Fact or fiction: is it better to eat nothing before your workout?

Sometimes I really can't see the forest for the trees with all those different theories about sports and eating. Should I eat something small six times a day or rather three times a day a large portion? Not eating anything before twelve or rather having breakfast? Cardio or strength training to burn all day? Exercising in the morning or in the evening? I go completely crazy from all those thousands of issues. I'm just happy if I even manage to cross the threshold of the gym.

But okay, time for the next question: is it better to train on an empty stomach in the morning? Personally, I really feel faint if I don't have breakfast, but I hear more and more often that you burn more calories throughout the day when you have breakfast after your workout. This phenomenon is also called ’fasted cardio‘. The idea behind it is that your body will start using fat reserves because it doesn't have enough carbohydrates to draw energy from. As a result, you would lose fat faster. But the big question is of course: is this a fact or a myth?

Well, this theory is a myth. Various studies show that fasted cardio does not lead to more fat loss than people who have breakfast before their cardio session. Here's how it works: when it comes to losing weight, it's about burning extra calories, it doesn't matter whether you do this before or after your breakfast. Because if you burn a lot of fat during a morning session with fasted cardio, your body will choose to draw more energy from carbohydrates later in the day. And then you burn less fat again. In other words: the same result. So it doesn't matter at all whether you exercise before or after your breakfast or late in the evening, just do what works best for you.