Discussion: surprised by this article's...

surprised by this article's findings: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/phys-ed-t...

Seems like they compared no breakfast before exercising to a heavy breakfast before exercising... and found that the former was better. Would have been nice to see a comparison to a light breakfast before exercise too rather than just the extremes.

So, thought I'd reach out to the wisdom of attackpoint. Any thoughts on how much/what you should eat before an early morning workout?

Hi Zan,
We're already discussing this article. As a result, I got up early this morning to work out in the basement...how 'bout your dad? Any chance of getting him out there at 6am?

6am. Slackers.

BTW, I almost never eat anything before my morning workout (which can be just about anything from an easy 20-minute jog to a 20-mile trail run). Never been a problem. Your body has roughly 2500 calories available in stored glycogen. Even if you're depleted from the previous day(s), you've got plenty to get you going until your fat reserves come online.

I would not recommend racing on a completely empty stomach, though I have done that, too. No problem with energy, just some folks can get sick if they put out really hard efforts with nothing in their system.

I often don't eat before morning runs and have no issues, but preference is to have a banana before I start, just coz I start feeling hungry before I finish otherwise. Don't think there's a marked performance effect either way. I'm pretty resetricted in what I can eat prior to exercise anyway (weird exercise-induced allergies) but a heavy breakfast anything less than 2hrs before running used to make me feel ill anyway, so if it's a 6am run you're after, that's a mighty early wake-up just to get some food in the system.

I am not sure xc skiing in the cold would be good without some food in the tummy. Between the exercise and the cold you can burn lots of calories. Not sure of the calorie burn for xc skiing, but I bet its higher than just running. As far as orienteering or run races, little in the stomach works good for me.

I think it probably depends how good you are at skiing :)