Should You Lift Weights Fasted?
Q: If I eat anything at all in the morning, it’s my girlfriend’s pussy when we have morning sex before I go to the gym. Ahhhhhhhh, the breakfast of champions! Anyway, other than that occasionally, I eat nothing else. Should I eat something more substantive or is it okay to lift weights on an empty stomach?
A: Ummmmm, are you also going to sleep without showering then rolling out of bed the next day to go straight to the gym without washing up after getting even funkier from morning sex because you’re the smelly person every gym has?
*barf*
Yeah, I think what you should be really asking about is how to have better gym hygiene so you can do better. But that’s not the question. Instead, what you wanna know is if you should lift weights fasted. So should you?
Well, that depends…
After going for several hours through the night without food and upon waking, people perform fasted cardio with the idea that working out without eating forces the body to burn fat for fuel in the absence of glucose it would get from a meal. As such, fasted cardio is done for fat loss purposes. The same intent can also apply to lifting weights fasted. So is fat loss your motivation for lifting weights fasted?
If the reason why you’re lifting without eating is to lose fat, then there’s no evidence that fasted weightlifting is superior to lifting in a fed state, which is the same case for the fat burning efficacy of fasted cardio.
For fat loss, research suggests that fasted strength training doesn’t have an advantage over lifting with food in the tank or vice versa. But if you’re lifting weights to burn fat in the first place, then you should probably reconsider what you’re doing because as a fat burning activity, weightlifting burns very little fat while you’re engaged in doing it because of the energy pathway that it uses, which is the anaerobic system. The greater benefit toward fat loss is cardio because the use of oxygen results in a higher percentage of stored fat getting burned as fuel by way of fat oxidation. Conversely, weightlifting calls for the body to use the energy that’s stored in muscle as glycogen, with it then breaking down fat and muscle when there’s none available.
Basically, weightlifting doesn’t burn fat as you do it. Instead, fat gets burned indirectly through the development of muscle, a tissue that increases the metabolic rate. That being the case, the purpose of lifting weights is to build and maintain muscle because the more of it you have, the more fat your body burns.
When it comes to fasted strength training for muscle, it’s popularly believed that doing so contributes to muscle loss from the body breaking down muscle protein to fuel itself in addition to its use of fat. That fear turns out to be unfounded. Research finds that the loss of muscle while strength training fasted isn’t significant, nor is there a great loss of it after fasted lifting so long as you eat a protein-rich meal following your workout. However, while it appears that lifting weights fasted has no real impact on muscle, it may not be something that you want to do if your goal is to become as big and as strong as possible because of the potential impact on performance.
As mentioned, going for several hours without food deprives the body of the opportunity to extract glucose from carb sources and then store the nutrient in the muscles as glycogen for its immediate energy needs. As a result of these already depleted glycogen stores, there’s the possibility that lifting weights fasted may cause you to fatigue quicker than you would otherwise. Studies back this up, as it’s been proven that fasted resistance training decreases performance the longer the duration of the workout whereas work capacity is enhanced by lifting in a fed state. So if you want to get bigger and stronger, fasted weight training might not be the best because it can affect your ability to work out as long and as hard as you need to promote muscle growth.1Given this, you should make sure to drink plenty of water when lifting fasted so any impact on your performance from the lack of food isn’t compounded by dehydration.
For general health and wellbeing, you can lift whenever and however you want. But if you have certain goals, such as burning fat and building muscle, then there may be nuanced approaches to training that you may want to take, such as going to the gym to lift weights without eating. On that front, lifting weights fasted isn’t any more beneficial than lifting weights with food in the stomach. Neither is it any less effective. So ultimately, the determination of whether or not fasted lifting is okay comes down to preference.
Whether or not to lift weights before or after eating is a matter of personal choice. So if it’s more to your liking to lift fasted and you don’t feel it has an impact on your intensity, then go ahead. But if you think that you’d be better off eating beforehand so you can work out even harder, then eat a balanced meal of complex carbs, healthy fats, and protein 3-4 hours before going to the gym. When that’s not possible because you’re working out very, very early, at like 5 am, for instance, then lighten the fare and take a few minutes to down an apple, banana, orange, Pop-Tart, or protein shake with water and instant oats. Consuming carbs that are easily digested will provide your body with the energy it needs for an effective weight training session instead of possibly crapping out sooner than you’d like, whether you’re lifting to burn fat or build muscle.
Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?
Glossary: cardio, dietary fat, fat, fitness, food, goal, glucose, gym, exercise intensity, muscle, nutrition, train, work out, workout
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