Can running on an empty stomach help you lose weight? Doctor: I’m afraid it won’t work.

If you are an experienced weight loser, you may have heard the theory that exercising on an empty stomach can help you lose weight: when your stomach is empty, your body is forced to burn stored fat. So everyone who wants to lose weight should set the alarm one hour earlier and go for a run before breakfast. This will allow you to burn more fat.

Well...it should work in theory, but is it really that simple in practice? Let’s take a look at other people’s experiences that are filled with blood and tears!

Theoretical basis for fasting exercise

First, Scott wants to take everyone through some basic physiology: When we eat, the body releases insulin to store the nutrients that enter the blood. If readers remember, insulin has another notorious effect: preventing the release and burning of fat. In plain words, the body's logic is: since you have eaten, the blood is now full of nutrients, so why bother to spend time extracting the energy from the fat tissue and using it?

In the diagram below, we can see that the body quickly shifts its energy source from fat to carbohydrates after a meal.

(Just a schematic diagram, not actual experimental data)

Therefore, as long as you exercise on an empty stomach, theoretically you can maintain your body's fat-burning state and make the fat-burning effect of exercise better. That's the theory, but what about in reality?

Long-term effects of exercising on an empty stomach

As Scott said before: People don't exercise most of the time, and most of the calories they consume have nothing to do with exercise. If you only focus on the present moment of exercise and ignore the calorie consumption throughout the day, you are missing the forest for the trees.

In order to test the hypothesis that fasting exercise can reduce fat, the researchers recruited 20 young female college students and pushed them into a devilish weight loss training camp below the fire pit:

All girls had the same exercise and diet schedule, the only difference was that the control group (or "non" fasting group) drank a sports drink before exercising, while the fasting group had to wait until after exercising to drink it.

Please note that the sports drink here contains 20 grams of whey protein and 40 grams of maltodextrin. Think of it as a highly absorbable protein and carbohydrate drink.

(Note: The maximum heart rate formula used in this article is 220 - age. That is to say, if you are always 18 years old, your maximum heart rate is always 202 beats per minute.)

The results were revealed: after four weeks, both groups had lost weight. However, researchers found that whether it is weight, waist circumference, fat mass, muscle mass, body fat percentage, or BMI value. There was absolutely no difference between the two groups! Although running on an empty stomach can burn more fat, it can "theoretically" also help people lose more fat. But once again, the complexity of the human body makes the experts' predictions all fail.

Disappointment aside, the following explanations are worth pondering:

1. Although you burn more fat when running on an empty stomach, your body will burn more fat to compensate when you are resting.

2. Although fasted jogging burned more fat, these differences were not enough to produce significant changes within four weeks.

3. Exercising on an empty stomach simply won’t burn more fat.

What about high-intensity training (HIIT)?

This study is aimed at female college students who already have a habit of exercising, work hard on dieting, jogging, and are pure and beautiful. What if you are not a skinny young woman today, or you don’t like jogging? Don't worry, someone has already thought of this problem.

In 2013, Gillen et al. asked 16 obese women to undergo six weeks of high-intensity interval training (which is a bit like Tabata). These fat girls sprinted on a bicycle for 60 seconds and then rested for 60 seconds. They called it a day after 10 cycles.

After completing 18 training sessions, the scholars announced: Whether you exercise with a full stomach or on an empty stomach, it will not change the effect of high-intensity training. Exercising on an empty stomach may not be as good as you think!

Conclusion

Based on today's research, Scott recommends that you exercise on an empty stomach or "not" empty stomach to help you lose weight, and the effect is not much different. If exercising on an empty stomach makes you see stars, eat a snack before you go back to the drawing board! If exercising on a full stomach makes you feel sluggish, then feel free to exercise on an empty stomach! An exercise strategy that can adapt to personal physiology, time, and habits in the long term is a good strategy.

In addition, this study also points out an important concept: beautiful theories may not stand the test of research. Many times, scholars and experts construct beautiful theories in laboratories, on papers, and on the Internet, telling people how to eat and exercise to be healthier and more beautiful.

Although these statements seem complete and unbreakable, the human body is far more complex than we imagine. A single mechanism (such as burning fat on an empty stomach) is often diluted and influenced by many other physiological, psychological, and social factors, and the final result is often unexpected.

Therefore, before the "human trials" are carried out, no matter how beautiful the theory is, it can only be "taken for granted". Isn’t the myth that you can’t eat too much cholesterol the best example?

This article comes from: Dr. Scott's One-Minute Fitness Class

※For more information, please see "Dr. Scott's One-Minute Fitness Class"