You’ve heard it before: “Eat your breakfast.” Should you eat in the morning? And what if your goal is weight loss? How does breakfast affect your ability to burn fat at the gym?

One of the interesting things about the fitness world is the prevalence of fitness myths. Some of these seem to make sense and may be based upon an incomplete understanding of the human body and metabolism while others outright ridiculous. This article will look at one such myth, whether one should eat prior to morning workouts.

The Myth: Working out first thing in the morning on an empty stomach will maximize fat burning, since muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate) is low.

Let’s begin by examining the basis for this approach. Eight to 12 hours may pass between dinner or an evening snack until waking. During this time, the body is still operating and using calories, but no food or energy is going in. When you awaken, your body is in a “fasting metabolic state”. In other words, it has entered an energy-conserving mode (slowed metabolism) and is using body fat stores as the primary energy source due to the decreased level of muscle and liver glycogen.

Eating begins to bump up your metabolism thus breaks this fasting state (hence the word used to describe the morning meal, “break- fast”). The myth states that since glycogen, a preferred fuel source for muscles, is low, the body will use its fat stores to a greater degree. So far the myth appears to make sense.

There are a few other myths which relate to this one; let’s have a look at these first, since these myths are commonly used to bolster the argument for the big myth this article is all about:

Low intensity exercise uses more fat than high intensity exercise. In terms of the percentage of calories you’ll burn off, yes… this is true. But the total calorie burn per minute is low. At rest you are burning the greatest percentage of calories from fat. As soon as you pick up the pace, CHO (carbohydrate) begins to make a greater contribution. Knowing this, does walking lead to more fat loss than running stairs for the same allotted time? No. At higher intensities, even though the percentage of fat used is lower, the total calorie burn and daily fat burn will be higher. Higher intensity exercise is associated with an increased calorie and fat burn for many hours after the session. This is called exercise post oxygen consumption (EPOC).

Food eaten in the evening will end up as fat on your body. If that were the case, then if you ate nothing all day but one apple before bed, it would turn to fat and you would gain weight. There is no enzyme in the body that is time sensitive and forces calories eaten after 7 pm to be stored as fat. As long as your total caloric intake is lower than the amount of calories you burn off, you could wake up in the middle of the night and have a meal, go back to sleep and still keep losing weight. As long as you maintain a calorie deficit, you will decrease fat stores and lose weight.

Let’s get back to the initial topic of maximizing calorie burning with exercise to increase weight loss. Performing high-intensity cardiovascular exercise has the most significant contribution to calorie burn. At higher but still aerobic intensities, one can burn twice as many calories (and fat) as cardio done at a lower intensity. Plus you have the benefit of EPOC (the increased calorie burning after intense exercise).

There is an old saying that “fat burns in a carbohydrate flame”. In other words, the body needs glucose (from carbohydrates) to prime the fat burning processes. With less than adequate glucose available to keep the machinery running, exercise intensity (and therefore calories burned) can’t be maximized. A clear example of this is when an endurance athlete “hits the wall”. Their performance suffers or ceases not because they ran out of fat stores, but due to a lack of glucose to keep fat burning efficiently.

So, here it is: if you do not eat before you train/exercise, you decrease your body’s ability to maximize fat burning. And NOT just because your workout wasn’t as good as it could have been if you had more energy, but because you end up burning fewer calories all day. Why do performance athletes eat their biggest meal before training and consume a pre-workout snack? So their energy systems are full, allowing them to train at maximum intensities. Ultimately they will end up burning more calories all day (during the session and the subsequent recovery process) when compared to a less energized workout. Imagine being fully energized when you train or exercise and many more calories you will burn!!!

Weight/fat loss is determined by your daily caloric deficit

Exercise itself does not burn a great amount of fat no matter how long the activity. It is the contribution of exercise to a person’s total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), including the intensity, that affects fat loss. Working out increases the amount of calories your body needs daily; provided you don’t take in more calories than you burn off through exercise, your body will use its stored fat for energy – meaning that you’ll lose fat.

If you break the fast before you go to the gym, the body has the potential to perform better, enhance recovery and burn more calories. The higher the intensity of your workout (which you can now perform thanks to having filled your energy stores with a pre-workout snack), the more calories from fat you will use throughout the day in order to fill your energy deficit. The energy or calorie deficit, not the workout or when you eat, determines how much weight/fat you lose.

Make sure you don’t add calories – just time them properly

We’re not suggesting you add calories to your daily intake. Simply adjust the way you distribute your calories throughout the day. Spacing meals properly has added benefits, such as using more calories to digest each meal (after a meal the body has work to do in digesting and absorbing food), and a steady stream of nutrition (enhancing recovery and energy) as well as controlling hunger. Your first meal of the day breaks the fast and “fires up” the metabolism, so the sooner you do this, the better.

Copyright (c) 2009 Neal Spruce

Neal Spruce is chairman of the board for the prestigious National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) and founder dotFIT, LLC. Neal is a fitness specialist, author, licensed teacher, researcher, bodybuilding champion, personal fitness consultant and speaker. dotFIT is the leading online fitness and weight loss program.

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Can you acknowledge how many times in the past year you have openly told yourself, "from now on, I start working out every day so that I can get in shape, lose some weight, and look better?" Now, think of how many times you actually made this happen? I am almost sure that you have not had a serious reason for not starting to exercise, you were either lazy or tired, am I right? The truth is that laziness and tiredness are the top two opponents of fitness.

Is it a sin to be lazy?

I believe that there is not a single person in the world who would honestly say that he/she has never been lazy. Even people whose whole lives are surrounded around sports tend to get lazy sometimes. It is simply in our nature to get sluggish, and honestly it is very hard to fight this feeling. It is normal to relax and get lazy sometimes but we should not let it happen very often.

Many years ago in Christianity laziness was viewed as one of the top seven deadly sins. Although over time the nature of this concept has overcome a big change, today it is still perceived negatively. Psychology defines laziness as a mental problem, medicine as a medical condition, and biology defines it as an instinctively behavior of saving energy.The only positive effect that comes out of laziness is that we can relax by doing nothing. Doing nothing sometimes is a pretty good feeling but we definitely do not want to make it our habit.

What causes laziness?

The major cause of laziness is the excessive consumption of carbohydrates. On one hand, if you consume a big quantity of carbohydrates at once you would start feeling lazy and sleepy. If you get used to consuming a lot of them on a daily basis this would lead to a permanent unwillingness for your body to move. On the other hand, if you do not consume enough nutritional products you would cause a delay in your metabolism which would also result in a lazy behavior.

Active athletes, who overestimate their physical abilities, suffer from laziness, caused by lack of proteins. When this is combined with overtraining they tend to get into the so called "sports depression" (frequent and painful muscle pain). That is the main reason why you need to watch what you eat. Never eat too much but never skip meals as well. Eating various nutritional products on a daily basis is the key to success.

Laziness or exhaustion?

It happens often that laziness is confused with the symptoms of exhaustion. The laziness you could experience after being sick for a couple of days, after a lot of exercising, or because of a stressful situation at work, are all classic symptom of exhaustion but not of laziness. The best cure for all the situation above is to relax until you start feeling better.

The victims of fatigue

Fatigue is a mental or a physical exhaustion. Although its main cause is the lack of sleep, sleepiness is just one of the symptoms for this condition. Other reasons are: headache, general weakness, muscle pain, difficulty concentrating, slowed reflexes, and irritability. Tired people lose track of the level of their exhaustion and do not realize that if they do not take any action their condition will get even worse.

Fitness against laziness and exhaustion

It is a widespread myth that if one wants to be healthy, get in shape and lose some weight, one has to exercise a lot. As a result of this belief people started looking at fitness as a job that would only make sense if practiced to a level of exhaustion. If you start exercising to exhaustion, what do you think will happen? You will for sure overtrain. Now, the emphasis of exercising is placed on the physical activity, rather than on its intensity. It is proven that even light exercising, if done in the correct way, can definitely get you in shape and make you look better.

Remember that regular fitness work increases your energy, reduces your stress level, and makes your entire body and mind feel good.

Now, let’s get started and achieve the body shape you have been dreaming about.

My name is Gergana Ganeva and I am the owner of a website called Healthy Body Exercises. I have been involved with sports for 18 years now. A few years ago I ended my professional and college career as tennis player and since then I have been working with people who want to lose weight the healthy way. My main goal is to provide you with all the knowledge on how to stay healthy and
lose the extra weight the healthy way.

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Are your bad habits making your kids fat or fit?

If you want to keep a Fit Teenager Versus a Fat Teenager then these 2 Rules you must apply

Breakast for your Teens brains

Want to give your teen a head start to higher grades in school? Bring on the breakfast, says Nutrition Expert Pyles. A study found that skipping breakfast has no negative effect on teens ‘ attention spans in high school ; however, students reported feeling more alert after eating breakfast.

In an article in the August 2008 issue of Pediatrics , researchers tested teens’ ability to remain alert in class when fasting and after eating breakfast. During the study , half of the 104 students (aged 13-20) consumed breakfast, while the other half – the control group – did not; midway through the study the teens who were the original controls were given breakfast , while the other half were not. The teens were tested and measured for cognitive functioning, attention sustanibility and alertness.

Although consuming breakfast did not have any effect on the teens’ ability to sustain attention, it did make them feel better: their moods improved after eating their morning meal , and they scored better on memory tests then they did after fasting.

"With an increasing number of children and adolescents skipping breakfast, there is a need for scientific studies evaluating whether omission of breakfast affects the cognitive functioning and mood of fasting students," the researchers concluded. In my opinion you should practice making your kids eat breakfast this will start them out with good behaviors and habits early on to prevent weight gain in the years to come. Remember it is easier to change in your youthful years because as you get older your metabolism slows down.

Why lack of sleep makes kids fat and you should be aware

Researchers know that people who sleep for only a few hours each night are more likely to be obese. But now a new study has shown that those who are sleep deprived during childhood are at significantly higher risk for becoming obese as adults.
Study participants included a cohort of 1,037 boys and girls born between April 1972 and March 1973. Parental reports of bedtimes and rising times at ages 5, 7, 9 and 11 were used to estimate childhood sleep times. The researchers later compared participant’s sleep times to their body mass index (BMI) scores at age 32.
Shorter childhood sleep times were significantly associated with higher adult BMI values, even after adjusting for other potential factors, such as socioeconomic status, parental weight or physical activity /television viewing.
Writing in the November 2008 issue of Pediatrics, the researchers concluded that "these findings suggest that sleep restriction in childhood increases the long-term risk for obesity. Ensuring that children get adequate sleep may be useful strategy for stemming the current obesity epidemic." This is a very serious matter and very close to my heart for those of you who know me or may not know me. I was an obese teenager and experienced this first hand you must take a stand with your kids! This will affect many areas of their life, so let’s work together as one.
Light’s out, kid’s!

By, Natalie Pyles – Fitness, & Weight-loss Expert, Nutrition Specialist, Author, & NSA Speaker

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Everybody probably knows what the #1 most important meal of the day is. It's breakfast. That fact has been drilled into us since we were little. It sets your body's tone and metabolism for the day. Fat loss is virtually impossible with out it.

Problem is a lot of people don't know about this little fat loss secret I'm about to share with you. What you eat before a workout is one of the most important things you can do during the day for ultimate fat loss. Without a solid pre-workout nutrition regiment your post-workout meal will be a lot less effective.

The questions I get asked the most are what' and when' to eat this meal. First off let's talk about why you need to be eating this meal.

The pre-workout meal ensures that you will have adequate nutrition to make it through your workout. You should concentrate on getting fuel into your body. And the body's best fuel source is carbohydrates. Most importantly you want to concentrate on complex or fibrous carbs, which are the carbs that give you sustained energy. What you are doing with these carbs is making sure that your glycogen levels (stored carbohydrates) are full, because when you workout your body pulls the carbs out of glycogen storage to be used as energy. So if you your levels are depleted, like when you wake up in the morning, and you skip the pre-workout meal then you have no glycogen to pull out. So the body will resort to pulling lean muscle tissue off your muscles to fuel the workout, which results in less muscle mass, decreased metabolism, and increased fat gain.

You also need to get a lean source of protein. Protein should be consumed with every meal regardless, to keep the protein (amino acid) stores up.

If you workout on an empty stomach your body doesn't have any energy. You can't give 100% intensity, and if you do you will most likely feel sick, light-headed, and nauseous. You will reach fatigue a lot quicker also.

When to eat this meal ideally would be at least 60 minutes before hand. And about 60-90 minutes is a good time range. This will give the body enough time to digest the meal and give the body a full dose of energy for the workout. If this is not possible, as in an early morning workout then 20-30 minutes should suffice, but the meal should be a lot lighter. Early morning workouts are ideal for a meal replacement shake, especially if you have trouble eating so early.

Now to the part you probably care, and want to know the most aboutwhat to eat. The best carbohydrate source to eat before a workout would be oatmeal in milk, or some added whey protein if lactose intolerant. It supplies long lasting energy and is a good source of protein when combined with milk. Other things you could consider would be a bowl of cereal, peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat, fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and energy bars. But be careful with the bars, I only really recommend Lara Bars, Luna, Cliff Bars, and Prograde Cravers, other then that it pretty much is just eating a bunch of sugar and chemicals.

Good choices of protein would be whey protein shakes, chicken breast, turkey breast, lean cuts of steak, fish, or meal replacement shakes or bars.

The meal replacement shake I use is Prograde Lean. It's definitely the best tasting one I've found. And the whey protein I use is Buy Bulk Whey. It's a natural protein, which is good because you can mix it with almost anything and it will maintain its flavor. I add it to yogurt, pancakes, Gatorade, fruit juices, and a lot of different recipes.

Jason Yun, a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Sports Nutritionist, is the owner of Yun Strength and Fitness Systems, LLC and runs Yun Fitness Bootcamps in Columbus, OH and the Metabolism Makeover Nutrition Course. Please visit the website for more information about pre-workout nutrition supplements at:
http://www.Yuntraining.com/lean.html and http://www.Yuntraining.com/whey.html

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