is it necessary to eat before cardio for fat loss?

[Bajwa_99]

Hey I was just wondering is it necessary to eat any protein before cardio, if you want to shed fat?? because I heard that if do cardio on an empty stomach, your body will tap into your fat storage for energy and burn the fat instead, is that true??

[.V.]

Now here's a topic that's been debated to death over the years. There are a couple of different ways you can look at it.

If you do cardio without fueling up first - you are forcing your body to use it's glycogen stores up first for energy. Then when they are gone it starts using your other stored energy sources - fat and muscle. Hopefully you'll use more fat than muscle.

Another thought on this is to treat cardio as any other workout - feed it. Fuel up first, refuel after. This allows you to work the muscles used - (remember cardio works the muscles too because fat don't flex) without catabolizing them as badly.

The truth is - both ways actually lead to fat loss. So does a long walk, a medium run, high intensity intervals, short very high intense (like max ot cardio) sessions. They all work.

Try one way for a while, then try another. Evaluate your results honestly. Use what works best for your body.

[Blaze]

Your body will attack muscle first though, under normal circumstances, before it starts eating that fat for energy. Muscle is going to feed it more.

[threenorns]

that's true of HIIT, but not low-intensity cardio. long-duration exercise of low to moderate intensity activates fat stores more efficiently because oxygen is needed to burn fat. once you go up past the aerobic (oxygen burning) zone, it switches.

[Todd]

As well, if you do ever look into doing any high intensity like cardio, then you'll benefit from that method as well, because remember, if you jolt your metabolism well enough during cardio, you will elevate your metabolism and continue to burn more calories in the hours after you are done your cardio session.

You have to remember that the amount of calories you burn DURING a session isn't the entire picture....it's how well you elevate your metabolism THROUGH cardio that allows you to burn TONS of calories in the several hours after your session is done. This is something that you do not benefit from nearly as much if you are doing moderate to low intensity (longer duration) cardio bouts.