The Best Thing to Eat Before a Workout? Maybe Nothing at All

[elleng]

(For my friends here, kind of!)

'For those who can stomach it, working out before breakfast may be more beneficial for health than eating first, according to a useful new study of meal timing and physical activity. Its results indicate that when we eat affects how much fat we burn during exercise and also alters molecular activity within fat cells, in ways that could have long-term implications for our physical well-being.

Athletes and scientists have long known that meal timing affects performance. Most obviously, if you eat first, you have relatively high levels of blood sugar. Working muscles can readily use this sugar as fuel.

If, on the other hand, you have fasted before working out, your muscles must rely primarily on the body’s skimpy supply of stored carbohydrates or its larger reservoirs of fat. Accessing this fat, however, requires extra metabolic steps to become available as energy, which makes it a relatively inefficient fuel source during times of strenuous exercise. As a general rule, the body tends to turn to fat as its primary fuel source when exercise is more moderate.

Knowing this, many athletes experiment with meal timing, often training hard on an empty stomach, in hopes that this strategy will encourage their bodies to become more adept at using fat as a fuel.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/well/move/the-best-thing-to-eat-before-a-workout-maybe-nothing-at-all.html?

[Eyeball_Kid]

1. I typically start out an exercise routine with a small bite to eat, like a banana.

That helps the stomach discomfort when beginning to exercise strenuously. During half of my workouts, I'll burn as much as 900 calories, sometimes more. I'm guessing that the banana doesn't affect a whole lot in the bigger picture.