Will Fasted Running Make You Faster?

Just because you can run fasted doesn’t mean you should. 

The ongoing debate "to fast or not to fast" sparks passionate discussions within the running community, with proponents highlighting benefits like improved fat adaptation and weight loss, while opponents raise concerns about performance, health, and weight gain.

Pro ultrarunner @kilianjornet has publicly discussed occasional use of fasting before easy, low-intensity runs to understand how his body adapts to running with depleted glycogen (carb) stores. Meanwhile, other elite ultrarunners, like @mountainrocheattribute the “high carb revolution” as the primary catalyst for the increasing rate at which endurance running records are being broken.So, what’s the real story behind fasted running, and is it a strategy worth considering for your training? Check out my full article at Outside Run.

Is fat burning undermining your performance?

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The media loves to make nutrition simple. Workout fasted and you burn more fat. If only it was this simple. 

When it comes to the physiology of the body during exercise, nutrition is a complex topic. Researchers are still studying the different effects of nutrients, nutrient timing and supplements on exercise and exercise performance. This isn't to say that fat burning doesn't work (it does!) but it's not as simple as not eating carbohydrates before and during a workout. 

There's a lot of debate about fasted training, training low, LCHF diets, keto and low carb. Unfortunately, with no middle ground, athletes tend to direct their energy and attention to what's most trendy and popular and for the past few years, carbohydrates have received a bad reputation from the media. 

I am a proponent of carbohydrates in the diet. I feel strongly for nutrient timing (eating before/after workouts) and I believe that the use of sport nutrition is critical in optimizing health and performance for endurance athletes. But this doesn't mean that I prescribe eating all the carbohydrates, anytime and of any kind. But I am also a proponent of fat, protein, vitamins, minerals and water. In other words, fueling for sport performance is not black or white. If you sit on either end of the spectrum you could be sabotaging your performance and compromising your health. 

I'd like to start off with some not so breaking news that often gets overlooked when it comes to fat burning. 

• Through endurance training, you will increase fat oxidation by upregulating the enzymes of the fat oxidation pathways, increasing mitochondrial mass, increasing oxygen update and improving economy of movement. 
• To become a better athlete (ex. faster, stronger, more powerful), your physiology needs to change. While some individuals may experience a performance boost because of an improvement in health, the diet or body composition, a race weight means nothing if you haven't done the work to significantly change your physiology and to arrive to the race in an optimal state of mental and physical health. 
• Don't underestimate the importance of the relationship between your lactate threshold, economy of movement and VO2max. Having a lean or muscular body or performing workouts in a fasted state does not ensure that you are economic and able to quickly oxidize carbohydrates (without GI distress) to optimize performance. 
• Carbohydrates are the primary fuel produce ATP (energy). But you also need to keep up with your hydration (water and sodium) needs in the face of sweat losses induced by intensity, duration and the environment. 
• Don't rush the process. To truly change your physiology for performance, you have to continue to stress your body in different ways. Otherwise it gets comfortable and you no longer receive an adaptation. High intensity efforts and strength/power training are just as important as easy sessions, endurance sessions and recovery. And don't neglect skill and technique work. All of that training is for nothing if you can't hold good form under fatigue. 
  
• You have to fuel and hydrate on race day. There's no beating the system here. If you want to perform (and have some fun doing so), you need to take in carbohydrates, sodium and fluids - in proper amounts, frequently and consistently during your long distance event. And to figure out the best fueling and hydration strategy, you have to develop confidence (and the ability to digest/absorb nutrition) through training. More so, consuming carbohydrates teaches your body how to store and utilize carbohydrates more efficiently which will reduce the risk for GI issues on race day (while promoting more efficient use of carbs to delay fatigue).
  

If the majority of well-designed research clearly shows that the strategies to become a better fat burner does not show a direct correlation with improving athletic performance. So it's worth asking the question.....are you undermining your health and performance by restricting carbohydrates, performing fasted workouts and trying to complete workouts in an underfueled state?

For many athletes, the strategies applied to become a better fat burner for metabolic efficiency or to burn more fat to change body composition are nothing more than a form of underfueling - which means you are not eating enough to get the results that you desire. Yet scenarios play out all the time as athletes try to apply the weight loss methods for the non-athlete population, assuming that eating less carbs = fat burning and weight loss.

Sadly, far too many athletes are using endurance training as compensation or punishment in order to look a certain way or to justify eating patterns. You don't need to ride your bike for 3 hours in a fasted state just to "earn" a bagel. And you don't need to punish your body with a high intensity workout just because you ate a cookie. 

The methods that you are using to become a better fat burner (or to lose weight) are likely not working. I know this because I see it time and time again. Not eating adequate carbohydrates in the diet, not timing nutrition with training, not utilizing sport nutrition properly and having an unhealthy relationship with food (alongside body dissatisfaction) turns training into a method for weight loss, but it doesn't work. You are simply undermining your training, sabotaging your health and these methods have the exact opposite effect on your body composition than you are trying to achieve.

As a result, health is compromised, fitness improvements are slow to achieve (if at all) and all that training, time, energy, money and effort is for nothing come race day because the body is undernourished and overtrained. 

Fat burning is catchy, trendy and enticing. And some methods may work for improving performance in the short-term. But the long-term repercussions of not feeding your active body enough food and nutrients are concerning - from a weakened immune system, bone loss and nutrient deficiencies to gut issues, damaged endocrine, hormonal and metabolic health and psychological issues. 

With so much great research and science demonstrating a positive relationship with carbohydrates and performance, are your methods for weight loss and metabolic efficiency negatively impacting your health, performance and body composition?

Let's look into some of the reasons why fat burning is not all that it's cracked up to be. 

If this blog was helpful for you, please share, especially with your fat-burning obsessed training partners. 

Training on empty

Do you intentionally underfuel during workouts and/or on race day? 

Intentional calorie/carb/fluid/sodium deprivation is not uncommon. As a Board Certified Sport Dietitian, I often work with athletes who struggle with their relationship with food and the body. There's a fear of consuming calories around/during workouts and often train and race with the mindset of "how low can I go??" In other words, the athlete tries to complete a given workout or event with the least amount of calories/carbs possible. Although many athletes learn the hard way through a performance or health decline, it's a wonderful "ah ha" moment when an athlete experiences what a body can do when it is well fueled. 

For many athletes, the desire to lose weight and/or change body composition or to become more "metabolically" efficient are the primary motives for underfueling. Intentional insufficient fueling is often the result of a desire to lose weight (or to avoid gaining weight). 

While an athlete may be able to complete a given workout or race with less fuel/hydration than recommended, there are consequences. Ultimately, when an athlete is in a negative energy balance (expending more calories than consuming) during the day and/or not taking in adequate fuel/hydration before/during/after workouts, the many metabolic processes that allow the body to adapt to the stress of training are compromised. More so, the body struggles to recover between training sessions. Here are some of the consequences of underfueling. 

• Increased risk for injury and illness
• Inability to train at high intensity
• Lack of strength and power 
• Delayed recovery 
• Trouble concentrating
• Difficulty sleeping
• Moodiness
• Feeling run down
• Underperforming 
• Hormonal issues 
• Decreased mental function, increased depression

How can you improve your health, well-being and athletic performance? 

Eat enough. 

Don't let a season of training and/or racing become compromised or cut your athletic career short due to inadequate energy consumption. Underfueling sabotages your health and performance - it does not make you a better athlete. Restricting calories because of an irrational belief that performance will improve if weight is lost (or because you are afraid to gain weight) is not the strategy to becoming a better athlete. By fueling your body properly, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that you feel and perform better. 

With so many voices and sources providing you nutrition advice, there's one simple message to remember....

If you want your body to perform well, respect it by giving it the fuel that it deserves. 

Big results or marginal gains?

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Not every athlete trains to win a race but most athletes train to maximize the potential of performing well on race day.

While your definition of race day success may be to simply complete the race distance and have fun along the way, there are a great number of athletes who pursue the many possible methods of getting the most out of the body through training, in order to meet performance standards on race day.

One of those popular methods is metabolically efficiency, which in simple terms, means burning fat in order to preserve carbohydrate stores.

As desirable as it sounds to an athlete to become more metabolically efficient, manipulating your diet and fueling strategies in an effort to become a better fat burner is not a requirement to be a better athlete. 

The idea of marginal gains lies in the strategy (or method) of trying to gain the 1% competitive advantage. In other words, big successes from a small change. 

With lots of confusion on how to properly become "metabolically efficient" or what it means to be metabolically efficient, it's important to stress that metabolically efficiency is much more than one tiny change in your training.

At Trimarni, we don't believe that fasted workouts are the best way to burn fat or to assist in weight loss. Seeing that many athletes have an extremely unhealthy relationship with food and the body as it is, asking/telling an athlete to voluntarily restrict food before and during workouts feeds the desire to be great at food restriction throughout the day. Many athletes are uneducated on the proper training and diet methods of how to be metabolically efficient, simply because there are too many nutrition experts offering their unique strategy, often while pushing supplements/products.

While this concept of metabolic efficiency is not new and there are many scientific truths and notable results in becoming great at burning fat as an endurance athlete, as a Board Certified Sport Dietitian, I don't view this dietary and training strategy as a necessity for all endurance athletes, as it can actually delay athletic development and heighten an already unhealthy relationship with food and the body.

Without proper guidance on how to become "metabolically efficient", it's very easy to assume that not eating before a workout or fueling during a long workout is good so not eating after a workout and restricting food later in the day, is even better.
Metabolic efficiency is not a diet plan - it's a sport nutrition strategy that may take your performance to the next level, but it is not a requirement. And due to athlete non-compliance, results are often positive and extreme in the beginning but do not last long term.  

I my opinion, for the majority of athletes, I see "metabolic efficiency" as a method that provides marginal gains and has more cons than pros.

Whether you want to become more efficient at conserving glycogen or you look to burning fat as a way to remove unwanted body fat and lean up, it's important to remind you that your success as an athlete starts with nailing the fundamentals.

This post is not to disagree with the concept of metabolic efficiency but instead, to encourage you to nail the basics before following a more extreme dietary and training methodology.

You must make smart choices with your daily diet and training regime in order to stay consistent with training while keeping your body in good health.
Eating a small banana with a smear of nut butter before a 90 minute run and consuming 150 calories of a sport drink and 20 ounce water spread over a 90 minute run may not fit the metabolic efficiency fueling standards but it will help you have a great workout and will likely keep your immune system strong during a time when it's very easy to get sick (sick = no training = loss of fitness).

Not eating before a workout or not fueling during a long workout will not help you gain the competitive edge if your training methods are haphazard, you don't sleep well, you have poor coping skills when it comes to stress, your daily diet is inconsistent, unbalanced and you have an unhealthy relationship with food and the body. 

Although it sounds extremely sexy to say that you are "metabolic efficiency training", the truth is that most athletes (even the elite ones) still have a lot to gain from continuing to nail the basics and progressing on with the developmental process, than simply restricting carbohydrates around workouts or performing workouts in the fasted state (as these are the two ways that I hear of athletes performing "fat burning" workouts).

It isn't until you have maximized your fundamental athletic capabilities that you will need to search for and attempt that one ethically safe way to gain the competitive edge.

Perhaps at that time, metabolic efficiency training can be the choice method for achieving the 1% advantage over your competition.

BUT.....until then, you haven't yet reached the marginal gain status of your athletic career.

Until then, make sure your daily diet strategies do not reduce the effectiveness of your training and above all, do not sabotage your overall health.

If you do feel as if metabolic efficiency is necessary in your training, consult with a sport dietitian who is specializes in the area.

 If you consult with me on the topic, you better believe that I will dive deep into your lifestyle choices, training methods, sport nutrition practices, dietary patterns and relationship with food and the body to discuss the many ways that you are not getting the most out of your body as an athlete.

For the majority of athletes that I work with, the missing link as it relates to body composition struggles and nutrition issues in training and on race is not because athletes are not metabolically efficient but because there is a clear limiter in the daily diet or sport nutrition regime...most common reasons include; an unhealthy relationship with food and the body, not using sport nutrition products properly (timing/quantity), poor nutrient timing or consistently not planning healthy and balanced meals.

From my experience in working with athletes, I encourage you to get to the truths of your daily diet and training regime before assuming that working out in the fasted state is the missing link that when accomplished, will improve your health, improve your body composition or improve your performance.

Now is the perfect time to learn how to make great daily nutrition habits as you follow a well laid training regime to keep you consistently training throughout the holiday season.