Is Cardio Fasting Better for Weight Loss?

Is Cardio Fasting Better for Weight Loss?

Every weight loss topic is fiercely debated, including whether cardio fasting is better for weight loss or not. Many believe that depleting energy resources through fasting before running or cycling will automatically force the body to tap into fat sources for energy. But is this true, or just another urban legend and misconception?

A study called “Changes in body composition associated with fasted versus non-fasted aerobic exercise” – published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition – aimed to find an answer to this question and divided a group of 20 women into two groups: 10 participants exercised after an overnight fast, while the other half of the group received something to eat before the workout.

The training consisted of one hour of steady-state aerobic exercise three days a week. The research subjects were provided with customized dietary plans designed to induce a caloric deficit. Nutritional counseling was also provided throughout the study period to help ensure that participants did not cheat and eat more food than they were supposed to.

Is Cardio Fasting Better for Weight Loss?

Here’s what the research had to say about the results: “Both groups showed significant weight and fat mass loss from baseline, but no significant differences between groups were observed in any outcome measure. These results indicate that changes in body composition associated with aerobic exercise in conjunction with a hypocaloric diet are similar, regardless of whether an individual is fasted before training or not.”

In summary: if you want to lose weight, it doesn’t matter whether you do cardio fasting or not, as long as you maintain a caloric deficit and exercise regularly. As the research shows, it also doesn’t have to be every day, although the participants underwent 1-hour exercise sessions each time, which is not just a short session, for sure.

It’s worth noting that the research chose a peculiar way to test the theory by giving a meal to the test subjects immediately before or after the exercise session, preventing us from finding out if a sustained state of high metabolism after exercise would have helped shed fat even more or not. The sample size was also quite small (only 20 women were tested), and the gender ratio was far from balanced.

Taking this information into consideration, if you want to maximize weight loss through cardio exercises, it’s best to do a workout early in the morning and have some food immediately afterward, preferably some proteins and carbohydrates to aid in muscle recovery. Moreover, as it turns out, the best time of day to do weight-loss exercises is early in the morning. Just saying.