Gym on empty stomach

Depends what you are doing I guess but I certainly wouldn't be able to lift twice my weight off the floor if I had no food in me...

MeganMoroz89 wrote: »

superchea wrote: »

Wake up and go to the gym on empty stomach in the morning is that a good or bad thing? I usually don't have an appetite in the am but I still manage to get in 2,000 calories a day.

I know some people who can work out on an empty stomach but I am 100% not one of them. I NEED to eat beforehand or else I get very lightheaded.

Me too! Dizzy, lightheaded, sleepy, all that good stuff

zcb94 wrote: »

My workout partner believes not only in fasted cardio, but in what I affectionately call NPO cardio. She doesn't allow even a sip of water before or during exercise.

Curious as to what her reasoning for this is? How long before the workout does the non-drinking extend? You could get through a workout just fine without water provided you are properly hydrated before and especially if you aren't sweating a lot but I can't actually see any advantages to denying yourself water so it makes me curious

gmallan wrote: »

jolive7 wrote: »

Depends what you are doing I guess but I certainly wouldn't be able to lift twice my weight off the floor if I had no food in me...

Whereas I manage this just fine. I'm okay lifting heavy fasted but can't do conditioning or my energy seriously tanks and I don't get what I need out of my workout.

If you are managing it fine, you probably aren't doing the max you could be lifting then (what one considers "heavy" varies), or you don't lift with very much intensity, or many lifts at a time, or you don't do very much weight compared to your body size (you aren't using all that much energy compared to your size and available energy). Usually fasted you will run out of easily available energy on intense heavy lifting quickly and then your system wont have an easy time catching up with all the anaerobic load and expended energy...and you start to crash a bit.

I can usually get away with a few heavy sets and be fine too, or if I dont push the lifts hard I'm also OK with a full workout. But when I try doing max weight sets I'm not as strong, and once I tried doing all full weight heavy leg day on an empty stomach, it hit me hard. The last exercise I was doing was about 1,180lbs on the leg press machine for 3 sets of 10 (lots of anaerobically generated power in a short time), felt fine, then suddenly walking away from the machine, wham...lightheaded, felt like I almost fainted, had to lay on the floor for a while. Never happened before or again (after that I'm always eating something relatively close to a heavy weight workout) and no, no health issues ever. I've also seen similar situations happen to others.

Of the people I've known, usually its the people who don't lift as much typically and aren't really interested in building much muscle, or the untrained that claim it never affects them. I'm sure there are some who could have superior recovery and strength too, just saying those categories will probably all be just fine, but if you are trying maxes and training to increase strength I wouldn't advise it. And for cardio same thing: just look at the olympians and their patterns. They don't go fasted for performance.

heybales wrote: »

Also depends on what is meant by fasted-lifting.

Ate a snack at midnight and straight to bed, up and lifting by 7 am.
That's not really much of a fast - your liver carb stores should be just fine for your brain needed to feel motivated - and of course your muscle glucose stores don't disappear overnight unless you have some massive muscle cramping going on (and bigger problems I'd suggest then).
Not likely a pass out issue after some heavy lifting.

Many people have this misconception that their muscles glucose stores can be put back into the bloodstream and used up overnight, when it's not even needed then - and it can't happen anyway.

Now, last meal at 8 pm, and lifting at 2 pm with nothing to eat yet.
Ya - that's fasted and likely to effect performance.

There are many reasons for getting light-headed after heavy lifting, low blood sugar being one of them.

Yup it all depends, we can argue about both what is fasted and what is maximal and what is too much energy expenditure pointlessly since its different for everyone and under what circumstances. I have only experienced low blood sugar once after heavy extended lifting and included it as an example, once out of decades of lifting off and on. But I see reduced strength/performance on fasted lifting regularly, I now avoid it, and I advise others to as well if you want to workout hard or extended time, since you might see reduced performance if you do, not that you will for certain, its actually probably not easy to get to that point. For most this isn't really a question which will ever affect them though if they are in reasonably good health, some will never even try to push much, and many don't really care about a specific amount of pounds to achieve in a lift, and that's fine.

I'm really talking about maximal performance, and I very frequently felt reduction of strength fasted on my way to a 425lb bench goal as compared to training non fasted. I stopped weight training whenever I expected to improve my lifts without eating an hour to two beforehand and I got to my goal. If you really want to see what to do and not, to increase performance, you need to look at people who regularly do such things, like strength athletes and olympians, and again the vast majority just wont go for performance fasted. The majority of my workouts it also doesn't matter. But if you are pushing for that increased weight goal, fasted lifting can hurt your progress.

Meh, I train fasted in the mornings for the most part. Heavy Deadlifts and over 20 miles in my bike are the exceptions. Can't do those fasted.

jolive7 wrote: »

Hornsby wrote: »

Meh, I train fasted in the mornings for the most part. Heavy Deadlifts and over 20 miles in my bike are the exceptions. Can't do those fasted.

I am lightheaded after my deads on a good day haha can't imagine on empty

Tried it. Didn't go well. Passed out. Made an *kitten* of myself. Lol. Won't do it again.

gmallan wrote: »

SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish wrote: »

gmallan wrote: »

jolive7 wrote: »

Depends what you are doing I guess but I certainly wouldn't be able to lift twice my weight off the floor if I had no food in me...

Whereas I manage this just fine. I'm okay lifting heavy fasted but can't do conditioning or my energy seriously tanks and I don't get what I need out of my workout.

If you are managing it fine, you probably aren't doing the max you could be lifting then (what one considers "heavy" varies), or you don't lift with very much intensity, or many lifts at a time, or you don't do very much weight compared to your body size (you aren't using all that much energy compared to your size and available energy). Usually fasted you will run out of easily available energy on intense heavy lifting quickly and then your system wont have an easy time catching up with all the anaerobic load and expended energy...and you start to crash a bit.

I can usually get away with a few heavy sets and be fine too, or if I dont push the lifts hard I'm also OK with a full workout. But when I try doing max weight sets I'm not as strong, and once I tried doing all full weight heavy leg day on an empty stomach, it hit me hard. The last exercise I was doing was about 1,180lbs on the leg press machine for 3 sets of 10 (lots of anaerobically generated power in a short time), felt fine, then suddenly walking away from the machine, wham...lightheaded, felt like I almost fainted, had to lay on the floor for a while. Never happened before or again (after that I'm always eating something relatively close to a heavy weight workout) and no, no health issues ever. I've also seen similar situations happen to others.

Of the people I've known, usually its the people who don't lift as much typically and aren't really interested in building much muscle, or the untrained that claim it never affects them. I'm sure there are some who could have superior recovery and strength too, just saying those categories will probably all be just fine, but if you are trying maxes and training to increase strength I wouldn't advise it. And for cardio same thing: just look at the olympians and their patterns. They don't go fasted for performance.

I do what is programmed for me for the day by my very experienced S & C coach. All my max lifts are in the "experienced" to "elite" category for my body weight, age and gender and this is maintained while playing intense contact sport which requires other attributes like speed and endurance that generally trade off with strength to some degree. So I think I'm probably lifting relatively heavy and tracking okay with my training and strength progression. Having said that not every workout needs to be maxing out anyway. I do what I need to do to get my programmed workout done on any given day. I do always eat pre-game when I need to hit 100%.

Training fasted for me generally means a big dinner at 8pm, a whey casein blend shake at 9pm and training in the morning. I also take BCAAs during my workout. Maybe my performance would be a little better if I wasn't fasted but it is certainly not suffering. I also value my sleep highly so I feel getting up before a morning workout to give time to eat and digest food so it's actually available for use during the workout and not just sitting in the stomach would be a massive trade off for me - probably more than the additional benefit I'd get from eating. When I eat pre-game I get up 3-4 hours before to eat to make sure it has time to digest properly.

OK, I wasn't really saying anything about you per se. And it really sounds like with what you said this time we completely agree here: "I do what I need to do to get my programmed workout done on any given day. I do always eat pre-game when I need to hit 100%."

I'm not saying its always necessary, just helps when you are trying to get max lifts or go high intensity for long periods to get max performance. Sometimes, probably most times, its better to just get the workout in than postpone it (or skip a day) for meal timing.

Good.... yes! Fasted cardio/weights is what I do each day.

I think it's fine either way. But for me, I have to eat something because I get low blood sugar and lose my energy halfway through. I normally eat carbs and protein in the morning then workout.