Skip Breakfast before exercise to burn more fat- this according to a recent article in USA Today. The article states that European researchers found that cyclists that trained without eating burned more fat than those who did eat. The higher fat burning was due to having less carbohydrate reserve.
In a similar study, researchers found that people that didn’t eat had a decline in performance during intense activity. So we see from these studies that if you don’t eat before exercise you will burn a higher proportion of fat to carbs but you also show a decline in exercise performance.
Which begs the question; is it better to burn a higher percentage of fat or train harder?
In one study they did a comparison between 20 weeks of steady state cardio and 15 weeks of interval training (notice the 5 week difference). What was found was that although the interval group burned fewer calories during training, they also burned 9 times the subcutaneous fat as the steady state group.
Exercisers have to realize that their training response shouldn’t be just the one hour session but that what ultimately burns fat is the effect on the metabolism the other 23 hours of the day.
So what do we do? By looking at these studies if you are going to do some light cardiovascular exercise go ahead and do it on an empty stomach (keeping in mind any medical conditions that may contraindicate this). But if you plan on training with any intensity at all you are much better off having something in your system. The intensity of your exercise will always determine your results. Eating insures that you will have adequate intensity and we wont find you passed at somewhere with low blood sugar.
By the way, none of this crap matters if your nutrition strategy includes Diet Coke with Bacon!
