@cbsmel I agree with you. For people starting, it's hard to know the "personal preference" and having some guidelines may help. And I find interesting the metabolic differences, but they are hard to study and hard to transpose to real life.
@cbsmel Agree with this. I would also add that it can change for some people. There have been times where I perfected eating before training and times when I preferred training fasted. Also I prefer to eat before squats and dead lifts but not as much when training upper body strength.
@cbsmel I find that I get more out of a strictly bodyweight routine when I'm fasted, but as soon as I do a weighted routine, if I haven't eaten before, I'm going to struggle. So I think conditions definitely matter here as well.
It's a glorious feeling when you are done with fasting(IF) and exercising for the day, and you can finally start eating. For this reason alone I prefer to exercise fasted, it's not like you need much calories for strength training.
@this_dot I do OCR races, so these could be 10+ mile events lasting upwards of 3 hours. I would always have my big meal no less than 12 hours before race time. If I race at 8:30am, I want to be finished with my carbo-loaded dinner by 8:30pm. I've never not done a race without such a large meal so I can't even say if it helped or not. I also have a breakfast of oatmeal, banana, and greek yogurt with some Gatorade for the electrolytes two hours before my race.
But that's specifically for race day preparation. When it comes to training sessions, I do not want to consume any meal 3 hours before the workout. I might have a coffee up to an hour before the workout, or maybe BeetElite a half hour before the session if it is going to be over 90 minutes long.
@this_dot I greatly prefer fasted workouts. I feel lighter and stronger. If I work out later in the day that I don't want to fat that long then I eat lightly so as to not interfere with my workout.
