Excercising before breakfast

I am the same way. If I do not eat before the workout I find that i get weak and cannot finish the workout . blood sugar need to be stable not depressed.. thanks for your input.

peole who work out in the morning tend to exercise more consistently.. Also working out before breakfast helps get your metabolism going, then you eat b-fast and that revs it up too..

I've been doing that for about 6 months now and I'm very satisied with the results..:happy:

My husband and I work out in the mornings. We head to the pool. He eats a slice of bread and some OJ before he goes, but he also checks his blood sugar as he's diabetic. I just take my vitamin C before I go. He swims very vigorously and I go at it for 35 minutes, whicih is all my skin can handle in the pool. After that I go home, eat breakfast, and start work. It feels good to get my exercise in early and have the whole day ahead of me to know I have accomplished something good for myself. Plus I always see nice people in the locker room.

I eat a very light breakfast before heading to the gym (a plain english muffin) to fuel my morning workout. By the time I'm finished with my workout, shower, dress, and walk from the gym to work, it's been about two hours and I'm ready for a snack, usually fruit and yogurt.

I prefer morning workouts; if it's going to be rigorous, then I eat a banana beforehand and then my main breakfast afterwards. I like getting it done and over with so nothing pops up preventing my workout from getting done later.

From what I've gathered, you should not workout before you eat. You need the fuel to get through the exercise. At least I know I do. I don't have the energy to push myself through it without eating before hand. Plus, eating breakfast helps get your metabolism going better for the day since its been going around 12 hours with no food....

Exercising before breakfast forces your body to burn excess fat as opposed to metabolizing the food that you've just consumed with breakfast. I've heard this from every personal trainer I have ever met.

Mayo Clinic (reputable source) offers this advice: (You may have to cut & paste the link)

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/hq00594_d

I hope this helps! Good luck.

So what does your body burn after the workout and the food was used up during exercise? Everything I have seen from real research indicates your body will burn the excess fat when there is a deficit in calories for the day whether they are from exercise or simply living and it does not matter what time of day.

The Mayo clinic article simply mentions that it is a good idea to eat before a work out but not too much so you have maximum energy available. If you don't eat or eat too much your work out will not be as effective.

Exercising before breakfast forces your body to burn excess fat as opposed to metabolizing the food that you've just consumed with breakfast. I've heard this from every personal trainer I have ever met.

Mayo Clinic (reputable source) offers this advice: (You may have to cut & paste the link)

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/hq00594_d

I hope this helps! Good luck.

So what does your body burn after the workout and the food was used up during exercise? Everything I have seen from real research indicates your body will burn the excess fat when there is a deficit in calories for the day whether they are from exercise or simply living and it does not matter what time of day.

The Mayo clinic article simply mentions that it is a good idea to eat before a work out but not too much so you have maximum energy available. If you don't eat or eat too much your work out will not be as effective.

when I went to a trainer she told me to eat 1/2 banana and a tsp of pb 1 hour before I worked out with her. IF you are lifting weights, you must have some energy to do so. Or at least this is what she told me. I went in one morning and was sent home because I had not eaten.

I wonder if any PT are on here? Opinions?

I've always heard if it's a light exercise, you should be fine not eating, but if it's intense or you're running for a long time, at least eat a banana or something just to fuel you. This morning, I planned to walk/run for 30 minutes on the treadmill so I ate a banana as I was driving to the gym and ended up going for 2.7 miles and running 8 of the 30 minutes. No side cramps, nausea, I had plenty of energy to get through it, then once I was done, I was famished so I ate a normal breakfast and I've been feeling great ever since!

I prefer to excersize in the morning on a empty stomach before i shower. It is more consistant as others have said and easier for me not to have to figure out something to eat, then wait so i dont get a tummy ache, etc. i just do it, shower and then have my coffee, get ready for the day and so on.

When you work out on an empty stomach you burn fat. When you work out after eating you burn carbs.

That is an extreme oversimplification. You almost never burn 100% fat or 100% carbs empty stomach or not.

Here is a link to an article that explains the research on this topic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/health/04real.html

The short version is that technically you do burn a negligible amount more fat on an empty stomach but are much more likely to stop exercising early due to fatigue so the net result is less fat burned.

Eat before and workout harder.

If you wanna burn the fat you are gonna have to eat something before you work out no matter what time of day. Your body is in a fast over night and store the fat, you need to break that so when you work out in the AM your metabolism gets going and burns the fat.

I have half of a protein shake, or cliff bar before I go then the other half and a banana on the drive home. I love working out in the AM gets my day started and I totally feel energized to care for my daughter. I do nap tho cuz I wake up at 4am lol but it works for me

Okay, a little primer on how the body works for fueling any activity (even organ function while sleeping). No matter what you use to fuel the body, it has to be chemically converted to ATP which is what the body actually uses to produce the movement. The first way to produce ATP is the Creatine Phospate--ATP system which can only provide enough ATP for about 60 seconds of movement. It is basically using what little ATP is already in the muscles and creatine phospate to produce a little more. When you jump up to catch a falling baby or run a 40 yard dash or something else that is quick and explosive movement, that is the CP-ATP system. For movement longer then that, you have to use glycolysis, either anaerobic or aerobic. Glycolysis can provide energy for up to 20-30 minutes of exercise. You're basically converting stored glycogen and glucose to ATP. There are three places in the body where you can store glycogen and glucose; glycogen in the liver and muscles and glucose in the blood. The majority of the glycogen is stored in the muscles and the muscles don't share. So, if you aren't using the biceps for example, you can't pull the glycogen from the biceps for the glycolysis process. There is only about 400 calories of glycogen and glucose in the liver and blood to fuel movement, so when you are sleeping, you deplete those before you wake up. When you burn fat, that is done through the Krebs Cycle and Electron Transport Chain. You can't get to those steps in the production of ATP without going through glycolysis. At the end of glycolysis, one of the by-products is Pyruvate. If there is oxygen present, then you can take the Pyruvate on to the Krebs Cycle and Electron Transport Chain to start burning fat. If oxygen isn't available, the pyruvate is converted to lactate (aka lactic acid) and no fat can be burned because you can't go on to the Kreb's Cycle. If you deplete your available glycogen/glucose, then you can't burn fat. So, if the body gets low on glucose/glycogen, like at night when you are sleeping and not replenishing carbs, then the body starts to break down protein to make glycogen/glucose. The only storage source of protein is in the muscles. So, about halfway through your sleep cycle your body releases cortisol to tell the muscles to break down to produce glucose for the blood and glycogen for the liver. When you workout first thing in the morning without eating first, you aren't burning more fat then if you were to workout in the afternoon or evening. You are just breaking down more muscle to burn the same amount of fat from your workout because of a lack of available carbs to start the fat burning process. The loss of muscle is what shows up as a greater weight loss on the scale, which is why the general population tends to believe it is better because they trust the scale. If you don't mind losing muscle, it will help the scale go down faster. If you are looking at wanting to maintain your muscle, however, this is not a good thing. First of all, if you want to look solid and defined, then you have to maintain that muscle. Even if you aren't wanting the body of a bodybuilder, though, you want to maintain that muscle so that you burn more calories at rest because muscle does burn calories at rest just to maintain itself. And the breakdown of muscle to convert protein to glucose/glycogen causes the body to be acidic (The Ketosis that low carb diets talk about.) which can actually damage your organs, specifically the kidneys and liver from trying to get rid of the nitrogen in the protein. To prevent this muscle breakdown, some athletes actually get up in the middle of the night and have a quick carb heavy snack so that they don't have any muscle breakdown in the middle of the night.

So, for those reasons, I actually recommend to my clients to eat something, preferably mostly carbs, about an hour before they workout. That isn't always feasible for everyone, though. Most of the time it is a time constraint that prevents them from having an extra hour to wait before working out. If you can workout right after eating something, that's okay too. You just won't have the carbs available for all of the workout. There are some people, though, who can't workout with anything on their stomach or they get sick. If you are one of those people, you can workout in the morning, but know that you will eventually slow your metabolism from the loss of muscle unless you are doing other things to prevent muscle loss. That will require something like heavy weight lifting later in the day with adequate protein in the diet to build muscle to have it to break down in the mornings.