Treatment Table Podcast

Mini Consult | Should You Eat Before a Workout? The Truth About Fasted Training

• Mathew Ah Chow • Season 1 • Episode 19

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0:00 | 13:05

Should you eat before exercise, or is fasted training better for fat loss?

In this Mini Consult episode, Mathew answers a listener's question from Shirley about what to eat before a workout and whether a banana, snack, or full meal is the best option.

With so much conflicting nutrition advice online, it can be hard to know what's actually worth following. Mathew breaks down the science behind fasted training, fat burning, workout performance, and recovery in a simple, practical way.

You'll learn:

  •  Whether fasted training really burns more fat 
  •  When a banana is enough before exercise 
  •  Why workout intensity matters when deciding what to eat 
  •  The best timing for meals before training 
  •  Why protein after exercise is essential for recovery 
  •  How to fuel morning workouts without feeling sick or sluggish 

If you've ever wondered what you should eat before the gym, a run, Pilates, HIIT, or strength training session, this episode will help you cut through the confusion and make better decisions for your health and performance.

One takeaway: Fuel your body for the workout you want to perform, not just the calories you want to burn.

Send your questions for future Mini Consult episodes via Instagram @treatmenttablepodcast or email treatmenttablepodcast@gmail.com.

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See you next week on the Treatment Table!

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the treatment table. This is your mini console. I'm your host, Dr. Physiotherapy Matthew Archer. Now, if I sound a little bit off, it might be because I have a fat lip from training this morning. It was at jujitsu at the 6am class and copped an elbow to my lip, so it's a bit fat. But um I'll try my best to pronounce my words. I know sometimes I speak too fast and mumble a little bit, but I will do my best. So this is your mini consult where we get to break down your questions. So thank you everyone for sending them in. Keep them coming, and we're gonna break down and give you one simple tip to take away. Renel, have you got today's question?

SPEAKER_00

I do. Before I get to it, I will just say, you know, people spend thousands to get their lips as fat as yours are right now.

SPEAKER_01

That is true. That is true. It's not quite the look I was going for, but uh Well, rock it. Yeah, we'll just have to rock it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

All right. So today's question comes from Shirley, and she's asking, is it best to eat a banana or have like a full meal before training? And what's the benefit?

SPEAKER_01

Great question. Thank you, Shirley, for sending through your question. And so, look, on top of the physio, we do do a lot of classes, and that ranges from Pilates to strength training to high-intensity interval training. And sometimes those classes are 6 a.m., sometimes they're 6 or 7 p.m. And so the timing of when you eat uh is really dependent on what type of exercise you're gonna do. Now, first of all, and start with, there's probably something that you've picked up on social media. There is a little bit going around that if you train fasted and you don't eat, that you're gonna increase your rate of burning fat. So I will break that down today and give you a bit more context to where that's coming from and whether that actually makes a difference or not. So again, it's one of those things that maybe someone's picked up or has been passed around, and there is a time and place for it, but we'll break that down a little bit more today.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I get inundated with information and there's macros and micros and protein and dairy, and you're like, what am I supposed to be eating or like not eating? And then if you eat this, this is good for that, but don't do this. And yeah, so I'd love you to break this down.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, definitely. Look, and it's one of those things that annoys me because it's you end up with it all just being too hard. And sometimes we overcomplicate things, we think about what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing. And that's really the idea of this podcast, right? It's to give you guys simple break it down without all the noise, and to give you really simple practical steps that I know it works because I see it with all my clients and we do it day-to-day in the clinic. So let's break it down. Should we go banana or a full meal before a training session? So, one of the things we want to think about here is what kind of fueling do we need for our workouts? And how long is it gonna take for our body to digest that food? If we are thinking about our morning workout and we're busy, we want to get out the door, we need to get there, um, you're not gonna wake up two to three hours before to have a full meal. The likelihood of you doing that is very, very low. Or if you try and eat too much, you're gonna feel sick and it's gonna be uncomfortable. So this morning, um, maybe that's the reason why I got elbowed in the lip. I trained just on coffee this morning. Um, so again, it depends on the session. My session was 45 minutes, generally lower intensity in the mornings. Now, if you were gonna do a longer session that's gonna be more than 45 minutes into an hour, it's gonna be very high intensity. Think about HIIT training or some heavy, heavy strength work, then you need to have some carbs. So you're better off having a banana or having some light protein and some light carbs that's gonna be easy to digest. So that could be um some oats. Um we broke it down with Erica Hung, the dietitian, on one of our previous episodes, and we compared rolled oats versus an oat slice. So the same similar ingredients. The oat slice she recommended was really good as a pre-workout because it's broken those oats already down, and so it's easier to digest and it's gonna hit your bloodstream quicker, and that's gonna give you the feel to get through your workout. One of the other reasons why I don't generally recommend training fasted is that if you're fatiguing and you're gonna get tired, and maybe that's what happened with me today, is that your energy and your sugar levels start to drop. And we know from the research is not only do we need the sugar in our blood to go to our muscles to then burn to create the energy to do that exercise, but also for our brains to work. And so if we're not really conscious and aware of what we're doing, it increases our risk of injury. So we're more likely to drop our form or to try and rush certain movements or not have the control. So again, unless you're performing at a really, really high level, if you're just trying to get through to your 6 a.m. class, having something about 20 minutes before, that's gonna be ideal. So generally for me, I would have coffee, really good stimulant, and I have my morning coffee anyway, and that helps have a banana. Ideally, you want to add some protein. So I like to go banana with some peanut butter. That gives you some uh carbohydrates and a bit of protein already. And so what we know as well from research, not so much as well, the timing, you want to make sure you have some energy there, not too much so that you're uncomfortable. But as well, protein post-workout, really, really important. By having protein and good quality protein post-exercise, really important to have those protein breakdowns into your blood that sends it to those muscles to help them recovery and repair from that exercise.

SPEAKER_00

So obviously, like we see a lot of protein shakes, they're nice and easy. Are you saying that's better if you're gonna have that, to have that after rather than having it before?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, definitely. Like if you there's different types of protein. Some of them have carbohydrates, generally they're lower in carbohydrates. So I would say to have that protein shake after, just so that you're then, you know, improving your recovery post-exercise as well. So then coming to the bigger meal. Now, this is important as well. So we know that from your exercise choice, if you're gonna be doing more strength work or high intensity, you ideally wanna be fueled and have something in your stomach. So it's just the timing-wise, you will need to have this meal at least three to four hours before. So I had a client come in the other day. You're gonna laugh at this, Renel. She had a big, big, big breakfast and thought she had enough time to eat it. And then I got her doing some sit-ups, and I totally forgot it, but she did complain about earlier, and I totally forgot. And then she was complaining about the sit-ups, and I thought, it's just sit-ups, like, come on, it's not that bad. And then I realized why it's because she was so uncomfortable because she ate too early before our session.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_01

So, yeah, keep those big meals, keep those big meals at least three to four hours before. Um, if you were in that kind of one to two hour window, and so when I was training a lot, it was hard to eat enough to feel my performance to be able to train twice a day between finishing work and getting to the next training. And then um, so ideally having smaller regular um snacks or bits of food is better. So, what you might do is have that protein shake an hour before and then have a little bit of light carbohydrate. So it might be a wrap, it might be a protein bar, it might be an oat slice. The other question we asked Erica was, you know, what's the difference between orange juice in a bottle versus oranges? And again, very, very similar. The orange juice is really good as a quick pickup before you train, because those glucose is going to get absorbed through your stomach really fast and gonna hit your muscles, give you that energy to get through that workout. Now, coming back to what we talked about earlier, is wool training fastered increase the amount of fat you burn. And this is where I think a lot of confusion gets. So technically, from the research, yes. But again, it's relative to what we've talked about as well. If you're gonna feel really slow, lacking energy, you might burn more energy during your workout, but say you're trying to get through a HIT workout, the whole idea is to get your intensity as high as possible and increase and shift that metabolic load. Now, if you're feeling flat and you're not gonna reach the intensity you require, you're not gonna burn as many calories. The other part of that research that no one talks about is that because you're not reaching the amount of calories burnt in that exercise, when you compare to someone who has a smaller meal but is able to burn more calories over the same period of time, it actually ends up the same.

SPEAKER_00

So this is kind of like when the other day we're talking about the um up the stairs, like getting up the stairs, instead of focusing on losing the weight to get up the stairs, we were focusing on getting stronger to get up the stairs and the side effect being that. So maybe again the focus instead of it being on the burning the fat, it be what's gonna give me the energy to get this workout done to the best of my ability?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, spot on. Like again, it's not fun if you're feeling tired, and particularly if you've got a trainer that's yelling at you to do more, to push harder, or you know, you're like me in a jiu-jitsu class and you've got someone bigger, heavier, and you're struggling to get that power to uh kind of out wrestle them, you need that energy. And if you don't have that energy, it's not fun. And we spoke about this before. If it's not fun, you're not gonna keep doing it. And it's gonna be the next morning, you're gonna wake up, you're gonna be like, oh, you know, yesterday was a struggle, I'm still tired, I'm not feeling it. Have that coffee or have that tea, have a little bit of a snack, give you that energy that you need, and then smash that workout. So your one takeaway from today is you can train faster if it's a slow, nice and easy exercise. And, you know, but ideally what you want to do is have a little bit of carbohydrates before your exercise, give you that energy, fuel your body, get that recovery in, have some protein post, and that's gonna get you the results you want, and it's gonna make it more enjoyable. It means more consistent, more results, more long-term success. So don't forget, you want to make sure you get the most out of your workout. The adaptation and the recovery is where we get fitter and stronger, not during the actual workout. You want to make sure you can feel your body to get the benefits of training. We don't just train to then get stronger in that training session. It's what you do afterwards. So a little bit of feel before, get that protein before, get the most out of your exercise. You put in the work, you might as well get the benefit. That's your mini consult for today. One question, one topic. Thank you, Shirley, for sending through. So make sure, fuel up, get that energy in before your workout, go smash that workout, and get some protein afterwards. Please make sure you keep sending through those questions. I'm really enjoying them. I hope you're enjoying them. You can send your questions to our Instagram account, send me a message, treatment table podcast, or you can send us an email, treatment tablepodcast at gmail.com. Next week we have a special bonus episode, one that we didn't get to fit into our first season. And it's a completion of our three legged stool. So stay tuned next week. We have a special guest come in to cover sleep and recovery. And we'll see you next week on the treatment table.