I'm already carrying way more pounds than I'm happy with at the moment so I really don't want to add to it over the holidays. I came across this article yesterday which had an interesting suggestion-exercising on an empty stomach.
"Fasted cardio" has been a favourite of many bodybuilders for a while when looking for fat loss. Other fitness professionals argue against it either maintaining that it doesn't work or that people don't do a decent workout when fasted overnight. The study reported here split young males into 3 groups and fed them a high fat, increased calorie diet. The control group did no exercise, one group did endurance training (running/biking) with carbohydrates before and during and the last group did their endurance training fasted.
At the end, the control group gained weight, the fed exercisers gained less....but the fasted exercise group gained the least, showed no signs of insulin resistance and seemed to burn fat more efficiently.
Sounds simple?
I've just started reading the full journal article to try to tell more and I"ll update when I do. Skimming the first few paragraphs raises a few issues already though:
-Small group (28 in total)
-They were all regular exercisers. The results may not be applicable to a wider population
-All male
-Lunch was supervised but on weekends they were instructed to replicate the meals as well as they could and log it. There's no knowing what they actually ate
-The control group hadn't gained as much weight as expected by 2 weeks so they increased their calories by 500kcal!
It doesn't look like it's going to be a fantastic study but it's something interesting to try. It wouldn't kill me to do a little workout on Christmas morning as my gift to self!
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