The concept of nutrition in sport has changed considerably in recent years. Before you could not talk about exercising without having a correct breakfast before, fasting training was a taboo subject. Today it is not only more accepted and, in certain cases, it is recommended to skip certain meals such as breakfast or even lunch, but this concept of training has evolved and the technique has been perfected until reaching the well-known intermittent fasting.
In general terms, it has already been proven that fasting training has fewer damages than those that were assumed and, not only that, but that it can have benefits in the athlete’s body. With this article we want to go deeper into this concept and see if it can have benefits or not when it comes to gaining muscle mass, something that at first glance seems controversial , but that has begun to be studied and the results will not leave you indifferent.
In any case, read what you read below, if you decide to start a training of this type, the best recommendation I can give you is that your training is led by a nutritionist with sports knowledge and that you do it as long as you carry many years doing sports in general, and bodybuilding training, since we do not recommend fasting workouts for people who are just starting out in bodybuilding.
Theoretical basis
Research carried out in 1988 showed that going for long periods of time without consuming food (between 24 and 48 hours), the body begins to produce higher peaks of GH (growth hormone) (1) and, in theory, it made sense to say that Those higher peaks of GH release would lead to increased fat loss, maintenance of muscle mass, and might even allow muscle mass to increase. However, at that time no one carried out the experiment to demonstrate these hypotheses were fulfilled empirically. For this reason, there has been a great rejection of fasting training, since it makes sense to say that if the muscles do not have the proteins they take from food, they will acquire the energy of the proteins that make up our muscles, thus producing a decrease in mass. muscular.
However, the proposal is tempting, that is, you stop eating breakfast and, in return you will receive as a reward a decrease in body fat and an increase in your muscle mass. Next we will try to clarify this debate, what will be better to gain muscle, train without having had breakfast before, or after having eaten food?
Scope of application
We cannot recommend anyone to remove breakfast from their daily meals in order to train more effectively, until now this method has been reserved for those who need to lose body fat and gain muscle quickly, that is, it has normally been reserved for bodybuilders who are in the phase immediately before a major competition.
However, the method that bodybuilders use is not exactly like that, that is, they skipped breakfast, but they do not train in the morning, but in the afternoon, why?
Resolution of the dilemma
To explain it we have to take into account other hormones, such as cortisol, insulin and ghrelin. Upon awakening, cortisol and ghrelin levels are high, while insulin levels are very low. The fact of having a lot of cortisol and little insulin mobilizes fats, while if the presence of insulin is higher, we favor the accumulation of fats, so here we have the first statement: if you want to lose weight, refrain from taking carbohydrates in breakfast .
As for ghrelin, high levels of ghrelin favor the release of GH after 2 hours of wakefulness. Which, as I mentioned before, can help us reduce body fat and maintain muscle mass. Therefore, we can make the second statement: delaying the time for breakfast can be advantageous .
However, everything has its limits, not always “more is better” , that is, if by skipping breakfast we are going to obtain advantages, we will also obtain them by skipping other meals, this is not the case. Fortunately, thanks to science we can know, not only when is the optimal time to skip a meal, as we have explained, in the morning, but we can also know how long is the maximum time that we can go without eating food so that our muscle mass is not diminished. In this sense, it has been shown that:
- A prolonged fast for 24 hours or more compromises the anabolic mechanisms, that is, it causes a decrease in muscle mass.
- A prolonged fast for more than 12 hours blocks tissue growth, that is, it eliminates the ability to develop more muscle mass (2).
- If you train in these periods of time , after having gone more than 12 hours without eating, it is impossible to stop the breakdown of the muscle to obtain energy from the proteins that make up the muscles (3).
- In addition, there is also evidence that training during these periods without eating produces an increase in white adipose tissue (made up of lipids), that is, it favors the accumulation of fat, so that the opposite effect can be produced.
In conclusion , all these results do not contradict the use of fasting, they simply teach us to use it in the correct way to increase our muscle mass, what is it? One of the solutions is the one used by bodybuilders, we exercise in the afternoon and then have dinner before going to bed, we can withdraw breakfast so that GH levels continue to increase with the benefits I mentioned before, but we should always eat before 12 hours pass, when those benefits turn into detriments. Another solution, if we want to train in the morning, would be to have dinner just before going to bed, sleep 8 hours, and do the training just when we get up, so the opposite effects mentioned will not occur, as long as we eat after the training.
However, to end this article I want to emphasize what I said before, for these benefits to really occur and our body to endure those periods of time without eating, we must be well trained, and our diet in the rest of the meals of the day must be perfectly balanced and with the necessary amount of nutrients, so I remember that it is never too much to consult a nutritionist to guide this process.
The last thing we have to do is turn all this into a fashion and that everyone uses it as if it were the definitive method, with that article I just want to show that skipping breakfast is no longer a taboo subject, that it can bring us benefits, but that It will always depend on how we organize our fast, our intakes and, above all, our training.
Sources
- KY Ho et al. (1988). J Clin Invest, 81 (4): 968-75.
- MJ Drummond et al., J Physiol., 587 (Pt 7).
- K. Inoki et al. (2002). Nat Cell Biol., 4 (9): 648-57.
- Kiefer, J. (2012). Skip breakfast and get ripped ?. 30 (6), 102.
