Not knowing any details, I can't make an informed decision. But from a personal and anecdotal perspective the concept is idiotic and counterproductive.

Idiotic and counterproductive? Not quite. It depends on what you're trying to do.

If the morning workout is going to be a high intensity one, I would agree that you would want to load up so that you can perform at your best. But if it's a pedestrian 6-mile fat-burning run, then EATING is counterproductive.

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I would highly doubt that this method is productive in boosting one's metabolism.

When one awakes, liver glycogen stores are depleted. If one went to go exercise in this depleted state performance suffers and the body turns to lean body tissue for energy.

It is well known that a full breakfast is the key to boosting one's metabolism throughout the day and helps to avoid the late day eating binge that occurs when one tries to fast in the a.m.

Well, I have read a few articles about this, and while some state that exercising before breakfast may allow you to 'burn fat faster' as your glycogen levels are at their lowest, some suggest that your body may then be in full-blown "starvation prevention mode" and store (as fat) anything that you may swallow after your early morning training...

(BTW, François, I have a question for you, see my post below

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...earch_string;#374083

I hope I am not mistaken.)

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Pardon my French.

Point taken, hence the anecdotal perspective. When I was an idiot senior in college I had the bright idea of getting up early on Tuesday mornings to do criterium workouts in a secluded neighborhood. I'd always end up bonking, and in the group rides that evening I'd end up bonking again.

I got FAT that spring...And I was working out every day.

cool. merci. I answered your post. didn't see it the other day

I am sure most of the responses you get will be myth or "studies" that really can't be repeated in the real world, as is a large percentage of the nutrition industry and marketing.

Simply: you need calories to work off of; your bodies has caloric stores; at some point you need to add to those stores; you burn fat and CH and P. If you tip the scales towards more work-less cals, you will lose weight.

Personally, I regularly do lots of exercising (easy and hard) first thing in the morning without any calories beforehand (other than dinner). If it is longer than 1.5 hours, I will bring some calories along. It works fine and I am an FOP AG'r at all distances. The more you are in this sport, the more you realize that marketing and "studies" all so suspect that you need to simplify it and rely on your own experience.

Merci beaucoup François for your answer regarding rotorcranks.

Getting back to training before breakfast, I do all my bike training sessions from 5h30 to 6h30 on a computrainer.

I never breakfast before training, even when I do VO2Max intervals. When I know the training session will be rather hard, I make sure I eat some pastas the night before, around 8:00 or 9:00 PM.

The question is, I have always wondered whether training this way could have some deep and negative impact on my metabolism. I have a natural (genetic?) tendency to easily store fat, but I do not know whether 5 years of pre-BF training have had an adverse impact on the speed at which I store fat...

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Pardon my French.

I think this is a lousy way to train, but a great way to lose weight. I did it in college when I wanted to drop pounds fast -- I would eat my last meal of the day no later than 6, go for a slow run -- 5-6 miles at 9:00 pace) and then go to bed without eating anything else. The next morning I would get up and go for a 3-4 mile jog before I ate anything. The morning jog felt AWFUL -- I felt like my legs were made of concrete, and it was incredibly slow...........but it got rid of fat faster than anything else I've ever tried.

The keys here are that both workouts are at a fairly low intensity, so that you don't need massive recovery (in terms of time, or protein intake). And you're not going to get any direct training benefit from this (in fact I would only really recommend it during your off-season, or maybe the month before you start in-season training again to accelerate your progress to race weight). But in my experience, it took off fat unbelievably quickly.

Good luck!

I've read some articles that state that by starving one's metabolism instead of the body becoming efficient at burning fat or glycogen it becomes efficient at setting the metabolism at starvation and store mode. If it predicts that it is being robbed of calories it will do its best to store them. The idea of eating something is to trick it and prevent this from happening.

Yeah. Then there's the theory that if you have a bunch of glucose swimming around in your blood (due to a recent meal), your muscles are going to use that and not touch the fat.

The point is, it's easy to misinterpret these studies or take them out of context. Best to do plenty of experimentation and draw your own conclusions. All I'm saying is that fasting shouldn't be a taboo. Give it a try.

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One has to fuel a body for optimum performance. Starving it of fuel is counter productive to training. Weight loss is best done over the long haul with small steps rather than drastic measures.

Brian,

I am not asking what YOUR opinion is on this, but if there are studies showing that you can increase the rate of fat metabolism by exercising before breakfast, obviously on a relatively short workout at low intensity...
I am not talking about going on a 3h bike ride with 2x20' at maxlass and run 1h off the bike obviously.

When I was in college, I used to swim first thing in the morning, up to 6000 yards, every day of the week except Sunday, before eating breakfast and only drinking a little water before practice. For that matter, I think that over Christmas break one year I swam up to 11,000 or 12,000 yards every day for a week before eating breakfast. That was back in the day when real swim coaches didn't let you get out of the pool to use the water fountain and certainly didn't let you have a bottle of water or gatorade on the deck.

Now, I regularly work out before breakfast because it's the only time of the day that I can work out regularly. I run up to 8 or 10 miles after eating nothing and only drinking water and a glass of either gatorade or orange juice. I don't have trouble, as long as I am "in shape", doing up to 6 x 1 mile intervals as fast as I can run such intervals before breakfast. I also do long runs of up to 20 miles with nothing in my stomach except water, gatorade and no more than 2 packets of GU. I don't have problems with bonking unless I go out too quickly or just aren't in good enough shape for the workout I'm trying to do. I do eat a reasonably well balanced diet for the working out that I do, and we tend to eat dinner between 7 and 7:30 because that's when the entire family can be there. I understand that the energy is there in your muscles if you are eating properly to do this sort of workouts that I do, and it's not until you are working out much longer that you need to consume significant calories while working out.

My experience has been that you lose weight if you eat fewer calories than you use regardless of when you consume them. Alternatively, you gain weight if you eat more than you use up. Anything else seems to me to be substituting a gimick for what you actually need to do to accomplish something.

Francois - instead of getting mainly antedotial evidence do a lit search at the UTEP library. You'll find what your looking for.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

@ low intensity, your body burns fat preferentially to carbohydrates. (to varying degrees based on the individual...i'm @ 80% fat utilization @ 130bpm, but apparently that's quite high).



anyway...if you have an empty GI system, after digestion has occurred, this fat is not going to be metabolized from the GI system, instead will be metabolized from the body's stores. You break down the stores you have, instead of using the (now non-existant) stores in your gut.



if you eat beforehand, i think the theory is that you will use the readily available CHO and fats in the GI system, before it uses the fat stores in the body



i don't have a specific study to prove this...but the theory seems sound with a general understanding of exercise physiology.

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"Anyone can work hard when they want to; Champions do it when they don't."

You could probably find articles at the library or on the net regarding this issue. I'm sure there are published papers supporting whatever method you're wanting to pursue. In fact, it looks like you have the answer and want something to back it up rather than the opposite way of doing the research rather than finding the answer.

In the end, do what works for you.

no I don't have the answer and was looking for links...
and I don't do the research (on this)...the research is what is done by the people writing the papers...

There's no literature to support it since the metabolic mechanism involved does not make sense. But that's to me, let's see if one of the world leading researchers on the utilization of CHO in exercise will prove me wrong...

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

I was wondering when you were going to chime in palhaco! ;-)

Hence the saying, fat burns in a carbohydrate fire. Whith limited amounts of CHO available the process doesn't work effectively.

A quick, cursory search in PubMed revealed this. I'm sure you can find a multitude of others, many of opposing opinions and findings, no doubt.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...query.fcgi?DB=pubmed

Nutrition. 2004 Jul-Aug;20(7-8):716-27. Related Articles, Links
Optimizing fat oxidation through exercise and diet.

Achten J, Jeukendrup AE.

School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. jachten@bham.ac.uk

Interventions aimed at increasing fat metabolism could potentially reduce the symptoms of metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes and may have tremendous clinical relevance. Hence, an understanding of the factors that increase or decrease fat oxidation is important. Exercise intensity and duration are important determinants of fat oxidation. Fat oxidation rates increase from low to moderate intensities and then decrease when the intensity becomes high. Maximal rates of fat oxidation have been shown to be reached at intensities between 59% and 64% of maximum oxygen consumption in trained individuals and between 47% and 52% of maximum oxygen consumption in a large sample of the general population. The mode of exercise can also affect fat oxidation, with fat oxidation being higher during running than cycling. Endurance training induces a multitude of adaptations that result in increased fat oxidation. The duration and intensity of exercise training required to induce changes in fat oxidation is currently unknown. Ingestion of carbohydrate in the hours before or on commencement of exercise reduces the rate of fat oxidation significantly compared with fasted conditions, whereas fasting longer than 6 h optimizes fat oxidation. Fat oxidation rates have been shown to decrease after ingestion of high-fat diets, partly as a result of decreased glycogen stores and partly because of adaptations at the muscle level.

Publication Types:

• Review
• Review, Tutorial

PMID: 15212756 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Francois -

I recently read an article (trying to find it) that mentions there are additional fat-burning gains from working out in the morning...but the benefits are not tied to whether you ate or not.

the gains you speak of are due to the elevated BMR throughout the course of the day if you workout in the morning.



you get more 'bang for your buck' so to speak from increasing your BMR @ 8am as opposed to 8pm, b/c after you head to bed...the body shuts it back down to normal.

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"Anyone can work hard when they want to; Champions do it when they don't."