Anyone remember being told to eat a banana before exercising? Or only to exercise after consuming… protein … carbs … a handful of almonds … whatever…?
Well, it turns out that the best time to exercise is on an empty stomach. A very empty stomach. According to research published last week, the perfect time to exercise is before breakfast, while our bodies are in a fasted state.
Before you start an intensive programme of pre-breakfast jogs, bear in mind that this small study only involved overweight men. Needless to say, the results appear dramatic. Overweight men who exercised – moderately intense cycling – before breakfast burnt double the amount of fat than those exercising after breakfast.
The significant finding is this: while exercising before breakfast led to no difference in weight loss, it had ‘dramatic’, ‘profound and positive’ effects on the men’s overall health (the researcher’s words, not mine, but not the sort of cautionary words researchers normally use). The mens’ bodies became much better at managing insulin levels and keeping blood sugar under control, potentially reducing their risk of diabetes and heart disease. For some reason, the bodies of the exercise-before-breakfast cohort were better able to transport glucose from the bloodstream to the muscles, making the muscles more responsive to insulin.
“Changing the timing of when you eat in relation to when you exercise can bring about profound and positive changes to overall health,” said Dr Gonzalez of the University of Bath.
Co-author, Dr Wallis from Birmingham University, added that exercising in “an overnight fasted state can increase health benefits … without changing the intensity or duration of effort.” Read more here.
We’re always looking for short-cuts to better health so we’re awaiting the results of their next trial involving women with interest. We’ll keep you posted. But what’s so interesting about this study is the way it highlights the crucial role of timing, reflecting a very recent study on blood pressure medication which found that taking it before bed was far more effective than taking it in the morning, halving the risk of heart attacks and stroke. The body’s internal clock is infinitely more complicated than was ever imagined and, fortunately, researchers are becoming more aware of this. If you missed the blood pressure study, catch up here.
While we’re on the subject of muscles a new study, involving over 4000 participants, suggests that Vitamin D deficiency could also lead to poor muscle function in the over 60s. It’s not only resistance exercise that our muscles need but sufficient levels of vitamin D, which scientists now think may be muscle-protective as well as bone-protective. Read more here.
Vitamin D is just about the only vitamin we recommended in our book and we both take supplements during the winter months when British sunlight is low, spare and often absent altogether. You can read our earlier posts on Vitamin D here and here.
Lastly, Susan is hosting a workshop in Gloucestershire on 19th November. This morning workshop (to include a lunch cooked with the perfect age-well ingredients) will help you think about your health and longevity and you’ll leave with your own, unique Age-Well Plan.
Tuesday November 19th at Water Lane Workshops, near Stroud, Gloucestershire. For more details contact:
e: kate@waterlaneworkshops.co.uk / t: 07770 988455 / f: www.facebook.com/Waterlaneworkshops
Any experience of exercising before breakfast? Did you feel better? Worse? Please do share any comments in the comment box…
Annabel
Regarding your comment “Vitamin D is just about the only vitamin we recommended in our book”: you should strongly consider recommending B12.
I (as almost vegan) have been for years checking this on and off (with normal results), until a recent *new* test (intra-cellular values) showed I was (in complete contradiction to the normal test) seriously deficient.
To quote Wikipedia (which I don’t like doing, but it’s succinct..) “Vitamin B12 deficiency can cause severe and irreversible damage, especially to the brain and nervous system”
In addition to effects such as tiredness, heart palpitations and fatigue, there is strong evidence to suggest deficiency contibutes to psychological problems (e.g. depression) and also erectile dysfunction. There is some ongoing debate whether there is any correlation between lack of B12 and dementia.
In short, anybody who is tending towards Vegan should take a supplement from day 1, cheap insurance..
Absolutely agree – and we do say that in our book. We also say that anyone with a deficiency should supplement too. And we like zinc at this time of year which is also backed by robust data. Thanks for the comment!
Oh I do love you two! You speak my language!
I always exercise on an empty stomach first thing in the morning and have never experienced any ill affects as a result. (I am a morning person) I power walk rather than run, do stretches and Pilates and am about to incorporate weights for my bone health.
I have Barrett’s Oesophagus and a small hiatus hernia which makes exercising with food in my stomach very unpleasant, anything that engages the core can cause reflux. I take Proton Pump Inhibitors so would welcome any guidance you may have about vitamins etc I could take to balance any long term side effects they could be having on my overall health.
Looking forward to seeing you in London in January. 😊
Thanks Shelley. Looking forward to meeting you too!
I’ve always found exercising on an empty stomach much more palatable (sorry!) than trying to get in some breakfast before hand. Nowadays I commute by bike for an 8am start and often don’t get around to ‘breakfast’ until 11am or later, meaning I accidentally do the 16:8 fasting too most working days. In my younger days (I’m in my 60s) I would cycle to the beach (in Western Australia), run a couple of miles in the sand then swim in the ocean back to the start and cycle home, then have breakfast.
I’ve never had any problems with energy fluctuations that other people talk about – I have literally no idea what ‘running out of energy’, short of actually hitting the wall (which has only happened twice in a career of endurance sport), is like. Physiological testing when I was cycle racing found that I am an extreme fat burner, in that I burn a high proportion of fat at every exercise loading (effectively, each heart rate level). This obviously means that I need less sugar (whether stored glycogen or food intake) than most folk for the same event. And it shows on Audax events when most cyclists eat continuous whereas I can quite happily complete a 600 (600 km in 25-30 hours) on pretty much ‘normal’ food intake without energy drinks or gels.
It’s not clear whether this is an adaptation to training for endurance sports (fell running, mountaineering, open water swimming, 12/12 hour time trials, ultras (before they had the name), and extreme cycle events) since my teens or whether it’s a genetic feature along with very low resting heart rate.
The corollary is that I gain weight easily and have a BMR of 1200 kcals per day.
So you win some and you lose some!
That’s very interesting, Fiona. Thanks for sharing. incidentally there was some research last week on mice that showed hungry mice did more exercise than non-hungry mice. The researchers wondered if the hunger hormone, ghrelin, actually spurs us to exercise rather than the reverse. It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view perhaps, if the brain thinks we’re flagging it might just shoot us some extra energy to go and forage for or catch the food we need.
On the truth about or trust me (one of those TV programmes) it said that it’s better for women to exercise after eating, so it would be interesting if a future study included females…
And it may be an individual thing too, not gendered at all. So many factors to consider, including age. Watch this space! Thanks for the comment.
Now that I am retired I exercise only in the morning before breakfast. When I was younger I preferred the evening but I cannot be bothered if I have not done something in the morning that’s it. I always exercise on an empty stomach. If I go for a jog I have no appetite for a couple of hours but if I do something less intense but still interesting, like yoga, I am starving by noon.
I have been tested twice and am Vitamin D deficient so I take a pill once a day fro September to May. Basically if I am in shorts and short sleeved shirts in the garden I don’t bother with them.
One interesting fact that I have learned the hard way recently is that Physios are much better at sorting out muscles and joints than GPS. According to my physio, who sorted out this spring’s knee injury ( kneeling down planting spring onions during the spring) after I hoped it would get better for 6 months, most medical degrees in the U.K. contain about 5 or 6 hours specifically at the skeleton and muscles. Before all you GPS jump down my throat A) I believe her because the effect on my knees has been little short of miraculous (in that I went for a pain free jog the other day, after the GP looked baffled and suggested yet more rest) and B) my first degree was in mineral engineering, ie how to process minerals from ores, which is a fairly specialised field. When I worked in diamond mining I had precisely 90 minutes of lectures on diamonds to work with. Sure I had a lot of the basics, density separation; techniques etc but on the specific field only 90 minutes. The same when I worked on gold and uranium mines.
So when you have tried the GP and got nowhere, grit your teeth, spend some cash as you won’t get help from the NHS and see what transpires. Obviously this is only my experience and I would not go to a physio before I had tried to get sense out of my GP. NB 40 minutes with my Physio is about £50 it depends, when my wife went it was more, I think she had longer sessions. As you are paying you pay attention. If you can afford a pair of running shoes you can afford to go to a physio so that you can use them painlessly.
There is an obvious logic of the benefit of exercise on an empty stomach. When we eat, we increase the amount of sugar in our blood, and our body preferentially uses that for exercise. If we have not eaten, our blood sugar is low, so the exercise must be fueled by fat reserves. I practice intermittent fasting and always prefer to exercise at the end of a fast, except when doing a major endurance activity.
Very good point, Robert, thank you