in order to burn off more fat and calories...is it better to eat before or after exercising?

Question

I plan to walk about a mile in the morning and another in the evening

I am a 40 yr old woman who is about 60 lbs over weight....and have not exercised in some time. I plan to start out walking 2 miles a day...1 in the morning and 1 in the evening.

Answer 1

Here are some ideas from my 360 Blog of September 10.

Don't target more than about 2 lbs per week. If you try to lose faster, your body will go into "starvation mode" and get very stingy about burning calories while at the same time very efficient about storing any calories that you do provide. And it will make you feel awful.

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. You can easily find a list of calories for various exercises by doing a Google search on something like "swimming calories." You can the lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 2

Normally I tell my clients (I'm a personal trainer with Gold's) never to exercise on a full stomach, and to wait at least two hours after a meal before working out. The reason for this is, that when your stomach digests food it takes some blood out of your circulatory process and thus you simply won't be able to excercise to the best of your ability. And the whole point of the exercise is to be able to sustain as long as you can so as to burn optimum amount of calories. That is if your goal is to lose weight.
But if all you're gonna do is walk a mile, which I consider as VERY light exercise (don't expect to lose weight from just doing that!) then you can go ahead and walk a half-hour or so after dinner.
For your morning stroll, do it BEFORE you eat. With no food in your belly your body will turn to the fat stores to burn, and this is what you want!

Answer 3

My ideas? Try to do 200 minutes of cardio a week. Remember fat does not turn into muscle, so you need to lose your fat while putting on muscle. Work hard, but don't over 60 minutes at a time. Do planks and other abs exercises on alternate days.

On training days, do 5-10 minutes of cardio to warm up, then do your weight training. Do 30 to 60 minutes more of cardio, then go home.

The best time to eat is just after your workout within an hour when your metabolism is raging. For your muscles, incorporate some isolated soy protein or whey protein. Whey is more potent but the soy tastes better!

Don't look at your scale as the be all and end all, but get a measuring tape to check your progress, and that will show more tangible results.

Read magazines like Shape, Womens Fitness, Fitness, etc to get tips and to stay motivated.

Good luck and stick at it. This plan has lost me 20 lbs in 12 weeks so far, just go for it!

Answer 4

you will probably hear a lot of arguments for and against this on the molecular level.. some will talk about how you should eat before and you can burn off part of what you ate and some will say that what you ate won't hit your system so it really doesn't matter.. then a few will say what I'm going to say.. just make sure you aren't making yourself sick and it doesn't matter too much.. it's true that the stomach will be using some of your blood and will give you less oxygen to work with, but so long as you are doing the same workout and not feeling sick, food on your stomach/not on your stomach doesn't matter.. you may do your best workouts with a little food.. not enough to make you feel sick or take too much blood away, and enough to keep you from having hunger pains.. i usually have a little bit of beef jerky right before i work out to keep me from being so hungry that i have to stop my workout to go eat... and it isn't enough to tax my stomach.

Answer 5

i have personally lost around 100 pounds on the carb free diet. i stay away from refined carbs and sweets. i will eat a light breakfast and wait about an hour or so for digestion and then exercise. you really need the added energy that food provides your body to get a good workout. you will see a difference if you don't have a little something in your stomach. your workouts will not be as effective and your energy levels will be low if you try and work out on an empty stomach. good luck.

Answer 6

it would be best to have a small meal after exercising. it takes an average of four hours to completely digest food. so if you exercise right after eating, you aren't burning away anything from the meal you just had. it would be beneficial to eat first and then exercise if you spend more than four hours exercising, but who has time for that?

Answer 7

It is better to eat after exercising so that you will burn fat while you excersise instead of the food you just ate. The food you eat after will immeadiately turn into the necessary vitamins and minerals you lost while exercising. This way, you burn fat then you burn the fat from the food you eat after instead of just burning the food you eat beforehand.

Answer 8

If you actually wish to achieve muscle quick than get your mind into work mode. each single set and each single exercise. Keep the weights significant and ne'er over ten reps. Approach each effort knowing that you simply area unit getting to be venturing into new territory and waging war on your skinny biology. i like to recommend these efforts with a workout partner therefore you'll eliminate any safetey problems, not lessen and push your limits each in. of the manner.

Answer 9

I would think it would be better to eat before you work out whats the point in working out if you eat right after? That's what I do...

Answer 10

Eat at least an hour before working out. Afterwards, if you are doing weight training, eat something within 30 minutes of working out to replenish your muscles. If you are just doing cardio, eat after an hour after working out. This is what my (certified) personal trainer told me and it seems to work.