Why should you eat breakfast before a workout?

August 18, 2018  10:47

Many personal trainers and fitness influencers swear by fasted training, but new research suggests that eating breakfast before a workout could "prime" your body to burn more carbs, and speed up your digestion and metabolism post-workout.

According to standard.co.uk, a small study from the University of Bath, that was published in the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism, compared the effects of eating breakfast versus fasting overnight before an hour's cycling. Breakfast – a bowl of porridge made with milk – was consumed two hours before the exercise. The scientists also carried out a control test in which breakfast was followed by three hours of rest. 

They then tested the blood glucose levels and muscle glycogen levels of the 12 healthy male participants and found that eating breakfast increased the speed at which the body burned carbohydrates during exercise, as well as the rate at which the body digested and metabolised food eaten after exercise.

"This is the first study to examine the ways in which breakfast before exercise influences our responses to meals after exercise," said Dr Javier Gonzalez, co-author of the study.

"We found that, compared to skipping breakfast, eating breakfast before exercise increases the speed at which we digest, absorb and metabolise carbohydrate that we may eat after exercise."

Rob Edinburgh, co-author and PhD student at the university added: "We also found that breakfast before exercise increases carbohydrate burning during exercise, and that this carbohydrate wasn't just coming from the breakfast that was just eaten, but also from carbohydrate stored in our muscles as glycogen. This increase in the use of muscle glycogen may explain why there was more rapid clearance of blood sugar after 'lunch' when breakfast had been consumed before exercise.

"This study suggests that, at least after a single bout of exercise, eating breakfast before exercise may 'prime' our body, ready for rapid storage of nutrition when we eat meals after exercise," he said. 

The authors acknowledged that the study is limited in that it only examined the body’s short-term responses to breakfast and exercise, and noted that more research is needed into the long-term effects. 

 

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