One of the longest standing BS claims is "energy expenditure". News Flash! - You cannot sustain exercise for long enough or at an intense enough level to burn through the calories you obtain from food, unless you are consuming Gulag fare. The body is very conservative when it comes to energy. It's always able to obtain more of it, than it ever burns. That's how you survive inconsistencies in nutrient availability.
Hint: If you swim the English Channel, non-stop, you will arrive at the other side, about 25 lbs. lighter. The effort of the swim is less of a driving force, for this weight loss, than the temperature of the water. Unfortunately, that weight loss will reverse in about a day or two. My apologies to all the obese whose hopes were just crushed.
Exercise does affect energy expenditure, but only in the long term. Meaning that exercise continues to burn fat and raise basal metabolic rate, during times of rest, because of its hormonal effects on metabolism. Exercise also causes improved signaling sensitivity of fat stores, directly from the fat cells, to the brain. So, once again, energy in/energy out is not "balanced" calorically, rather it's at the discretion of your neuroendocrine system. Without the proper functioning of this system, as a whole on your energy expenditure, nothing will be sustained long term.
But unfortunately, the BS about exercise doesn't end there. Not a chance. No, the BS travels right into the heart of the low carb community with such claims as - "There are benefits to fasted exercise!" Really?
Before I say nay, let me try to not be judgmental, simply because the most obese are the ones espousing this nonsense. Instead, we need something more tangible to debunk this than just focusing on the messenger's inability for their own advice to produce them any results.
Let's first begin by making it clear that there are no "benefits" to fasted exercise. Exercise while fasted, at best, is no different than exercise while fed. At worst, it can actually be counterproductive. So, let's analyze these claims in the context of obesity, since what occurs to the non-obese, healthy people is irrelevant to us.
Let's go through four claimed "benefits" of exercising while fasted. The first one goes something like this:
Claim 1. Fasted exercise can make you more insulin sensitive. This is BS.
All exercise makes you more insulin sensitive. This effect is not exclusive to fasted exercise, as it produces no added "insulin sensitivity".
I have discussed before how exercise causes non-insulin mediated glucose uptake. You can find that post under the blog label 'Exercise'. This means that the benefit of exercise comes from the ability to clear glucose, from the bloodstream, without the need for insulin. This is fantastic for people who are insulin resistant.
Requiring no insulin to facilitate glucose uptake, improves insulin sensitivity, over time, for the insulin resistant. It also helps maintain insulin sensitivity for those that aren't resistant. Circulating insulin can now be put to better use, like building muscle, as diet burns fat and exercise builds muscle. This is why exercise routines must be followed consistently, so that this effect occurs often. This effect has nothing to do with being fasted or not. It is simply exclusive of exercise, period.
So, even if all exercise makes you more insulin sensitive, in the context of obesity, when you exercise fasted you are causing cortisol disruption, which can affect Dawn Phenomenon (DP). These spikes in blood glucose caused by DP only further deteriorate blood glucose regulation and that is pathological for obtaining better insulin sensitivity. Fasted exercise just produced you a negative and counteracted the positive, you would have otherwise had.
Studies have shown diabetics have better postprandial glucose control, when a meal is consumed pre-workout, instead of post-workout. This is completely counter to what the entire fitness industry has always believed, since it's a known fact that insulin sensitivity is greater post-workout than pre-workout. This is why many athletes like to "carb up" after a workout. But, this is only true of healthy people.
People with metabolic syndrome/diabetes do not benefit from more "insulin sensitivity" post-workout, since they are chronically insulin resistant and the only tissues they have, which are very insulin sensitive, is their fat tissue. So, they should be more concerned about how their glucose regulation is improved by eating before their workout, because ultimately, it's this better glucose regulation that will result in truly improved insulin sensitivity.
Claim 2. Fasted exercise raises human growth hormone to help build muscle. This is BS.
All exercise raises human growth hormone. This is not exclusive to fasted exercise.
I have discussed before how human growth hormone is a growth hormone. It is not particular to what it grows. It grows whatever your metabolic state determines it to. In the context of obesity/metabolic syndrome, human growth hormone is excellent at growing fat mass. This is especially true when there is no protein for it to grow anything else, like would be the case with fasted exercise.
For this reason, do not expect human growth hormone to stimulate greater muscle protein synthesis or suppress skeletal-muscle breakdown. In metabolic syndrome/diabetes, not only is muscle protein synthesis under expressed and skeletal-muscle breakdown is overexpressed, but the former requires insulin and metabolic syndrome/diabetes are states of insulin resistance.
So, if you are already compromised in the ability to build muscle and deplete glycogen, exercising while fasted is only making this issue worse, as you are still insulin resistant and are giving the body even less protein to work with pre-workout.
Claim 3. Fasted exercise can cause improvement in overall work out performance. This is BS.
In the context of obesity/metabolic syndrome, the only thing you are improving is the release of even more stress hormones.
Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. It might make you feel as though you can go faster and stronger, but at the end of the day, the only thing that will go higher and longer is your blood glucose, as you continue losing its regulation due to adrenal overexpression.
You are stressing the body and when the body of a person with metabolic abnormalities is stressed, it releases glucose. Lots of it. This will impact your insulin sensitivity and glucose regulation in the long run, regardless of how low you see your blood glucose go down during the exercise itself. After all, you can't exercise 24 hours a day. You need to regulate your blood glucose while your sitting, sleeping, driving, eating, you know, while living.
Claim 4. Fasted exercise will train your body to burn fat more efficiently. This is monumental BS and a sneaky one at that, because it is only half true. It's the other half, not being told, which changes everything.
Just because the body increases fat oxidation, during fasted exercise, does not mean that it will burn more fat in total. On the contrary. Exercising while fasted, not only reduces basal metabolic rate and increases the loss of lean muscle mass, but it also decreases fat oxidation post-exercise. It then causes for greater fat storage upon eating. This will affect energy partitioning and body composition - the two things that are most important for reversing metabolic disease.
If you understand the body's starvation response, then this effect makes perfect sense. The body must increase fat oxidation during fasted exercise, as it's the only fuel it has. But then, the body tries to protect itself, from the next time it's forced to do work with no fuel, by decreasing fat burning and increasing fat storage. Your metabolism is actually becoming thriftier as it adapts to what its being exposed to. This will ultimately make you fatter, by volume, with less muscle mass, as the body always catabolizes lean muscle mass during fasted exercise. This is why bodybuilders never train fasted.
For people with metabolic syndrome, this catabolism is enhanced, as the only thing a metabolically ill person's body does very well, is catabolize itself into glucose any chance it gets. Exercising fasted is a perfect time to do just that.
So, we exposed these four fasted exercise claims to reveal what they truly were all along - myths. And not very well thought out ones at that. If you're going to perpetuate a myth, at least create ones that aren't so easily debunked, like Big Foot. Generalized statements, with absolutely no context and containing only half truths, can actually cause problems for many. Worse, these people will be none the wiser about why they are having problems, since they are following what they were told was correct. Now you know to ignore silly recommendations, unless you thoroughly research them.
Make sure that you exercise during your eating window. This does not apply for people who are doing daily, 16 - 18 hour fasts. These fasts are too short to become problematic. Only fasts that are 24 - 72 hour have issues. If you are fasting longer than 24 hours, do not exercise on fasting days.
If you are strength training, you will benefit from having a whey protein shake pre-exercise, not post.
So, even if all exercise makes you more insulin sensitive, in the context of obesity, when you exercise fasted you are causing cortisol disruption, which can affect Dawn Phenomenon (DP). These spikes in blood glucose caused by DP only further deteriorate blood glucose regulation and that is pathological for obtaining better insulin sensitivity. Fasted exercise just produced you a negative and counteracted the positive, you would have otherwise had.
Studies have shown diabetics have better postprandial glucose control, when a meal is consumed pre-workout, instead of post-workout. This is completely counter to what the entire fitness industry has always believed, since it's a known fact that insulin sensitivity is greater post-workout than pre-workout. This is why many athletes like to "carb up" after a workout. But, this is only true of healthy people.
People with metabolic syndrome/diabetes do not benefit from more "insulin sensitivity" post-workout, since they are chronically insulin resistant and the only tissues they have, which are very insulin sensitive, is their fat tissue. So, they should be more concerned about how their glucose regulation is improved by eating before their workout, because ultimately, it's this better glucose regulation that will result in truly improved insulin sensitivity.
Claim 2. Fasted exercise raises human growth hormone to help build muscle. This is BS.
All exercise raises human growth hormone. This is not exclusive to fasted exercise.
I have discussed before how human growth hormone is a growth hormone. It is not particular to what it grows. It grows whatever your metabolic state determines it to. In the context of obesity/metabolic syndrome, human growth hormone is excellent at growing fat mass. This is especially true when there is no protein for it to grow anything else, like would be the case with fasted exercise.
For this reason, do not expect human growth hormone to stimulate greater muscle protein synthesis or suppress skeletal-muscle breakdown. In metabolic syndrome/diabetes, not only is muscle protein synthesis under expressed and skeletal-muscle breakdown is overexpressed, but the former requires insulin and metabolic syndrome/diabetes are states of insulin resistance.
So, if you are already compromised in the ability to build muscle and deplete glycogen, exercising while fasted is only making this issue worse, as you are still insulin resistant and are giving the body even less protein to work with pre-workout.
Claim 3. Fasted exercise can cause improvement in overall work out performance. This is BS.
In the context of obesity/metabolic syndrome, the only thing you are improving is the release of even more stress hormones.
Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. It might make you feel as though you can go faster and stronger, but at the end of the day, the only thing that will go higher and longer is your blood glucose, as you continue losing its regulation due to adrenal overexpression.
You are stressing the body and when the body of a person with metabolic abnormalities is stressed, it releases glucose. Lots of it. This will impact your insulin sensitivity and glucose regulation in the long run, regardless of how low you see your blood glucose go down during the exercise itself. After all, you can't exercise 24 hours a day. You need to regulate your blood glucose while your sitting, sleeping, driving, eating, you know, while living.
Claim 4. Fasted exercise will train your body to burn fat more efficiently. This is monumental BS and a sneaky one at that, because it is only half true. It's the other half, not being told, which changes everything.
Just because the body increases fat oxidation, during fasted exercise, does not mean that it will burn more fat in total. On the contrary. Exercising while fasted, not only reduces basal metabolic rate and increases the loss of lean muscle mass, but it also decreases fat oxidation post-exercise. It then causes for greater fat storage upon eating. This will affect energy partitioning and body composition - the two things that are most important for reversing metabolic disease.
If you understand the body's starvation response, then this effect makes perfect sense. The body must increase fat oxidation during fasted exercise, as it's the only fuel it has. But then, the body tries to protect itself, from the next time it's forced to do work with no fuel, by decreasing fat burning and increasing fat storage. Your metabolism is actually becoming thriftier as it adapts to what its being exposed to. This will ultimately make you fatter, by volume, with less muscle mass, as the body always catabolizes lean muscle mass during fasted exercise. This is why bodybuilders never train fasted.
For people with metabolic syndrome, this catabolism is enhanced, as the only thing a metabolically ill person's body does very well, is catabolize itself into glucose any chance it gets. Exercising fasted is a perfect time to do just that.
So, we exposed these four fasted exercise claims to reveal what they truly were all along - myths. And not very well thought out ones at that. If you're going to perpetuate a myth, at least create ones that aren't so easily debunked, like Big Foot. Generalized statements, with absolutely no context and containing only half truths, can actually cause problems for many. Worse, these people will be none the wiser about why they are having problems, since they are following what they were told was correct. Now you know to ignore silly recommendations, unless you thoroughly research them.
Make sure that you exercise during your eating window. This does not apply for people who are doing daily, 16 - 18 hour fasts. These fasts are too short to become problematic. Only fasts that are 24 - 72 hour have issues. If you are fasting longer than 24 hours, do not exercise on fasting days.
If you are strength training, you will benefit from having a whey protein shake pre-exercise, not post.
No comments:
Post a Comment