Last week I received an interesting comment, that had a question concerning my opinion about breakfast before a training session. If I am ok with it or not.
As always, you couldn’t write a rule that will fit perfectly to every trainee, but I decided to share my opinion and my experience. And the final decision- to have breakfast or not- will be in your own hands!
Personally, I usually work out early in the morning. I’ve tried to train fasted and I’ve tried training after breakfast. And all my tries, have led me to the same conclusion- that I do way better, when I eat before my workout.
Usually, if I do not eat breakfast I do not feel very good during my workout and I do not have the strength I usually do. Even if I manage to lift the weights I usually lift, it happens with the price of a lot of effort and strong will.
So in my case, a breakfast before workout is something I never skip.
Here everything depends on how you feel when you eat. I do not have a problem with waking up at 6a.m., eating breakfast and then training around 7a.m. But my observations show that a lot of people feel sick, during a workout, if they have eaten too soon before the training session. In this case there are two options. The first one is to build the habit to wake up earlier, so you could have enough time between your meal and the workout. The other option is to try training fasted and see how that goes.
Personally, I’ve noticed that every time I workout fasted, then I feel a lot hungrier during the day and I eat a lot more food as a whole, than if I have breakfast.
I am sure that now the followers of the popular intermittent fasting( read more HERE, “Everything You Need to Know about Intermittent Fasting”), are smiling and shaking heads, thinking that I am wrong, but as I already said there isn’t a one formula that fits all. I’ve tried fasting and everything else you could think about, but breakfast for me is the foundation of a good training session.
I’ve noticed that if I do not have the opportunity to work out in the morning, and if I train at noon, but my only meal before going to the gym was at breakfast (i.e. I am already getting hungry), I really have more strength and I do not feel negative consequences from the lack of food, right before my training session. This makes me think that the pre workout meal is what matters. It is not so important if it is 2 or 4 hours before you work out. What matters is if you had a pre workout meal.
There is one more thing to the whole story. There are a lot of people who have been eating unhealthy their whole life. People who never had breakfast or had some crap for breakfast. And now when they try to change their eating habits, and force themselves to eat early in the morning, they will surely feel sick during the workout.
But I am sure that after some time goes by, they will adapt to eating breakfast and they will feel good eating ore workout.
Besides that you should find out the exact quantity of food, that would match your needs. If your breakfast is an equivalent to an Easter feast, tell you the truth I would be about to puke, as well, if I try to perform a physical activity.
When it comes to my nutrition and my workout schedule, I usually have 2-3 eggs with butter and veggies, first thing in the morning and then after my workout I eat a more solid meal. I.e. I am not trying to eat all the food for the day in just my pre workout meal.
I know that a lot of you are interested in when you lose weight faster… if you train fasted or if you eat a breakfast before that, I will say this! I know it sounds arrogant but the truth is – You will NEVER permanently lose weight, if “faster” is part of your thoughts and your approach.
You will permanently lose weight, when you change your lifestyle, when you improve the quality of the food you eat; when you start training adequately with weights and when you realize that eating is not the most wonderful thing to do with your life, and that in reality it is just a mean to fuel your body.
You will permanently lose weight, when you stop stressing over different strategies for fast weight loss and when you pay more attention to the foundations and quit peering too much into the details.
During the last year, I have not used my food scale, I have not measured my food and I have not calculated my food intake. Not even a single time! And still, I have never achieved my goals easier than I do now. Because an year ago, I decided that the only thing I will do for sure is to eat ONLY quality, clean, real food. And from there on, everything fell back into place!( read HERE “How My Body and Mind Changed after 6 Months of Clean Food?”)
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