Somethings on my mind

[Henry4321]

Something has been on my mind the past few days... I've heard that when exercising you should consume more calories in the day to make up for the extra energy you're using up. Here is what I'm wondering about.. Why exactly? Wouldn't your body just take the extra energy it needed from your stored fat if you didn't intake more calories? For example if someone woke up and without eating a thing went for a 2 hour walk, wouldn't most of the energy used come from fat? Then why would there be a need to intake more calories to make up for it if the energy needed was already taken from an energy source(fat)? Whats the technical reason behind it?

I can kind of understand if you ate then exercised because you are burning the calories you just ate, calories your body needs just to function. However like I said, what if someone just woke up and without eating went for that walk and burned it straight from their fat and ate afterwards? What would be the reason behind having to get more calories then?

 

[corndogggy]

In my opinion, you're mostly right... as long as the exercise is low impact and weight loss oriented, and as long as your blood sugar doesn't get dangerously low, which is a possibility, especially with long exercise sessions first thing in the mornings. In fact, doing this is a great way to lose weight, as long as you don't do anything dangerous. Biggest reason for this is that your blood sugar is bottomed out in the mornings then many people eat and get a blood sugar spike, which floods your body with insulin to cover it. Insulin acts as a fat blocker, as soon as you get that flood of insulin you cannot pull energy from fat until you've burned up what's in your blood stream. So, if you do low impact cardio first thing in the morning, you bypass all of this and start exercising when your blood sugar is already low, and you start pulling from fat much faster.

Once you get past the weight loss stage and you're more worried about your exercise efforts being more performance oriented, yes you should eat more, and perhaps eat differently, for example... eating more protein than what you would normally need so you can rebuild muscles. Also your carbohydrate intake could potentially be sky high depending on what you are doing. You can't just eat normally then participate in performance oriented exercises and expect to see great results, you have to eat right, and eat more.

According to the Mountain Biker's Training Bible, 24-hour bike racers have been known to eat between 12,000 and 15,000 calories PER DAY and still lose weight when racing. That's 10 times the amount of calories that a normal person here is shooting for, with most of it being in the form of carbohydrates, and they're still losing weight. Can you imagine what would happen if they didn't eat more to replenish their energy? Best case scenario, they'd come in last place. Worst case, they would die. So yes, with situations like this, what you have heard is exactly right, for obvious reasons. It's just that what you do for performance and what you do for weight loss is totally different, even though they're both labeled as "exercise". Nobody passes up an energy bar on race day because they're on a diet.

 

[jondoe0069]

When you're in good shape, and you exercise regularly, you should give your body the fuel for the exercise. When you're trying to burn fat, the more calories you cut, the more stored fat you're going to burn (given you burn more calories throughout the day than you consume).

The key to consuming your calories is doing it at the proper time. Waking up and taking a two hour walk before you eat, in theory will burn mostly stored fat for energy. This is not always good though. When you sleep, you're going without food for a longer period of time than the rest of the day. Your body uses up certain nutrients that are needed to be healthy and feel good/energized. When you starve yourself, your body starts taking these nutrients from other parts of your body. Yes, you will burn stored fat, but your body will also break down muscles, which will make you feel fatigued. This is why breakfast is so important.

The good thing, however, is that later in the day, this trick works to your advantage. Your body most likely has a decent supply of the nutrients it needs from meal(s) earlier in the day. If you work out just before lunch or dinner, your body will have to burn stored fat calories. By then eating right after your workout, your body will use the new easily burned energy to rebuild muscles. Whatever is left over will burn a lot faster than stored fat.