Contents:
- Medical Video: Breakfast for Athletes
- Morning exercise before breakfast can burn more fat
- Not all may exercise before breakfast
- Tips for safe exercise in the morning before breakfast
Medical Video: Breakfast for Athletes
Breakfast and morning exercise are good activities in maintaining health. But what is often a dilemma is: if our exercise schedule is in the morning, do we have to have breakfast or exercise first?
Breakfast is indeed important to meet nutrient intake after the body does not eat food during sleep. Then, to exercise, the body also needs calories to produce energy. However, if you exercise after breakfast, your body will have more calories to burn, but it takes time to digest the food perfectly, so direct exercise after eating is also not recommended.
This is why some experts suggest exercising in the morning when you haven't had breakfast and your stomach is still empty.
Morning exercise before breakfast can burn more fat
Some studies show that exercising before breakfast is safe to do. One of which is research by Gonzalez in 2013 who showed that exercising before breakfast can burn 20% more body fat.
If we want to burn fat, the body must use food reserves in the form of fat in the body, not from the food we consume. Because basically, the body stores energy reserves in the form of fat, even when we haven't eaten.
By exercising before breakfast, the energy burned also tends to be more because it is obtained from the reserves of food that already exists in the body, from the intake that you ate before.
In addition, the researchers also explained, exercising in the morning before breakfast will not make us want to eat more food or starve all day. This will make the morning exercise session more optimal.
When we exercise before eating, there is a change in the performance of the hormone insulin and growth hormone. By exercising before breakfast, we will help the body to adjust the production of the hormone insulin, so that after we exercise and eat, the hormone insulin will work more sensitive and help absorb nutrients from food better and channel it to muscles and liver.
Performance of growth hormone also gets better when we exercise during the morning and have not had breakfast. Growth hormones help build muscle tissue, burn fat, and improve bone health and physical endurance. But this effect will only be optimal if we have enough time to sleep at night.
Not all may exercise before breakfast
The fewer calories in your digestive system, the more fat you burn when exercising, because your body takes food reserves from your body. This is why if you want to burn fat and lose weight, morning exercise should be done before eating.
However, according to Freguson, CEO of the Free Life Diet, as reported by HuffingtonPostIf your goal to exercise is to improve physical fitness, strength, and speed, exercising without food intake will actually make it less effective, because the body still needs calories to be metabolized.
In diabetics, exercise before eating is also not recommended because diabetics often experience a lack of blood sugar levels (hypoglycemia). So, if you have diabetes, it is advisable to have breakfast or eat a little snack before exercise.
Tips for safe exercise in the morning before breakfast
Both exercise and breakfast are activities that are influenced by habits, so this method does not necessarily suit everyone. But if you want to try exercising on an empty stomach, here are some tips that can be followed:
- Prepare yourself since the night before- Wake up is influenced by biological clocks and sleep times, so if you want to exercise in the morning, just need to sleep at night so your body is ready for physical activity in the morning.
- Do sports that suit you - the type of exercise you can do can be in accordance with your wishes or what you usually do. If you are just starting out, try with moderate intensity exercise such as morning walks or jogging.
- Enough water needs - drink about half to one liter of mineral water or other sports drinks before and after exercise. It is recommended that you meet this fluid requirement 2 or 3 hours before exercise.
- Stop if you are tired and eat whenever you like - If you feel tired and feel you need food or feel hungry, stop exercising to prevent a decrease in muscle mass.
- Enough to consume nutrients after exercising - This needs to be done within a maximum period of 45 minutes after you exercise, whether you have breakfast or not. But do not just consume carbohydrates, because consumption of protein must be reproduced.
