Thread: Do YOU exercise before breakfast?

Doing it in the morning is the most effective. You can take whey protein or BCAAs to prevent muscle loss

Originally Posted by ArnoldsProtege

I wanna see where everyone stands on this... I have been needing to lose excess fat more than i need to add on pure muscle, so im wondering if its a good idea to do cardio first thing in the morning? there is alot of heated debate, with some swearing towards one way, while others completely disagreeing.
Im already very muscluar and large framed (5'10, 205), and the whole thing where " oh, cardio first thing in the morning takes away from your muscles!" doesnt really bother me that much... its not like im going to become tiny and my muscles will completely diminish. I am however, working on a seriously intense new program to put on some crazy gains and im eating a decent amount of food, but not like, HARD GAINING type food.
Do you think that given my situation, id be getting better results by doing cardio first thing? if my goal is to get leaner, lose bf while maintaning/adding to current muscle and strength.

Personally pre-breakfast cardio sucks. You can't put in good effort, but many say that it works well in terms of fatloss. At the end of the day its cals in vs cals out.

Your best bet would be to do HIIT sprints later in the day. Use a hard core scheme like 4 minute reps - 20 sec full sprint, 10 rest for 4 mins. repeat this x 3. (Resting 4 minutes in between reps)

This will rev up your metabolic rate, allowing fat loss all day, rather than the period that you do cardio. Less muscle loss too.

You're obviously going to get a lot of different opinions on a bodybuilding forum but text book says to your cardio FIRST THING IN THE MORNING. You have stated that you aren't concerned with muscle loss and for most guys on here that concept is too hard to fathom so a lot of them will tell you different. Bottom line is that to lose optimal amount of fat you have to do your cardio before you eat any carbohydrates. If you do your cardio in later in the day your body will be using the carbs you ate that day to fuel your workout. However, by doing it before eating carbs, your body is forced to turn to its stored fat to use for fuel (of course, this is if you do your cardio at your target heart rate, anything higher and you will start burning glyocogen). If you want best results, do it in the morning and then on the days you workout, do it again after the work out.

After breakfast.

If you stress the body when it has no energy it will go into starvation mode and youll store fat for the rest of the day.

Faq

Originally Posted by Witchblade

Faq

No need to be rude Witch...

Originally Posted by goob

No need to be rude Witch...

We should welcome all newbies like this.

I know its in the FAQ, but I wanted to see how each individual ,personally, felt about pre-breakfast cardio. I originally had a poll, but i hit "back" to change it, and it ended up not working properly.

So most people then,when its all said and done, DO do steady state cardio in the morning when their goal is fat loss?

Screw that, I barely want to stand up in the morning let alone do exercise.

hell no

Originally Posted by danzik17

Screw that, I barely want to stand up in the morning let alone do exercise.

Haha, same here. I prefer training at night, morning is not a happy time for me. When I actually don't have to get up in the morning, I'll sleep for a good 11 hours.

Im in agreement with danzik, i have trouble standing walking and opening my eyes within the first 30 mins upon my awakening.

Originally Posted by danzik17

Screw that, I barely want to stand up in the morning let alone do exercise.

lazy fuk

dextrose and whey before I swim

I find it too tough to do cardio with no energy in me - so personally I wouldnt do it - see what works for you though - we're all a bit different

it looks like 50/50... some like it for fat loss, others cant even wake up in the morning. I guess it works for me because my gym is like, a 2-3 minute drive from my house. if i had to travel 15 minutes or more to my gym, i wouldnt feel up to doin it on an empty stomach. But i just wake up, check out my goals that i have written down like i do every day, and head off to the gym. So, i guess ill keep up the morning cardio btw, i have noticed some great fat losses from early morning cardi... i lost about 6 lbs the last month or 2, and i have been increasing muscle mass.

When I was younger I would do it before breakfast and then go eat and go back to sleep but I can't stand to do anything in the morning any more!!!