So, I could do my 30 mins / 8 mile +/-, 5 times a week, commute fasted. Intensity is generally “up” not bimbling along, it’s SS so the wind plays it’s part, plus I have a lump of a hill mid way.

I’d have a cup of tea, maybe two before leaving (sometimes an espresso), I could skip food at home & eat once at work.

What’s the benefits??? Pros / cons?

I don’t do diets or such, but I’ve heard of fasted rides, but don’t know much about the concept.

Ta

For a ride as short as 8 miles it won’t make any difference either way. The concept is that is trains the body to use stored reserves but again at only 8 miles it is too short for it to really come into play.

I think the idea is that low intensity fasted rides encourage your body to use fat as fuel source.

Supposedly, pre ride strong coffee helps.

It’ll make **** all difference on a tiny commute

Ok. Thanks for the info. Breakfast at home it is 👍

Unless your muscle stores are already depleted from an already hard work out the night before and you didn’t eat

**** all achieved other than your liable to eat your lunch by 10 am

I do a lot of runs fasted, up to 12 miles at my full marathon pace, and find it really helps when I do events (marathons, half’s) as I feel super strong when I am fuelled. It also did wonders for weight loss when that was a goal.

In truth, anything up to 8 miles (an hour ish) I prefer it without eating, feel sharper and less heavy.

Given

A) the length of commute and
B) from memory, you have the physique of the canine pet of a fresh meat retailer

I don’t think you’ve got a lot to gain 🙂

For a ride as short as 8 miles it won’t make any difference either way. The concept is that is trains the body to use stored reserves but again at only 8 miles it is too short for it to really come into play.

What sort of distance would it be required to do before it DID make a difference, do you think ?

What sort of distance would it be required to do before it DID make a difference, do you think ?

Time wise, probably a couple of hours

Dunno you’re meant to have 40-50 mins glycogen before the body starts metabolising new stuff aren’t you?

Science says

Your glycogen stores in the muscle group targeted should be depleted by a prior exercise

Otherwise it’s just calorie deficit by another name

I’ve been doing that for 5 years, five days a week.

My commute is 8 miles, it takes 50min aprox. 2-3 times per week I go straight to the gym and swim 1600m. Some days I have a banana on the way to the gym, but I don’t feel it makes any difference.

I then have breakfast at around 9.

My body got used to it in no time.

There’s some decent background on the TrainerRoad blog:

How to Program Your Body to Burn Fat Instead of Store It with Fasted Training

I’ve played around a bit with some ‘depleted’ training (probably not truly ‘fasted’) and can’t say either way if it made any difference to my riding. I quite enjoyed making a strong coffee and getting out on the bike nice and early though.

I used to do a big fasted run every Sunday, at least into double mileage figures before any breakfast.

However it was by accident, I didn’t know the science and only did it as felt like crap running with food inside me.

It’s not just the fasted training that might be beneficial but the smaller eating window in general. From what I have heard their are lots of benefits from spending at least 12 hours a day not eating, but more is generally better (up to a point).

I do a 10-mile commute before breakfast, I actually often wait an hour or so after getting to work to have breakfast.

smaller eating window in general. From what I have heard their are lots of benefits from spending at least 12 hours a day not eating

at the risk of sounding like james smith “calorie f***ING deficit i know certain folk on the forum dont believe in eating less but it works – it cant not work if your honest with your self. If you subconciously munch then its not a deficit – often when folk list out what they are eating its often actually much more calories than what they think.

 often when folk list out what they are eating its often actually much more calories than what they think.

Yeah, that – MyFitnessPal really helped me understand how much I was eating. Lost 15 kgs and mostly kept it off when I stopped checking everything every day.

Noticed a bit of creep lately and have started recording again.

As to fasted training – I leave the house early to avoid the worst of London traffic and generally eat at work.

When I first started commuting regularly, I would be ravenous when I got to work but as I’ve done more my body seems to be more efficient at storing glycogen where it’s needed.

Dunno you’re meant to have 40-50 mins glycogen before the body starts metabolising new stuff aren’t you?

It varies, and depends on how hard you’re pushing I think. I generally have about 70-80 mins worth in me. Mrs Dubs teaches a-level PE and reckons normal people have between 60-90 mins.

The only advantage I can see is that it could stop you having two breakfasts. Even an 8 mile ride would make me peckish, so satisfying that with my actual breakfast, rather than a snack, reduces overall calorie intake.

I do my 1-2 times per week 25mile commute ‘fasted’, leaving home at 0600.

I find that the main benefit is an extra 30 minutes in bed and a relaxed breakfast once I’m at work.

It varies, and depends on how hard you’re pushing I think. I generally have about 70-80 mins worth in me. Mrs Dubs teaches a-level PE and reckons normal people have between 60-90 mins.

Isn’t part of the theory on the morning fasted rides that your glycogen levels are lowest at the end of the night unless you’re eating heavy carb based stuff as your last meal. I thought you could “make the most” of an early fasted ride by eating low carb the night before and therefore you’d quite quickly get through what glycogen you have left in the morning. Or do the glycogen levels remain fairly level throughout 24 hours of the day?

Isn’t part of the theory on the morning fasted rides that your glycogen levels are lowest at the end of the night

“If you choose to train in a glycogen depleted state, the biggest take home recommendation of this episode is to make sure that you’re actually depleting the tissue you’re trying to stress. If you want to stress skeletal muscle’s fat burning, an overnight fast won’t do it. For that, you have to deplete muscle of its stored glycogen with a bout of high intensity or long duration exercise and then not replace the carbs until after the next workout.*

thus the only advantage is as below.

The only advantage I can see is that it could stop you having two breakfasts. Even an 8 mile ride would make me peckish, so satisfying that with my actual breakfast, rather than a snack, reduces overall calorie intake.

(otherwise known as calorie deficit)

*source – Shawn Bearden science of ultra podcast 69 for more info.

 I thought you could “make the most” of an early fasted ride by eating low carb the night before and therefore you’d quite quickly get through what glycogen you have left in the morning. Or do the glycogen levels remain fairly level throughout 24 hours of the day?

That makes sense to me, you’d be losing weight as the body would need to get into it’s fat stores to get the energy it needs.

Caveats…
1) I don’t have to teach this stuff like MrsDubs does, so I might be way off
2) I can only retain a couple of bits of information per conversation, again, I might be missing something

i know certain folk on the forum dont believe in eating less but it works

Some people on the forum do believe in it but also believe it’s not a simple equation and deficit isn’t the only story 🙂

Anyway even short fasted rides had an effect on me in that I used to consider it impossible but now it’s easy. So clearly something changed. Over the years of training fairly randomly with low muscle glycogen I have become much better at burning fat overall, I now consume far less when on the bike.

But it does catch up with me eventually, I can’t continue to starve myself and continue riding. So to the OP – make sure you do eat after your ride. I am not sure if eating immediately before your relatively short commute or immediately afterwards will make a difference as if you eat low GI your blood glucose probably won’t have started going up by the time you get to work and would have eaten anyway.

Don’t think it has much benefit for such a short ride. The idea it encourages your body to draw upon fat reserves probably only works for a much longer and very low intensity ride – you’re body can’t use fat for higher intensity exercise…it takes too long for your body to convert so to have half a chance the intensity has to be very very low. For a short 30 minute higher intensity ride you’ve enough blood glucose reserves to fuel you and the intensity levels mean your body will prioritise the blood glucose, then if you have your breakfast immediately after the ride then all you’re doing is replacing the glucose direct from the food source rather than fat reserves. Maybe if you didn’t eat anything for an hour or two after the ride then you’d encourage your body to draw upon fat to replenish glucose levels, but then you’ll sit there hungry.

But if you’re serious about losing fat then you’re not going to do that without being hungry some of the time.

As above really, bit to short to benefit as if doing longer Fasted rides.

I would do what’s best for you in the morning, and how you feel when riding on a empty stomach or not.
I am not a morning person so I prob get up get kit on and ride and have food end of ride.
If you like getting up early so you can eat, (plus a little digestion time) then ride, do that.
Do what’s best for you time wise etc.

The other random bit of theory my brain seems to have retained is that eating after exercise would also help reduce the insulin secretion therefore minimise, for a given calorie deficit, the transformation of carbohydrates into body fat. I think it’s more or less what is explained here : https://www.dietdoctor.com/first-law-thermodynamics-utterly-irrelevant

Surely even a brief ride before you eat has some effect here because of that. Apologies if I’m peddling pseudo-science, I’m not a PE teacher and have just been reading up on some of this because I do, mostly, ride early in the morning and often fasted.

I ride my commute fasted nearly every day. It’s 27km (so around an hour). It saves me a few mins before leaving the house so I can get up later! I always drink a pint of water before getting on the bike though and then have a coffee when I get to work. Don’t always eat breakfast but will eat through the day and then have a snack before cycling home again otherwise I feel a bit depleted by the end of the day.

I’ve not really noticed any change in my performance or weight loss/gain since riding fasted. I did attempt an early morning 100k ride whilst fasted and just water in the bottles… it didn’t end well though 🙂

What sort of distance would it be required to do before it DID make a difference, do you think ?

IME 1.5 to 2hrs. Much more than that is either specialist adaptation stuff or counter-productive. Under an hour is just a ride either way I expect.

There’s certainly a benefit to endurance ability if done regularly in phases ie it’s part of a base not the build stage. As a weigh loss thing I’m not sure how valuable it is, I lose weight quicker/more by eating to fuel more HI riding. But that may be because I’ve done fasted type riding stages for a while and have adapted to it, seem to get past the bonky-rides stage quickly when starting winter fasted miles these days. Generally you’ll burn more calories from increasing HI riding than increasing (relative) base pace riding. HI kicks your metabolism up a few gears for a while afterwards whereas base miles don’t (or, don’t as much).

Also read about autophagy, in how that works there’s evidence for general health benefits in fasted riding as well as endurance, which backs up the idea that no need to do more than 2 hours.

Similar to mine, 8.5 miles, always do it fasted, cos I like to roll out of bed, get dressed and go, and feel as if it’s better for me eating breakfast after exercise. I’ve no idea if this is true, but hey ho.

trail_rat
…i know certain folk on the forum dont believe in eating less but it works – it cant not work if your honest with your self….

It’s got to work. Basic physics. No one stayed fat in Belsen.

Or do the glycogen levels remain fairly level throughout 24 hours of the day?

As I understood it, carbs are turned into muscle glycogen but within 8-12hrs that glycogen is converted to fat stores. So the timing of eating then riding, the intensity of riding and how you fuel the ride
-if fasted, from glycogen if fast or from fat if slow
-if not fasted, from what you eat as well as some body reserves as secondary
starts to give a better picture of what goes where or what gets burned off or stored. I have little to no idea what effects the rates or variables or how it’s optimised.. but the general idea is simple enough to experiment with, we all react and adapt differently.

No one stayed fat in Belsen

ooof.. no-one exercised very effectively anywhere like that either.

I’ve tried very low carb diets and regular 6hr Z2 rides 16hours or more after my last meal. It’s hard but gets easier far quicker than I expected. It very quickly becomes detrimental to overall performance but it does make you an efficient energy user. It just doesn’t need to be done that much on top of 1 or 2x a week effective fasted rides to help with base preparation. After that I’d go for fuelling for faster/harder riding, or fuelling less (but not fasted) for longer base miles. If I want to drop weight I’ll eat the same and ride harder and I lose weight faster – plus end up quicker based on both power and weight.

Did 16hrs with my 19m commute today.

I didn’t miss breakfast.

I quite the idea of giving your body a bit of time away from eating.

These people that don’t eat that much seem to live long lives.

These people that don’t eat that much seem to live long lives.

Autophagy seems to back this up – not about the amount you eat as much as the timing and what happens in the empty phase. Probably the content of food too but that’s another topic. Exercising on low or empty may facilitate the process but too much of anything might be a negative, I expect there’s a tipping point where excess stress on the body outweighs it.

I never eat before a ride and always ride within an hour of getting up so all my rides are fasted but my longest rides are 2 hours (can’t eat before riding as feel sick in riding position due to stomach issue).
Always feels fine although on harder rides I start to struggle a bit after 90 minutes.

How does the STW hive mind know for sure that it doesn’t work for short daily efforts?

I’d say give it a go and see if it works, report back. a boiled egg and a banana at work is a pretty easy solution and saves faffing at home as well as in the office.

How does the STW hive mind know for sure that it doesn’t work for short daily efforts?

If you near-sprinted the 8 miles / 30 min I expect you’d have some effect on how you access and replenish fuel. Probably shades of effect in all this rather than work/not work, but it’s generally accepted that it takes most of us a while to warm up and get going – 30 mins isn’t normally/likely to be long enough to warm up and get your system adapting to working on empty. But worth trying? Certainly.

If you near-sprinted the 8 miles / 30 min I expect you’d have some effect on how you access and replenish fuel.

Apart from the fact that if you near sprinted 8 miles it would only take 15-20 minutes and not 30.

How does the STW hive mind know for sure that it doesn’t work for short daily efforts?

Define what “works” means and how you would know. As said above, it is what I have done for 20 years and couldn’t say what difference it makes, if any.

How does the STW hive mind know for sure that it doesn’t work for short daily efforts?

because its been researched heavily.

but feel free to do your own and see. themind/Placebo effect can be as strong as anything.