Eating Before or After a Workout: Revealed.

To eat or not to eat before exercise…that is the question. Should we exercise on an empty stomach? Should we eat before exercise to provide the energy needed to get a good workout?
Those on the “exercise while fasted” side of the argument suggest that exercising while fasted allows you to burn fat as soon as you start exercising. They suggest that if you exercise after eating then the body will have to burn the calories from the food you recently consumed before it will be able to burn away the gut and butt.
The other group thinks that fasting before exercise is nonsense. They believe that having a snack shortly before exercise will provide the energy needed to have a meaningful and effective workout. They argue that a calorie is a calorie and it doesn’t matter if it’s eaten before exercise or three hours later.
Both arguments seem logical. So who’s right?
Admittedly we are some time away from being able to answer this question definitively, and when all is said and done I imagine that the final answer will be, “It depends”. With that said, a recent study does add support in favor of the “exercise while fasted” argument.
In this study researchers fed subjects a high calorie/high fat diet to induce insulin resistance and weight gain. The subjects were assigned to one of three groups:

• Group 1: Control Group – Did Not Exercise
• Group 2: Fasted Group – Did not eat before or during exercise
• Group 3: Carb Group – Fed Carbohydrates before and during exercise

At the end of the study, the researchers unveiled some interesting insights. The fasted exercise group did not gain significant weight during the course of the study despite consuming 30% more calories than they needed and a diet composed of 50% fat.
The control group gained 3 kgs (6.6 lbs) and the carbohydrate group gained 1.4 kgs (3.08 lbs). They all ate similar diets and burned similar numbers of calories.

What Does It All Mean?
As I have suggested in past posts, exercise should be judged by how it impacts hormonal balance in the body, not by how many calories it burns. Exercising in a fasted state improved insulin sensitivity, which is a great thing.  It also increased GLUT4 protein content of muscle; GLUT4 acts like a straw that slurps sugar into the muscle without the assistance of insulin. GLUT4 decreases the quantity of insulin needed and thus decreases fat storage. Finally, exercising while fasted also activated fat burning genes, which helped to prevent a harmful buildup of fat within muscle and liver cells.
In a nutshell, exercising while fasted had a lasting impact on the hormonal balance of the body, which would work to maintain a healthy insulin level, prevent diabetes, and immunize the body against weight gain. It doesn’t get any better than that!
One final take home message is that although exercise has not proven itself to be a powerful weight loss aid, it does seem to immunize the body from weight regain after weight loss. This study lends support to this hypothesis. The control group, who do not exercise, gained the most weight. The group that exercised but were fed carbs before and during exercise gained approximately half the weight compared to the control group.

Take Action…
This is not the first study to demonstrate significant benefit to exercising while in a fasted state. To date, the majority of the research on fasted exercise has been performed in people who suffer with insulin resistance.
It is a well-known fact that we can develop insulin resistance from eating excess carbohydrates for long periods of time. Such a circumstance results in chronic insulin resistance. Most people do not realize, however, that an acute form of insulin resistance can develop from a single episode of gorging on carbohydrates, an example would be a party or celebration. Such an episode could delay fat burning for days.
Even if we are not ready to accept fasted exercise as the only way to exercise, it certainly does seem advisable to use fasted exercise as a primary tool whenever insulin resistance is a problem. This would include:

1. People with metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetes)
2. People with full-blown type II diabetes
3. People who just gorged on carbs and tasty treats

A simple way to implement these findings into your life is to exercise first thing in the morning before breakfast. After your fasted exercise, have a high protein/low carb/low fat breakfast or skip breakfast altogether. Try both approaches and find out which approach your body responds to best.

(I reposted this from: http://cutthefatpodcast.com/897/fat-loss-podcasts/episode-34-should-you-eat-or-fast-before-exercise)