Page 61 - Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon PDF Program

half day fast caused minimal impairments in physical performance measures such as
isometric strength, anaerobic capacity or aerobic endurance.
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In plain English, they found that a three-day fast had no negative effects on how

strongly your muscles can contract, your ability to do short-term high intensity
exercises, or your ability to exercise at moderate intensity for a long duration.

More research published in 2007 found that performing 90 minutes of aerobic activity
after an 18-hour fast was not associated with any decrease in performance or
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metabolic activity. What makes this study even more interesting is not only was
fasting being compared to the performance of people who had recently eaten, but it
was also being compared against the performance of people who were supplementing
with carbohydrates during their workouts!

This means fasting does not negatively affect anaerobic short-burst exercise such as
lifting weights, nor does it have a negative effect on typical ‘cardio’ training.

Another study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 1988 found no change
in measures of physical performance when soldiers were exercised until exhaustion
either right after a meal or after fasting for three and a-half days.
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From this research we can see that you should be able to work out while fasted and
not see any change in your performance.

The only situation where I think there may be a negative effect from fasting is during
prolonged endurance sports, like marathons or Ironman-style triathlons, where you
are exercising continuously for several hours at a time. 23,24 These types of ultra-long
competitions typically require the athletes to eat during the actual event in order to
maintain performance over such prolonged time periods.

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