Over the weekend I hit the gym with my buddy Mikey for a morning cardio workout.
Now, I say “cardio”, but really it was a metabolic resistance training session.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, the simple definition for metabolic resistance training is “cardio with weights”. We’ll cover this more in detail in another update so as not to get too off topic.
So we’re about 10 minutes into the workout and Mikey looks like he’s in pretty bad shape (despite being in really GOOD shape). So I asked him what the deal was.
“I didn’t eat anything for breakfast.”
Me: Why the heck not?
“I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do if you want to burn the most fat from your morning workouts.”
Uh oh.
Perhaps you’re still believing this old myth just like good ol’ Mikey, so allow me to take a moment to dispel it.
The theory behind empty stomach is cardio is simple: supposedly, by doing cardio on a empty stomach, you tap directly into fat stores since glycogen (carbohydrate) stores are somewhat depleted after an overnight fast.
Seems to make sense, but research has proven this to be wrong.
Several studies have shown no difference in substrate utilization (glycogen vs. fat) for those working out on an empty stomach vs. those who eat a small meal prior to their morning workouts.
In fact, one study showed the exact opposite—those who had a small meal first burned more calories and more fat than the empty stomach group.
How can this be?
The reason is rather simple if you think about it. I was kicking butt and taking names with my workout, and Mikey was barely able to get through his. Even if not eating beforehand allowed you to burn more fat (which it doesn’t), the major trade off is performance.
And why does performance matter? Well, if you can’t perform at an optimal level and put forth maximal effort, then you are not going to be burning an optimal amount of calories–period.
The truth is, empty stomach cardio is an outdated philosophy whose theory was proven incorrect by research. Still, there are plenty of people who hold on to the theory despite the available research. Perhaps they’re not aware of it, perhaps they just go by what the fitness and bodybuilding magazines tell them (bad idea); I’m not sure.
Whatever the reason, popular philosophy doesn’t always mean correct philosophy, and this is one such instance.
So I’ll leave you with some practical recommendations:
At the very minimum, have a couple scoops of whey before any morning “cardio” workout.
That said, if it’s still negatively affecting your performance, you need to go a bit further. The meal doesn’t have to be large, but it should contain some complex carbs (oatmeal, etc) along with a small serving of protein.
Give it about a half hour to begin digesting and then hit your workout.
Better performance = more calories burned = more fat loss = improved cardiovascular functioning = even better performance = even more calories burned = even more fat loss.
Don’t be like my friend Mikey and have a crappy workout because you didn’t eat. As I shared with you, the research shows that’s not going to make a difference anyway. Instead, eat your Wheaties (figuratively speaking) and then dominate your workout!
Alright, now it’s comment time:
I want to know: Do you still do empty stomach cardio? Will you give it up based on this post? Do you notice your performance suffers?
Or maybe you do REALLY well with empty stomach cardio.
Either way, let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below!
Chat with you below!
Your friend,
Joel
The performance drop off is not that different when training carb depleted
over a 4 minute tabata session I see a 5 second difference.
You mention the research but you say there is only one paper that supports it . You can find one paper to support anything.
blah blah blah another theory,,, i have done this for years empty stomach cardio and it works for me ,,,, im notlistening to anyone telling me i should not who it who charges a fortune for diet regimes and then looas as if they need to get in shape themsleves…. What ever works for you is fine if u feel good doing it , keep doing it ,,, dont let anyone change your mind ,,
Opinions and results obviously vary on this. My routine, FWIW: A 12 oz. blender drink of OJ, 2 Tbls. unsweetened yogurt, half a medium banana, a scoop of soy protein powder, and a scoop of psyllium husks. Down that, wait a half-hour, warm-up slowly, and get it on. It works.
Yeah I’m giving it up completely after this, I felt my performance was poor even when I just went to shoot some free ones at the basketball court. SO if it’s even proven by research forget about it, my breakfast is my largest meal, I ain’t skippin that :)
QUESTION: Does this performance thing work also if you have a workout with resistance and you are pretty trashed but you want to do some cardio at the end and you drink your shake. Does it work the same way? Will the glycogen vs fat usage for energy be the same as in your example?
From my own personal experience, I feel I perform much better if I have eaten a small meal before training, normally a protein shake. Exercising with an empty stomach made me feel sluggish and I was not able to fully perform my routines due to a lack of energy.
Could you cite the reference, I’d be interested to read it.
While I like your views on most things, I would have to disagree with you on this one. Working out on an empty stomach is the best thing to do. As long as your body fat% is over 4%. Which would describe 99.9999% of the population of the world. Excluding maybe Africa.
Cardio fasting YES – weights NO WAY. If I go for a run with food in my stomach – forget it – I am frantic for the nearest restroom – doesn’t sit well. I would have to eat at least 2 hours before a run to avoid this and that is just not practical for am workouts. I do fill my water bottles I wear around my waist with sports drink with calories (carbs & protein) if I am going on a run in excess of 60 minutes. I have also experimented on and off with liquid cartinine, glutamine and aminos in water about 30 mins before a run which seems to work very well. I will stay far away from anything containing any fiber or complex protein at all though (even a banana or a shake will really upset my tum)
I agree with that Joel! I have done empty stomach training a lot in the past only to find out that I’m totally drained after the cardio session. And breaking a sweat is more difficult.
To me it seems like having a small meal kickstarts metabolism, and I sweat more after 15-20 minutes in the cardio session. Overall calories count in the long run when it comes to fat loss.
Hi Joel,
Interesting post, as I simply assumed morning cardio before breakfast was the best approach. I used to enjoy morning runs before breakfast, though when I started doing some weight training a few months ago I noticed I’d feel lethargic afterwards. Some days I’d have an apple or banana beforehand as I felt my body needed it. I’ll pay more attention to this in future.
I’d like to see the research that confirms which approach is more effective, though I think it might depend on the type of training, the individual, plus their previous days activity/diet as you utilise in XFLD, which I’m yet to do as I’ve been slack in preparing my meal plan!
Hi Joel,
I would love to eat before the workout in the morning, but I am on your extreme fat loss programme and need to work out before work at around 5.30 a.m. I simply can´t eat that early….
A few years ago, when I first started lifting for weight loss, I tried to do the empty-stomach cardio, and I found not only a lack of energy, but actually felt down before hitting the end of my workout. Then, at the same time I was thinking it, I read someone else who said “Whatever fits you.”
I started eating breakfast before working out, then protein or peanuts after, and dropped 35 lbs total weight while adding 6 inches to my chest and back in 3 months. Time to do that again…
Joel, that’s one of the things that I love about your stuff, it is actually RESEARCHED and thus often turns some “accepted” nutritional and fitness myths on their heads. It’s amazing what you find when you actually go look into physiological effects of things that trainers and “experts” preach as gospel. So many people hear someone say it and just repeat it to their clients because the THEORY of it SEEMS to pretty much make sense. They don’t stop to actually check it out themselves.
Personal trainers out there, don’t just read something by someone that looks like they are in great shape and assume it is true and pass it on to your clients. You shouldn’t pass anything down to your clients that you haven’t done your due diligence on yourself. That goes for this article too by the way, research it yourself and verify what Joel is saying!
Thanks for the perspective on this Joel, as for me I’m with you, though I had done my own research on it before and didn’t really by into the whole fasted cardio concept.
For people who are wondering about doing “cardio” in the morning vs evening, doing workouts that create a good oxygen deficit are great for the morning because as your body continues to work throughout the day it puts extra pressure on your body to work to refuel those muscles. When you do it at night, you can still continue to burn calories into your sleep as your body works to replenish, but you don’t have the added stress of your daily movement.
Take it easy, thanks again Joel!
jM
Obviously everyone is different, but personally I can’t exercise on an empty stomach. No energy. Also, I have to wait at least 1 – 3 hours after eating, depending, of course, on how big the meal was, before I can exercise or I get stomach sick.
I’ve found my ideal situation is to have a good breakfast of oatmeal around 5:10. By the time I get out of the apartment and then it takes an hour to get to the gym, I start my workout around 6:30. After the workout (Adam Steer and Ryan Murdock’s BER) a shower and I’m in school (I’m a middle school teacher) by 7:30 – the school is a 2 minute walk from the gym. Then a smoothie before the students show up. This not only lets me have a great workout with tons of energy, but it also gets my energy up for the rest of the day.
I figure at least a good smoothie prepared the night before and stuck in the fridge should the jump-out-of-bed-and-onto-the-treadmill types. It’s not heavy in the stomach like solid food and you still get the energy to have the best workout you can.
If you normally do morning cardio fasted, why not at least try a small meal, or even just a smoothie, before just 1 morning workout and see what happens? If you get a better workout, bonus. If it doesn’t agree with you, at least you can say you tried it and know for sure it isn’t for you.
I have recently started morning cardio. I used to make it after my workout in the evenings. Before starting morning cardio I take about 15 grams of Glutamine and BCAAS in total. And then I immediately have breakfeast. It is either a protein shake or eggs with oats. In that case I need some slow releasing carbs too before hitting on cardio.
Hi Joel,
thanks for this post but would you mind posting links to the research you’ve found.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
Alex
Hi,
If i must loosing weight for a kickboxing match. I always wake up 45 min. before I normally do and then I workout (running for 30 min.) without a breakfast. and after that I have my break fast. For me, it helps to loose weight.
But If I had a intense workout like you and mikey. Ill defintely eat breakfast!
Joel said the keywords there, the secret is the glycogen stores! Not eating overnight is a fast and if you’re lazy like me, you might eat your last meal at 7pm, sleep in, and try to do a workout at like 11am, that’s a long fast, and Glycogen levels might be almost fully depleted, after so many hours. The point is, it might have been the case that Mikey, being a muscular dude, used up a lot of his stored energy over night and was really on empty, like really ON empty, the next day, thus no energy. While some of the commenters here say they workout just fine on empty, were likely not empty. My guess is there is a direct correlation between just how empty a person really is when they workout without eating, and their energy levels during exercise.
Also I have the XFLD and working out on an empty stomach is exactly what he says to do on day 2 when fasting, and this is ok precisely because cheat day filled your energy stores up, and your workout proceeds just fine in this fasted state.
My take on all this is, if your last big meal was yesterday’s breakfast and all you had last night was a salad, don’t bother with an empty stomach workout the next day, you won’t have the energy. But if you gorged yourself last night and passed out on the couch, a good empty stomach workout (followed by good recovery meal) may be just what the doctor ordered.
Hey Joel,
There are a couple of people out there that “walk their talk”,i.e..
Tom Venuto and Jon Benson,they both teach this still. Disagree?
Any comments?
Dan
May I recommend citing the study so that people can judge for themselves?
If a certain position is going to be dis/established using research, the results, methods and sources should be stated so that confirmation can be gained.
In the interests of fairness, it also gives the juxta-position an opportunity to cite their references.
This all leads to an opportunity for those of us who are bombarded with varying views to make a balanced judgement of our own.
I dont think you know what you are talking. It is a proven fact that insulin blunts the release of Growth Hormone, it is also a proven fact that intense exercising releases growth hormone. So if you put two and two together then you can understand why eating a meal before your morning cardio is not optimal… Basically you want your insulin levels as low as possible when you are working out which can not happen if you had a meal before your workout (assuming the meal contained carbs).
every time i experiment with this theory on myself and my clients i find that we perform better on an empty stomach. As a matter of fact on extreme metabolic workouts, if there is even a hint of food that has not been digested then it will come out during the workout (it has happened numerous times with me and my clients).
Believe the hype! Doing morning workouts on an empty stomach gives better results then when doing it on a full or half full stomach!
I definitely cannot work out if I don’t eat in the morning. And I definitely feel I can ‘attack’ my workouts better if I have something in my stomach. I usually go for oatmeal, 1 egg white, a teaspoon of cocoa and some cinnamon to add some flavour.
Wow, this topic is sure about to bring some heat along. So I have some doubts Joel,
Your buddies Lee Hayward, Dave Ruel, Vince Del Monte, these respectable fitness experts all talk about fasted cardio in their articles and all. Surely they can’t be wrong, can they?
I do fasted cardio as well, but the only difference is I do take a scoop of whey before I do it. and nah not cardio with weights, just some low intensity walking on the treadmill at an incline. What’s your opinion on that buddy?
What about the Lactic Acid workout and HIIT on fast days on the XFLD? Surely that amounts to the same thing as ‘Empty Stomach Cardio’? I have been surprised at how easy I have found it to work out really hard on a fast day. Is it because it comes after a cheat day?
Well, it depends on the type of workout no? Some people just do a 30 min walk on a high incline in the morning on an empty stomach.
I’m sure it gets tiring in the end but it’s very doable.
But if your studies proves the contrary, i’m not gonna deny it.
But i am interested in the type of cardio YOU do in the morning Joel, do you mean “walking with weights” when you say metabolic resistance training? Or is it a kind of HIIT? In that last case, i’m pretty sure it must knock-you out on an empty stomach.
I don’t like to eat for an hour or so anyway after I wake up, so I usually do my exercises on an empty stomach. I do a 50 minute “cardio-with-weights” workout . Then I have 1/2 protein shake followed by a 20 minute cardio-burn exercise. Then the rest of my shake. It works for me. I neither feel too full or too hungry and I get a good workout.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hey, it’s Joel! So you want to know a little more about me, huh? Well, I’d be happy to oblige :-)
I guess it all started back in 2001 (my freshman year of college) when I was just a “skinny fat” 19-year old kid. At the time, I was spending close to 2 hours a day in the gym (now my workouts last about 30 minutes), and despite my efforts, you’d probably never guess I worked out a day in my life by looking at me...read more