If you’re looking to lose weight or improve your health, you may be trying to do everything in your power to ensure your success: you eat right, sleep well, exercise daily. You may have even wondered whether exercising at a certain time of day could thwart or ensure your success.
Well, according to some researchers, there is a best time of day to exercise to keep your physique—especially if you’ve been hitting up the comfort foods. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to exercise is early in the morning, before breakfast.
But isn’t breakfast the most important meal of the day? Don’t our bodies need fuel to get everything running? In fact, exercising in a fasted or unfed state has numerous benefits—studies have shown that it helps support healthy insulin levels and can lead to better weight maintenance than exercising even just after breakfast.
In a Belgium study, a group of men were fed 30 percent more calories and 50 percent more fat for 6 weeks. A third of the men remained sedentary. A third followed a strenuous exercise regimen just after breakfast. A third performed the same exercise regimen just before breakfast.
As expected, the sedentary men gained an average of 6 pounds and developed insulin resistance by the end of the study. The post-breakfast exercisers gained about 3 pounds apiece accompanied by insulin issues. The fasted exercisers gained almost no weight whatsoever, retained healthy insulin levels, and burned more fat throughout the day than the other 2 groups. So, apparently the decision to work out before or after breakfast can make a big difference.
Even though this study showed that fasted exercising can significantly prevent short-term weight gain, there is hope that it can help significantly with weight loss when accompanied by a healthy, moderate diet.
Has your mother always told you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Perhaps it is, but breakfast doesn’t have to be eaten right when you get up—especially if you’re not hungry. Small windows of intermittent fasting have been shown to actually be beneficial to the body by improving insulin sensitivity. Work out first and allow your digestive system to awaken. Then, break your fast with a good, hot breakfast when your body is ready.
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