Exercise to burn fat instead of calories?

heybales

Eating the fruit, the sugar, just killed the whole effect you were attempting to get.
It only makes sense because you don't understand how the body and energy systems work.

Eating the sugar will cause insulin to go up, and fat burning to turn off. That's what insulin does, read up on it. You eat any sugar, it goes up. You eat enough protein, it goes up. Eat fat, no. But eating butter before a workout might backfire. ;-)

You will now burn what you ate until insulin returns to normal and fat burning is turned back on.
In other words - you will burn NO fat on your body until back to normal. That can take from 1-4 hrs depending on meal size.

The whole premise being doing a fasted workout (last meal night before) is your body is already in the best fat-burning state it's going to be in. It's been there the whole night.

As soon as you start moving more, like more intense exercise, you will burn more carbs, no way around that. Go anaerobic, and it's total carbs to power the effort.

Guess what lifting is?

Ya, the fasted idea is for cardio, not lifting. Normally it takes about 30 min of moderate cardio for your body to settle in to the normal fat to carb ratio of energy source. Prior to that it's higher carbs used.
The idea of fasted cardio is to jump to that state faster, right from the start, of more fat burn.

But it must be slow cardio that was going to burn mainly fat anyway, go intense and you'll burn more carbs no matter what, you got plenty in your muscles already, just not as much in your liver for your blood sugar levels.

But the whole thing backfires when you look at the day. You just had 1 hr say of cardio time. And you just burned say 200-300 calories less because you went so slow. So what if it was mainly fat, you would have burned the same amount of fat calories anyway going more intense, and burned more overall.
Burning more overall would have meant after the next meal, when insulin goes up and carbs are refilled, you would have had more to refill, and insulin would have returned to normal faster, and you'd get back to normal fat burning state faster.

That's why you burn more fat in a diet, almost always about the insulin effect being shorter and refilling carb stores. Gets you back to fat burning state faster than otherwise.

Fasted lifting is pure preference. Some can do it, and trying to eat before early morning workout makes stomach trouble. Others feel weak and need energy.
Since you aren't burning fat for that anaerobic effort anyway, being in fasted state provides no benefit to lifting.

relax24

And i was just about to ask, Is walking an efficient method for burning weight or is going to the gym better for you?
glad i found this thread

heybales

My personal trainer certainly advocates it though and I trust his credentials pretty highly seeing as he coaches high level state track and field athletes. He recommends an hour of cardio first thing in the morning prior to eating breakfast for quicker fat loss, his premise being that after not eating all night your muscles do not have a lot of glycogen stores to use as fuel which forces your body to burn stored fat as fuel instead. You will still be burning calories, but they will come from stored fat instead of whatever you have just eaten.

Fire your trainer, he/she's a goof ball.

If you accurately stated what they said, that implies a belief your muscle glycogen stores can be used for general blood sugar use, general energy use through the night, and will be depleted enough in the morning to make any difference.

Your muscle glycogen stores can only be used locally by the muscle - they cannot be put into the blood stream for use anywhere else.

Only the liver stores can.

And your liver stores topped off can generally make it through 10-12 of sleep providing the brain energy in blood sugar.

Your level of exercise, the intensity, is going to dictate what the ratio of carbs to fat as energy source is going to be, with a slightly higher carb focus for first 30 min of easy cardio until normal ratio is hit.

Dewymorning

A calorie is a unit of energy.

Fat is a substance which the body can convert into energy, at approximately 3500 calories per pound.

I am confused.

fitandfortyish

A calorie is a unit of energy.

Fat is a substance which the body can convert into energy, at approximately 3500 calories per pound.

I am confused.

I'm not a huge expert but tend to prefer working out fasted so I'll try to explain some of it for you--hopefully if I screw up a detail someone will correct me...

Yes, what you say is right--at some level when you exercise really shouldn't matter because you are burning the same amount of calories at 8am as you would at 8pm. A calorie, is a calorie afterall. Working out fasted ---first thing in the morning after not eating since dinner the night before, or 4 hours after your last meal in the afternoon, forces your body to "take" energy from fat.

You may have read on this board that foods, especially carbs, are energy. When you body doesn't use up all available energy, it stores it as fat. Conversely, if you just eat something and go work out, your body will grab that energy first and use it, because your body doesn't need to 'pull' energy from it's stored resources.

So the logic here is if the body doesn't have readily available energy it will burn up stored fat to fuel your exercise.

People who are lean already, don't have much stored fats and can run into trouble because the body will start to break down muscle (protein) to fuel itself. Which is why you will see posts about protein balance etc.

At the end of the day, calories burned are calories burned like you say--and you will lose weight for sure. But if you body is pulling from its fat reserves to fuel -- then a person *should* see a decrease in their overall body fat %---keep in mind that you must not put an excessive amount of carb back into your system for the rest of the day, or you just end up putting back what you took out.

I want to add here that I DO NOT advocate low carbs diets for myself. I love me my carbs, I just keep my carb intake at only 10% of my daily calorie intake.

Did I make that more confusing ... or less??

richardheath

Did I make that more confusing ... or less??

More.

Yes, the body will burn fat if you exercise fasted. However, the body will also burn fat if you don't exercise at all and are in a calorie deficit.

Exercise isn't needed for weight loss - a calorie deficit is all that your body requires. Exercise (in terms of weight loss) just increases the amount you can eat and still have a deficit.

In terms of ensuring the most of your weight loss is fat, the very best thing you can do is to lift weights (some form of resistance training) and eat sufficient protein at an overall calorie deficit. This will help preserve lean body mass (i.e muscle) while shedding weight (i.e fat). Meal timing is essentially irrelevant for anyone but the elite athletes.

Don't over complicate things. Eat when it suits you. Exercise when you can. If you are tired, have a few "quick" carbs before or after. If not, don't...

For the record - I usually exercise first thing in the morning and rarely eat beforehand. But that is just because I don't like to eat that early. I have a protein shake afterwards, and consider that "breakfast".

richardheath

Hi,
Thanks for that tip. But I can't lift bec of a "bad back." Would the small 2 pound weights count, or doubling up on the 2 pound weights?

Talk to a physical therapist. It really depends on how bad your back is, and we can't diagnose that.

But in general, a 2 lb weight is not considered "weight lifting" for most people. Weight lifting would be a weight you can just do 3-5 reps for 3-5 sets (for strength building. also known as "heavy lifting") or 10-12 reps by 3-5 sets for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Any more reps than that and it's cardio/endurance, not strength. {Not that that is bad, it's just not weight lifting.]

urban_ninja

I was curious about this so I did an internet search and found this article.

http://www.jillianmichaels.com/fit/lose-weight/myth-empty-stomach-workouts?xid=nl_LosingItWithJillianMichaels_20140203

This makes sense to me. I usually grab a little food before a workout in the morning so I was looking for validation.

Dewymorning

A calorie is a unit of energy.

Fat is a substance which the body can convert into energy, at approximately 3500 calories per pound.

I am confused.

I'm not a huge expert but tend to prefer working out fasted so I'll try to explain some of it for you--hopefully if I screw up a detail someone will correct me...

Yes, what you say is right--at some level when you exercise really shouldn't matter because you are burning the same amount of calories at 8am as you would at 8pm. A calorie, is a calorie afterall. Working out fasted ---first thing in the morning after not eating since dinner the night before, or 4 hours after your last meal in the afternoon, forces your body to "take" energy from fat.

You may have read on this board that foods, especially carbs, are energy. When you body doesn't use up all available energy, it stores it as fat. Conversely, if you just eat something and go work out, your body will grab that energy first and use it, because your body doesn't need to 'pull' energy from it's stored resources.

So the logic here is if the body doesn't have readily available energy it will burn up stored fat to fuel your exercise.

People who are lean already, don't have much stored fats and can run into trouble because the body will start to break down muscle (protein) to fuel itself. Which is why you will see posts about protein balance etc.

At the end of the day, calories burned are calories burned like you say--and you will lose weight for sure. But if you body is pulling from its fat reserves to fuel -- then a person *should* see a decrease in their overall body fat %---keep in mind that you must not put an excessive amount of carb back into your system for the rest of the day, or you just end up putting back what you took out.

I want to add here that I DO NOT advocate low carbs diets for myself. I love me my carbs, I just keep my carb intake at only 10% of my daily calorie intake.

Did I make that more confusing ... or less??

So, I eat in the morning, and my body burns energy from my fat. I then eat breakfast. For the rest of the day from when I ate breakfast I eat more calories than I burn. So what does my body do with the excess calories?

I think the answer is, store them as fat.

So....

I think I will stick with my current routine.

I do usually exercise just before I eat my lunch, but that is just because exercising straight after eating gives me cramps.

heybales

So the logic here is if the body doesn't have readily available energy it will burn up stored fat to fuel your exercise.

People who are lean already, don't have much stored fats and can run into trouble because the body will start to break down muscle (protein) to fuel itself. Which is why you will see posts about protein balance etc.

Most of that was pretty good, there are the 2 that need some clarification.

The reason for muscle breakdown isn't because of lack of fat. Lack of carbs.
Your 140 lb 5% BF marathon runner, considering 3% is vital, has 2% available, or 4.2 lbs, or 14,700 calories available for energy needs. No, they have enough fat to run several marathons in a row.

The breakdown comes from 2 places.
Your liver stores got depleted enough your body is going to maintain blood sugar levels, so it turns on gluconeogenesis for any available amino acids to maintain that, and some are broken down from normal muscle repair and usage. That's minor, starts happening after 60-90 min depending on your intensity or available stores prior to exercise.
The big one is when your muscles run out of glycogen stores. That's the "wall" of your recreational marathoner that went out faster than they should have, and carb burning ratio was too high, using them up. That's your 3 or more hour range.
Hit the wall, you still got fat that is being burned, but for the pace you were trying to do, more carbs needed, and gluconeogenesis is too slow to provide them all, so you body slows way down to compensate. That's the big muscle burner if you try to keep a strong pace maxing out that process.

That same effect can be obtained too in a diet, where muscle glycogen stores are always at some level of depletion compared to where they could be. That's some of the big water weight loss starting a diet. Less stored with water.
But you do several days of intense effort in a row, never replenishing enough carbs for that storage, by the end of several days, you can be in exactly the same state.

And you can mimic the first effect too by doing intense cardio fasted. Liver stores already low, you finish them off in first 30 min, and after that some protein use is coming in to play.

You can train your body through your type of workouts to use more fat as fuel at higher intensity levels though. It is indeed with low intensity fasted cardio. But that's a low calorie burner, and most want to optimize their time if not training for an endurance event.

But going in to a workout fasted won't change the needed ratio. If you aren't providing enough oxygen for a certain level of fat to be used as the fuel source, carbs will be used.
Actually, as soon as you start exercising, the ratio is usually around 80% fat usage, mid-aerobic zone it's about 50%, and at lactate threshold going anaerobic it's 0%.

If you went into a HIIT routine fasted, and pushed it to the anaerobic zone because you are doing it correctly - you are using total carbs, no way around that.

The only thing the fasted helps with is about the first 30 min of medium intensity cardio, where you might start out say 30% fat uses that eventually settles down to the normally expected 50%.

So your 250-300 cal burn for that 30 min is 125-150 calories of fat, compared to unfasted 75-90 calories of fat normally.

A difference of 50-60 calories. Fat is 9 calories per gram, so 50-60 / 9 = 5.6-6.7 grams of fat burned off extra.

That's 0.2 - 0.24 ounces of extra fat you burned off because of that difference.

And that's exactly why you shouldn't just look at the narrow window of the workout, but the whole day effect.

If you had a bite to eat to allow you to do a more intense workout, you'd burn more carbs from your muscle and liver stores.
After your next meal those will be replenished first, along with using that food for energy right then.

Guess what happens if you have a lot of carb stores to refill? Blood sugar drops back to normal faster than if you ate a normal bigger meal, and you are back in to fat burning mode faster until your next meal.

That's where the real fat burning comes in - the after effects.

Like it's mentioned with lifting. Same thing in a diet, you store the less than normal carbs faster, return to fat burning mode faster. And now your body is repairing the muscles from your workout, which elevates metabolism to do so.

fitandfortyish

So the logic here is if the body doesn't have readily available energy it will burn up stored fat to fuel your exercise.

People who are lean already, don't have much stored fats and can run into trouble because the body will start to break down muscle (protein) to fuel itself. Which is why you will see posts about protein balance etc.

And that's exactly why you shouldn't just look at the narrow window of the workout, but the whole day effect.

If you had a bite to eat to allow you to do a more intense workout, you'd burn more carbs from your muscle and liver stores.
After your next meal those will be replenished first, along with using that food for energy right then.

Guess what happens if you have a lot of carb stores to refill? Blood sugar drops back to normal faster than if you ate a normal bigger meal, and you are back in to fat burning mode faster until your next meal.

That's where the real fat burning comes in - the after effects.

Like it's mentioned with lifting. Same thing in a diet, you store the less than normal carbs faster, return to fat burning mode faster. And now your body is repairing the muscles from your workout, which elevates metabolism to do so.

So you're saying eat something soon after working out after fasting? Just want to make sure I'm doing this right (I've plateau'd and this may be why)

Siansonea

It's not complicated. Eat less. Period. That's all you have to do.

heybales

So you're saying eat something soon after working out after fasting? Just want to make sure I'm doing this right (I've plateau'd and this may be why)

If the workout was gentle enough and didn't take that much out of you, you don't need to eat if not hungry until your next meal.
Personal preference. Whenever you eat post workout, if you include carbs, they'll refill all the stores, blood sugar drops, insulin is removed, fat burning is turned back on.

Just keep in mind some types of workouts can make you feel not hungry, but using your brain you know full well you better eat, or the next meal could be a disaster for adherence. Or you could be shaky and weak and not feel hungry. In which case, eat a snack or meal.

Also, if training for endurance, and will be doing another session today or tomorrow again, carbs within 30 min are taken up and stored faster. Actually carbs to protein ratio 4:1 was found to cause best uptake.

Plateau is at least 4 weeks with no change to weight or many measurements.
If no weight change but measurement dropped you burned fat, then body is comfortable making improvements, and you are likely eating more than you think or burning less than you think - in other words eating at maintenance.
If no improvements, body has likely adapted and suppressed your system because too extreme a deficit for too long, and you are still eating at maintenance, but for bad reasons.

fitandfortyish

So you're saying eat something soon after working out after fasting? Just want to make sure I'm doing this right (I've plateau'd and this may be why)

Plateau is at least 4 weeks with no change to weight or many measurements.
If no weight change but measurement dropped you burned fat, then body is comfortable making improvements, and you are likely eating more than you think or burning less than you think - in other words eating at maintenance.
If no improvements, body has likely adapted and suppressed your system because too extreme a deficit for too long, and you are still eating at maintenance, but for bad reasons.

I'm not weighing myself -- I'm cool at 129lbs but could stand to drop a percent or two of body fat. Increased protein, decreased carbs and stayed at same calororic intake. Do HIIT cardio alternating with steady state (2 days per week steady state, 2 days HIIT) all fasted and added resistance training 5 days a week when i can squeeze it in, but my measurements aren't changing as expected--this month i want to see a quarter inch drop off my waist measurement...been stuck for a month at 28 inches....

richardheath

You say you've plateaued, and yet you are not weighing yourself... is it just the inches not coming off?

Thing is, the last few % body fat are usually quite hard to get rid of. You need to be in quite a small deficit, hitting your protein macro, and just give it time.

fitandfortyish

Yes, just inches not coming off now....I'll stick to it--see what happens. May see abs yet.

heybales

To see the best body changes - you do NOT want to be in a deficit.

Now at this point, sounds like you are not - but for bad reasons. Body isn't going to make improvements that require more energy usage when it already thinks it's not getting enough for what you do. I'm going to suggest that is the issue.

I'd also not do the HIIT fasted, you likely aren't hitting (ha!) the hard interval as hard as you can.

There's a difference between it feels tough because you are tired, and it feels tough because it was an overload to your muscles.

HIIT is great fat-burning routine compared to steady-state for cardio folks that don't want to lift - because it's as close to lifting as you'll get with cardio.
All out push anaerobically, rest, repeat. Just like lifting.

If you have the time, and not training for an event that needs sport specific muscle improvement - skip the HIIT and hit the weights.

And slowly increase your calories, 100 daily for a week at a time.

If truly eating above maintenance with 100 calories - it would take 5 weeks to gain 1 pound, slowly.
Therefore if you gain fast water weight - you just topped off glycogen stores with water, and were not eating at true potential maintenance.
Of course if you gain nothing, you were not eating at potential maintenance either.

ninerbuff

Train intense to burn calories and increase your RMR. Here's the kicker: the body burns MORE FAT at rest vs exercising. At rest the body burns 100% fat. That includes when you're sleeping too, which is why it's important to get enough sleep.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

EpsilonGamma

Ok, the guy who said it is a myth hasn't really even given you any information.

He probably needs to read up on what Intermittent fasting is.

Essentially, exercise before breakfast is good. I'm not saying it converts every available energy from fats, but yes, it does use some of the fat.

However, in saying that, it is very important that your calorie intake is in a deficit (less than what you expend in energy).

I love training fasted.

Azdak

It doesn't matter what time of day you work out, or what you eat or don't eat before a workout, the results are exactly the same. Sorry. But if morning workouts work for you, there's no reason to stop doing them.

There is some credible studies out there (lean gains, eat-stop-eat, Rusty Moore) who claim working out "fasted" -- min 4 hours since you last ate that seem to show better fat burning when doing HIIT...If anyone is interested in giving it a try to see if it works for you.

One area of confusion is that in the more extreme situations --e.g. Competitive bodybuilders preparing for a show -- fasted cardio might be of some benefit, but that's only because at extremely low levels of body fat, mobilizing fat stores becomes a primary challenge. As so often happens, techniques that might be of benefit to the elites are erroneously applied to the general population.

For the other 99% of us, there is no benefit to fasted cardio and in fact there is a greater chance of a negative effect rather than a positive effect. Those who keep pushing this idea are just not familiar with the research.