Thread: Eat before or after cardio?

To burn max fat/cal eat before or after cardio?
Quality of food around exercise should be?

Originally Posted by sarahann727

To burn max fat/cal eat before or after cardio?
Quality of food around exercise should be?

Depends on what type of cardio you are doing and just how much you want to preserve your lean mass.

It also depends on how soon before your cardio you are eating as to what you want to eat....

If you want maximal fat loss at the expense of a bit of muscle as well - then you can't really go past fasted cardio - doing a portion of REALLY high intensity cardio (stimulates a high release of fat from your fat tissue) and follow it with a little lower/moderate intensity cardio (so you burn those released fats)... And then follow it with a small meal ~30 minutes later before returning to normal eating after this.

But I generally do not recommend that to most people simply because it is usually not necessary and it is rather un-helpful in the long run (burning off all your muscle tissue is the wrong way to go about things.).

You are better off doing sensible cardio and eating sensibly beforehand. Basically, doing cardio and your overall calorie intake over the day is going to dictate whether or not you are losing weight - not just what you eat around when you do cardio.

Personally, I don't like fasted cardio - but if you are going to do it I would recommend it is moderate intensity at the most, and that you have a solid meal afterwards.

If you are doing higher intensity then you want a good meal ~1.5 to 0.5 hrs prior and then you usually want to follow it with a good meal afterwards. Really high intensity (like HIIT) then a PWO shake straight after is fine...

If it is just moderate intensity then a solid meal (eg: oats with some fruit and some egg whites) would be fine.

There are a few threads about it here:
pre and post cardio nutrition
HIIT first thing in morning
morning cardio....need pre-post meal for it
post workout nutrition?
Not eating before cardio