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For years, a lot of people were doing cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach before eating breakfast, hoping to increase fat loss. For sure, fasted cardio can help with fat loss, but the latest research says it’s probably no better than fed cardio.
What’s really interesting is that a lot of people still believe that fasted cardio in the morning is good, but at the same time, the majority of people have always believed that fasted weight training is bad.
The prevailing belief is that lifting on an empty stomach either kills your energy and performance, or with no protein in your system, you won’t build as much muscle.
One of the reasons this subject has been coming up more often in recent years is because different types of fasting diets have become a popular trend. Some diet gurus who promote fasting have made the controversial claim that weight training fasted actually builds more muscle (which is patently false).
Another reason is because there are a lot of people who train early in the morning and they find it uncomfortable to work out with a full meal sloshing around in their stomach. To avoid that nauseous feeling, they lift fasted, and then have breakfast immediately afterward. But a lot of these people aren’t sure if it’s good or bad. They wonder if it would be better if they trained in the afternoon or at night after some meals were in their system.
There was also a study published recently which showed that skipping breakfast then lifting in the morning decreases performance. That had people scrutinizing fasted training more closely again as well.
Fasted lifting is probably not optimal, especially if it’s done later in the day after as it might be on a time-restricted feeding diet, but if you look closely at all the research, lifting before breakfast in the morning might not be that bad, as long as you can maintain your training performance.
Weight lifting fasted is not going to burn more fat than fasted lifting will, and it won’t build more muscle, but it’s a personal choice for some people and they seem to do fine training on empty.
What Does The Research Say?
There’s not a lot of research on fasted weight training, but there have been a handful of studies. One looked at the effects of weight training on Muslims who were fasting during Ramadan. Muslims have a holy month where they can only eat solid food before sunrise and after sunset. A lot of bodybuilders and athletes who observe Ramadan will keep training during the fasting periods.
The researchers in this study thought that weight training could be done safely during Ramadan while fasting, but they also suspected there might be a negative effect on body composition. At the end of the four week study, contrary to their hypothesis, there was no difference in body composition either way. They did say that this was probably because these particular bodybuilders were able to keep up their lifting volume and performance.
Whether fasting affects your workout performance is important to think about, because in other studies athletes who kept training or practicing their sport during Ramadan suffered a drop in speed, endurance and energy. One study that was done on fighter pilots found a decrease in muscular performance among during Ramadan fasting.
The newest study was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research – it was called, “Breakfast omission reduces subsequent resistance exercise performance” – and the title sums it up: Lifting performance decreased in the group that didn’t eat breakfast. Specifically, the repetitions were 15% lower in the back squat and 6% lower in the bench press.
That’s not necessarily a nail in the coffin for fasted lifting though, because there were some nuances in this study. For one, the subjects were doing multiple sets with the reps in the hypertrophy range to failure. This tells us that pre-workout carb intake may be more beneficial when you train with high volume and high intensity. If you’re doing a shorter, lighter, less intense workout, then training fasted is less of an issue.
One more detail, and this is an important one that a lot of people don’t think about, is that the subjects in this study were habitual breakfast eaters. If you’re used to eating breakfast before a morning workout, and then you start skipping breakfast, it’s not surprising that your performance would take a dive. But it’s possible that people who are habituated to not eating breakfast may not have the same problem.
It looks like fasting can affect different people in different ways and individual response may vary. Some people say they like training fasted and they say their performance is fine. Other people hate training on empty and find their energy and lifting performance tanks.
The research is still somewhat limited so far, but it wouldn’t be smart to dismiss the possibility that weight training in a fasted state might decrease performance in the gym for some people. It’s very possible that you might not be fueled up properly if you lift fasted (especially if your muscle glycogen gets depleted from high volume training).
3 Important Considerations If You Lift Fasted
There are some good scientific reasons why weight training fasted might not be optimal. But whether you do it or not might come down to personal preference or convenience as much as anything. If you’re thinking about lifting fasted, there are a few questions you should ask yourself to make sure it doesn’t turn into a negative for muscle growth.
1. Is fasted weight training hurting your training energy or reducing your performance?
If your strength or energy drops because you’re fasted, then your muscle gains are going to drop. If you’re wondering whether it’s a good or bad idea for you to lift fasted, you should compare how you feel training fed to how you feel training fasted, and see if training in the fasted state is causing any decreases in performance. If it is, then it might not be the best idea for you.
2. Are you hitting your targets for calories, protein, carbs and fat by the end of every day?
There was a point some years ago when one of the biggest trends in bodybuilding nutrition was nutrient timing. Eating before training was recommended, and a huge big deal was made out of the post-workout meal – eating it immediately after lifting was considered vitally important. Most people back then believed that if you missed this post-workout “window of opportunity,” the muscle growth potential from the workout would be compromised, or people thought it was like the whole workout was wasted.
Today, research has shown that nutrient timing is still important in some ways, but it’s a secondary factor. When you eat your meals is not what makes or breaks you. The most important priority in muscle building nutrition is hitting your calorie and macronutrient (protein, carbs, fat) targets for the day, consistently. So if you don’t eat before you lift, but by the end of the day you’re hitting your macro goals, your results will probably be fine.
3. If you do weight training fasted, are you getting a post-workout meal quickly after training?
The newest studies have found that if you eat a meal containing protein before your weight training workout, the amino acids from that meal are still hitting your system during your workout and right after your workout, and that’s why the urgency of the post-workout meal is not as high as people used to think. If you eat a meal with protein before training, then it’s fine if your post-workout meal is an hour or two after training.
However, if you decide to weight train fasted, that changes things – then the post-workout meal does become more urgent if you want to optimize your muscle growth response to the training. If you lifted fasted, then your post workout meal should be eaten immediately after lifting. It should also be easily digestible, it should include protein, and it should probably be a substantially sized meal too.
Modern Evidence-Based Nutrient Timing Guidelines For Optimal Muscle Gains
Based on the science we have now, combined with common sense and personal experience, here’s what will probably happen if you lift weights fasted: It’s either going to make no difference either way, or it will cause a slight decrease in performance.
Since it is possible that performance might take a little hit, anyone with serious muscle building goals, might want to look at this from the perspective of what’s optimal for muscle gain versus what can you get away with doing without negative consequence.
Just because you lift fasted or have a longer than usual overnight fasting period doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to lose muscle. But on the other hand, there’s nothing anabolic about going long periods of time without eating. There’s no evidence to make us think that fasted weight lifting is optimal for building muscle.
So what is optimal for muscle growth? Well, since the nutrient timing and the anabolic window concepts were re-examined, scientists have come up with new best practices for maximizing the anabolic response to training.
Two nutrition and training researchers – Alan Aragon and Brad Schoenfeld – looked at 85 different studies to come up with a new guideline for nutrient timing.
These new guidelines got published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition: and there were two points:
1. For optimal results, eat 0.4 to .5 grams of high quality protein per kilogram of lean body mass both before and after (resistance) training.
2. For optimal results, the pre- and post-workout meals should not be separated by more than 4 hours.
With this new pre- and post-workout protein guideline, someone who has 70 kilos (154 lbs) of LBM would have between 28 and 35 grams of protein in both the pre- and post-exercise meal. If you ate more protein than this (without going over target on daily calories), there is no downside, but if you skipped these protein feedings or fell below the recommended amount, you might not optimize the anabolic response from the workout.
You should make a note that this scientific guideline for nutrient timing includes both pre- and post-workout protein intake. That means not fasted – at least not totally fasted – at the minimum, this is suggesting that you should eat protein before training if you want to optimize muscle growth.
For both before and after training, it’s the protein that seems to be the most important. How important the carbs are before and after for bodybuilders and strength-trained athletes is still being studied, but carbs are usually eaten before training because lifters hope to increase energy.
Carbs are usually eaten in the post workout meal too for recovery, but precise carb intakes for replenishing glycogen are a bigger priority for endurance athletes than it is for lifters and bodybuilders.
Conclusions
Personally, I think these new pre- and post-workout nutrient timing guidelines are sensible and match what most successful bodybuilders have been doing. I agree that at the bare minimum, eating some protein (if not a full meal) before weight training (combined with the post-workout meal as well) is optimal for the muscle growth response, and for longer, more intense workouts, including carbs in those meals is also optimal.
I know the challenge for some people is they lift first thing in the morning, and they can’t stomach lifting right after eating a full meal. But based on the latest scientific evidence, if maximum muscle growth is your goal, then least having a pre-workout protein shake or a small meal or snack with protein looks like it would be a good move compared to lifting totally fasted first thing in the morning.
If you don’t want to eat anything before lifting, that’s your choice, and it might not hurt. You simply want to remember those three points listed earlier – make sure your workout performance isn’t suffering due to having no fuel in the tank, get a high protein post workout meal immediately, and make sure you hit your calorie and macro goals by the end of every day. If you cover those bases, you’ll probably do fine even with fasted lifting.
On the other hand, if a fad diet guru claims that weight training fasted actually increases muscle growth, or is better than training fed, the research isn’t there to support that claim.
Founder, Burn the Fat Inner Circle
Author, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Scientific references:
Aragon A., Schoenfeld B., Nutrient Timing Revisited – is there a post-exercise anabolic window, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 10:5, 2013.
Faye J, et al. Effects of Ramadan fast on weight, performance and glycemia during training for resistance. Dakar Médical, 2005; 50 (3): 146-151.
Frawley K et al, Effects of prior fasting on fat oxidation during resistance exercise, Int J Exerc Sci, 11:2, 827-833, 2019.
Nashrudin, M, et al, Breakfast omission reduces subsequent resistance exercise performance, Journal of Strength And Conditioning Research, 33:7, 1766-1772, 2019.
Trabelsi, K et al, Effect of fed- versus fasted state resistance training during Ramadan on body composition and selected metabolic parameters in bodybuilders, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 10:23, 2013
Zerguini Y, et al. Impact of Ramadan on physical performance in professional soccer players. British Journal of Sports Medicine, Jun, 2007; 41 (6): 398-400.
Related: Fasted Cardio Revisited
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