Burn Fat: Exercise Before Breakfast

A new study suggests that exercising in the morning, before eating, can significantly lessen the ill effects of a poor holiday diet.

Researchers recruited healthy, active young men and fed them a bad diet for six weeks. A group of them that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. What's more, they burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently.

According to the New York Times:

"... Working out before breakfast directly combated the two most detrimental effects of eating a high-fat, high-calorie diet. It also helped the men avoid gaining weight."

Sources:

New York Times December 15, 2010

Journal of Physiology Nov 1, 2010; 588 (Pt 21):4289-302

It should be noted that the men who exercised before breakfast also drank ONLY WATER through their workouts (and for 2 hours after it).

This is important in the first instance since sugary drinks (such as energy drinks, fruit juices, sodas etc.) cause insulin to be released by the body.

At the same time, during exercise, human growth hormone (HGH) is released. Both compete with each other and – due to the essential role insulin plays in blood sugar regulation – insulin always wins.

This means that any HGH you may have released and would have contributed to muscle growth (and thus increased metabolic rate and in turn, weight loss) will effectively be lost to insulin.

In addition, your body's fat burning processes are controlled by your sympathetic nervous system, which is activated by exercise and lack of food.

This is how exercising on an empty stomach can prevent weight gain and insulin resistance. In simplistic terms, the fasting and exercise forces the breakdown of fat and glycogen for energy and increases levels of a certain muscle protein that plays a pivotal role in insulin sensitivity.

Remember that carbohydrates/sugars are the only foodstuffs able to alter blood sugar. This is because the starches break down very quickly into sugars in the body to be used as an immediate energy source.

When blood sugar rises, the pancreas produces insulin, which results in a signal being given to various cells to ‘open’ to receive this excess glucose.

This is a failsafe mechanism to combat the damaging, and even fatal, effects of having too much sugar in the blood. When this mechanism works efficiently, your cells are said to be ‘insulin sensitive’.

High insulin levels lead to easy fat storage. If the above pattern happens frequently enough, the cells can become ‘deaf’ to the insulin signal and thus require more and more insulin in order to react.

This is what is termed “insulin resistance’ and it can eventually lead to Diabetes.

Eating a full meal, particularly carbohydrates, will inhibit your sympathetic nervous system and reduce the fat burning effect of your exercise.

Instead, eating lots of carbohydrates activates your parasympathetic nervous system, (which promotes energy storage—the complete opposite of what you're aiming for).

So, if you know of anyone who’s suffering from diabetes and/or other lifestyle diseases, is insulin-resistant, or who simply needs to lose weight, let them know about this study.

For everyone else, this is clearly the healthiest way (along with a low sugar/refined carbohydrate diet) to maintain good insulin sensitivity and thus good weight and health…

For the entire article, see http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2011/01/04/the-benefits-of-exercising-before-breakfast.aspx