Exercise before breakfast or after
Posted by Jason
I occasionally workout (eg.cycle,skip or run) before breakfast and would like to know if this is helping or harming my weight loss objective. Does this kickstart my metabolism? Also does this harm me by not eating after 8 hours sleep, then exercising?
Re: Exercise before breakfast or after
Posted by Chris
There are 2 schools of thought on this topic.
School #1 says that because glycogen stores are lower and blood glucose levels are lower when you first wake up that you will shift into fat burning mode much more quickly than you would otherwise.
School #2 says that the body is in a highly catabolic (muscle breakdown) state when you first wake up and that working out at that time will lead to even more muscle breakdown - especially if the exercise is aerobic. They figure that doing this will crush the metabolism.
Personally, I figure the truth is somewhere in the middle. Both schools have sound arguments, though #2's evidence is a bit more sound. My advice would be to experiment with it and see if it works for you. If it does, great - keep using it. If not, scrap the idea and move on.
