Is fasted cardio the answer ?

Dana_Chami
Dana_Chami Posts: 9 Member
edited August 2015 in Fitness and Exercise
hey everyone .. Hope you are doing well and your loosing these pounds ! B) ! So for a month now , i have been doing fasted cardio HIIT in the morning before having my breakfast and i did feel a big change . My measurments changed and my body shrank dramaticly even though the scale didnt budge and wont budge *sigh* ! . I did some research and i found out that for people with less weight to loose or their aim is to loose fat , fasted cardio can be the answer .However if your goal is to build muscle then this is not your answer . My question is did anyone try this and found results ? Does it really matter about the timing of your sport?

Replies

  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,963 Member
    Dana_Chami wrote: »
    hey everyone .. Hope you are doing well and your loosing these pounds ! B) ! So for a month now , i have been doing fasted cardio HIIT in the morning before having my breakfast and i did feel a big change . My measurments changed and my body shrank dramaticly even though the scale didnt budge and wont budge *sigh* ! . I did some research and i found out that for people with less weight to loose or their aim is to loose fat , fasted cardio can be the answer .However if your goal is to build muscle then this is not your answer . My question is did anyone try this and found results ? Does it really matter about the timing of your sport?
    Were you doing HIIT after breakfast or did you just add HIIT? If so, it's not a true measurement on whether fasted works better for you or not when it comes to fat loss.
    Fat loss still is about CICO and rest since the fat is the primary fuel at rest and since we rest more than we exercise, rest is important.

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  • Dana_Chami
    Dana_Chami Posts: 9 Member
    I have been doing HIIT before breakfast for a month ? Does it work can you please explain to me about fat loss and how it works .. To be honest i still have 5 kgs and iam struggling to loose them.
  • IsaackGMOON
    IsaackGMOON Posts: 3,358 Member
    Dana_Chami wrote: »
    I have been doing HIIT before breakfast for a month ? Does it work can you please explain to me about fat loss and how it works .. To be honest i still have 5 kgs and iam struggling to loose them.

    Well to lose fat you need to be in a caloric deficit... this is where you eat below the amount of calories that you need to maintain your weight.

    Doing fasted cardio or whatever fasted exercise doesn't make you lose more weight... the fitness industry often says "fasted cardio will burn more body fat because you haven't eaten anything"... wrong. The large majority of people still have glycogen stores in their muscles to use.
  • LKArgh
    LKArgh Posts: 5,178 Member
    You lose weight by burning more calories than you eat. This can mean moving more or eating less, or a combination. How you implement the "moving" part, this is up to you. You can just go for a walk, use a bike, run, dance, swim, do HIIT or anything else you like, fasted or not. Or you can choose to not move at all and eat less, for weight loss it will work.
  • AsISmile
    AsISmile Posts: 1,004 Member
    Food contains calories, and calories is a unit of energy. Your body needs this energy to live. See it like fueling a car.
    When someone consistently eats more calories in a day than they burn in a day, those excess calories get stored as fat. 3500 excess calories are 1 pound of fat (on average).
    If you want to lose weight and fat, you need to burn those extra calories in your body. By eating less calories in a day than your body needs, it starts to convert fat and use those excess calories it stored to still have enough calories for day to day living.

    Cico (calories in/calories out), if less calories come in than go out (by burning energy), you lose weight.
    However, like ninerbuff says, not during workouts but during rest the fat is converted to energy. During workouts you need energy fast, so it calls on energy in your body that is easily accessible. Fat is not easily accessible, the conversion back to energy takes time, which is why you don't necessarily burn fat while working out but rather when you are resting.

    @ninerbuff Please feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.
  • 999tigger
    999tigger Posts: 5,235 Member
    Dasted cardio offers a tiny advantage, but its really small so its down to personal preference. Some people like to exercise first thing in the morning and can do it better without food whereas others need fule to get them through the session. Im not that convinced as to the efectiveness of hiit over steady state, granted it burns more during the time and post exercise, but its also harder to recover from.
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
    The only "benefit" of fasted cardio is that it delays you eating for a while.

    Good info here:

    http://www.bodyforwife.com/the-caloric-deficit-cheat-sheet/
  • litsy3
    litsy3 Posts: 783 Member
    The other 'benefit' of fasted cardio is that it trains your body to become more efficient at burning fat as fuel, if you are the sort of athlete that will find it useful to do that. But you'd do it by going for long easy runs (not by doing HIIT), and it would have no weight loss effect unless you were also eating at a deficit.
  • Dana_Chami
    Dana_Chami Posts: 9 Member
    AsISmile wrote: »
    Food contains calories, and calories is a unit of energy. Your body needs this energy to live. See it like fueling a car.
    When someone consistently eats more calories in a day than they burn in a day, those excess calories get stored as fat. 3500 excess calories are 1 pound of fat (on average).
    If you want to lose weight and fat, you need to burn those extra calories in your body. By eating less calories in a day than your body needs, it starts to convert fat and use those excess calories it stored to still have enough calories for day to day living.

    Cico (calories in/calories out), if less calories come in than go out (by burning energy), you lose weight.
    However, like ninerbuff says, not during workouts but during rest the fat is converted to energy. During workouts you need energy fast, so it calls on energy in your body that is easily accessible. Fat is not easily accessible, the conversion back to energy takes time, which is why you don't necessarily burn fat while working out but rather when you are resting.

    @ninerbuff Please feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.

    Thank you so much for explaining ❤️ it helped alot :smile:
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    edited August 2015
    I've tried not having breakfast before my morning run a while back for a few weeks, I noticed no difference at all and I workout better when I'm not starving...
  • FatAsianNerd
    FatAsianNerd Posts: 600 Member
    Fasted anything is pretty much awesome. I can't wait to go on my cut. At this time still bulking so I'm eating whatever I want without caring too much about macros. I do try and eat at about 3200 calories per day. Sometimes I can eat all of that in one or two meals. A few more weeks until I hit 195 and I'll start my cut.
  • auddii
    auddii Posts: 15,357 Member
    The exercise and food combination that works for you and allows you to stay in a calorie deficit is what works.

    I tried HIIT, and it didn't work for me; I lost more consistently when I added LISS into my program. I do lift in the morning prior to eating; I can't do food before my workout and still end the day within my goals; the earlier I start eating, the hungrier I am throughout the day. And not eating has not seemed to affect my lifts at all. In the afternoon, I need a snack right before jumping on the elliptical or I won't make it to the end. It's what works for me...
  • Ironmaiden4life
    Ironmaiden4life Posts: 422 Member
    FatAsianNerd wrote: »
    Fasted anything is pretty much awesome.

    No it's not.

    With the right diet and training set up fasted cardio can be a tool to help achieve your body composition goals, but do fasted resistance training and you are setting yourself up for failure if lean mass gain is your goal.

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