Training on an Empty Stomach, Good or Bad for 6 Pack Abs ?

You’ve heard this mentioned before – that if you go out for a morning run without having eaten anything before, your body will start to break down “stored fat” rather than just the fat you’ve got from your most recent meal.

And hey – isn’t that what we want?

No. It’s a myth, and here’s why.

Your Body First Uses Stored Glycogen

The carbs we eat give our body energy. This is pretty simple. And when we start doing some aerobic exercise, the first place the body is going to turn to in order to get that boost of energy that it needs – since the aerobic workout is asking so much – is from our stored glycogen.

If we run out of that, what happens?

The Body Turns to Fat Stores, Right?

Not exactly, no.

There’s no rule that says the body has to start breaking down stored fat when it runs out of glycogen.

Maybe it will, sure.

But maybe it’ll start breaking down muscle in order to get that glycogen.

There’s no real way to determine whether one or the other will happen. Sure, if you have lots of muscle tissue, there’ll be lots to break down – but why would you want to take the risk?

Just Another Version of the Spot-Reduction Myth

That’s really what this is. The idea that you can trick your body into reducing fat in a specific place (in this case, tricking it into using only stored fat for energy), when your body will actually do whatever it damn well pleases in order to get the energy requirements it feels it needs.

The trade-off of possibly losing muscle just for the chance at burning a bit of stored fat? Completely not worth it. Worst trade-off you could make.

So there are two solutions depending on what your goal is and what kind of workout you are planning to do when you wake up.

Eat Before Working Out if you are doing Weight Training.

If you are about to go pump some serious iron you better make sure you have some food in you or you are setting yourself up for one EPIC FAIL. Not only won’t you have energy to do your workout but you will in fact attempt to do the impossible, building muscle without the building blocks, protein. So what is actually going to happen is that you are going to have below par workout and you will end up losing muscle.

Personally I don’t do any weight training until I have had at least two meals already. This way I know my body has everything it needs to push hard and build muscle at the same time.

Eat the Right Foods if you are doing a Cardio Workout

This where we are actually going to look at training on a so called empty stomach. The fact is that when people are talking about going to do a workout in the morning on a empty stomach, what they mean is, don’t eat carbs before the workout ( For reasons mentioned above ).  It does not mean don’t eat nothing.

So what should you do? Well the main thing we are worried about during this workout is to not end up losing muscle. So what you want to do is take in some form of protein. I prefer a quick protein shake. This way when your body has used all the sugars and is starting to look for other energy sources it won’t have to dig into you actual muscle as you will have excess protein lying around that can be used together with fat. Add to this some muscle saving supplements like BCAA’s before your workout and you will be able to really get some great results from doing morning cardio on an empty stomach without destroying your hard earned muscle.

One other thing to take into consideration is the type of Cardio. I would only suggest that you do slow or steady state cardio if you are going to do the whole training on an empty stomach thing. Do not attempt to do HIIT cardio as it is way too intense for this early in the morning and you will end up with the same problem of losing muscle. So if you want to do HIIT just have a small portion of complex carbs 30 minutes before you do your workout.

Ok, so there you go, all the facts with no BS on training in the morning on an empty ( Or half empty ) stomach. This is one of those very hot topics and people will debate things for years to come. But for now, what I have talked about in this article is the latest research and will provide the best possible results. Personally I only use the training on an empty stomach type workout as an addition to my normal workout I would do later in the day as a way to get really ripped and do so quickly for a special occasion or photo shoot. I have found that if I need to maintain, one workout per day and a good diet is more than enough.

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