To eat or not to eat before exercise - what's the evidence?

[this_dot]

@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.

 

[hannahjoy]

@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.

 

[dawn16]

@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.

 

[cbsmel]

@dawn16 The thing is that fitness is so individual that you can't have a one size fits all solution.

 

[peachpits]

@this_dot It depends on the exercise.
For example, don't eat before yoga, especially if you are doing a lot of inversions.

Cycling tho, you can eat while you are doing it.

 

[this_dot]

@peachpits Sure!

There was an article on cycling I didn't include:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30672619

It shows that eating during is beneficial regardless of wether you ate before or not.

 

[dawn16]

@this_dot if i eat within 4 hours of exercise i am nauseous and run the risk of throwing up all over the gym so i know what i'm going to do.

 

[weblogalice]

@this_dot I vote eat. I also really like eating.

 

[sdee]

@this_dot Personal opinion:

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.

 

[dawn16]

@this_dot I feel like the psychological aspect of feeling empty should hinder performance, if the physiological does not. Surprised by the result.

 

[dawn16]

@this_dot I eat about 1 hour and a half before BJJ and feel great, this is normally a bowl of porridge or small lunch.

 

[caroline256]

@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.

 

[dawn16]

@this_dot hell no.... ONLY SOMETHING LIGHT LIKE a protein shake

dont do stupid stuff like oatmeal + banana+ peanut butter bowl etc

 

[dawn16]

@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.

 

[shhhh_love]

@this_dot My doctor/coach suggested to try running after overnight fasting and I liked it. But I eat a bit of protein before the gym.

 

[dawn16]

@shhhh_love

overnight fasting

You mean “sleeping”?

 

[shhhh_love]

@dawn16 Yeah. Usually I would have 10-12 hours between last food intake and my run.

 

[writerssecret]

@this_dot When hungry eat. When not hungry sleep.

 

[dawn16]

@this_dot I didn't read your post YET, but I can tell you... eating beans...especially soup... before a workout is a BIG NO NO!

 

[this_dot]

@dawn16 For practical reasons, I usually workout after dinner. Which I really don't like, but most of the time is that way or no way.

I try to avoid "heavy food" but ended up removing handstand practice!