Fasted Cardio: Pros, Cons and Myths

Written by Guy Gustafson
April 04, 2017

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Fasted cardio pros, cons and myths. Fasted cardio is the act of doing your cardio first thing in the morning upon waking on an empty stomach.

The idea is since your body is running on empty it is forced to take from its reserve energy sources and here lies the highly debatable part. Some think fasted cardio will take from the hard to reach fat stores your body has where others think that it sends your body into a catabolic state which means your body will break down your own muscle, denature the protein and use it for energy.

There is no solid scientific evidence that shows that fasted cardio works better than regular cardio especially since most of the people that do fasted cardio (bodybuilders,physique athletes) are on performance enhancing drugs that help them preserve their muscle anyway. Fasted cardio wouldn’t make sense for endurance or performance athletes like sprinters or marathon runners since they need all the food converted into glycogen for energy that they can get so they can perform.

If something works for you, then continue to do it because everyone’s body reacts differently to things. For me personally, fasted cardio works but under certain parameters. I don’t do fasted cardio until 4 weeks out of a show and I never do fasted cardio back to back. I also drink bcaas right before I do them because I am looking to keep all the muscle on my frame that I can. I also don’t do fasted cardio for more than 45 min. This is what has worked for me and I’m going to stick to it.

As for everyone else fasted cardio can be a good tool in your fat burning arsenal. My best advice is to try it out a couple times and see how you feel and if you like it and it looks like it’s working then use it. If your happy with where you’re at physically and happy with your routine, fasted cardio may be a good switch up and help you burn that last bit of fat that you were trying to burn off in those problem areas.

In conclusion, fasted cardio is very controversial and may only work for some so if you are considering doing fasted cardio first understand how the body works and take steps to prevent muscle break down because the last thing you want even as a woman is to lose muscle.

The less muscle you have the slower your metabolic rate will be, meaning you won’t burn calories as fast as you used to. Fasted cardio only will be effective if you’re on a healthy diet because if your eating pizza and sugary foods all the time then there’s simply going to be too much stored fat for you to see a difference.

So eat healthy, lift to gain lean muscle mass, which helps increase your metabolism, and do your cardio whether fasted or not. Those 3 steps will help you maintain a better overall body that you will happy about, it’s up to you to see if fasted cardio works well for you or not.

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