#9 How to Workout While Doing Intermittent Fasting

Siim Land (0:01)

Right, we're live. Okay, welcome to the livestream of Body Mind Empowerment. My name is Siim, and I just wanted to do this short little livestream to talk about intermittent fasting and working out, you know, is it possible, how can you do it, and what's the most optimal way of, you know, achieving your specific goals would be. There are many reasons why people do intermittent fasting. The biggest benefit has to do with autophagy, in my opinion, the life extension benefits of intermittent fasting. But, you know, the most common and the most convenient reason why people do it is that it allows them to maintain a negative energy balance so easily, you know, because if you restrict, if you only have a certain time frame where you can consume your foods, then it's that much easier to not eat too many calories and to, you know, stay in a deficit. The most popular time window for intermittent fasting is usually this 16 and 8 time frame where you fast for 16 hours and you have 8 hour time frame for food. People always think that even though they haven't eaten anything, then it might be too difficult for them to work out.

But in my experience and that what a lot of other people have also said is that you actually feel more energized and more vigorated while you're in a fasted state.

And the reason is that your body is going to actually pump out a lot more adrenaline and cortisol, which will make you more alert and fully sharper mentally as well as physically. It makes sense evolutionarily as well because think about it, you know, and a hunter-gatherer, if they would go hungry, then they're in a situation where their next hunt is literally a matter of life and death. If they're going to miss an opportunity of catching their prey animal, then they would starve to death, or at least they would have to spend more time in famine. You blew it!

And of course, you will also shift into ketosis, which covers the physiological energy aspect of it. To be honest, when you're working out or exercising in a fasted state, then you will actually burn a whole lot of fat. If you do it in ketosis, then it's actually you're burning your own body fat exclusively. Like when you're on an unrestricted carbohydrate diet, that doesn't put you into ketosis, then you will always be in this state where you're still burning glucose for fuel. When you're in a negative energy balance or when you're in need of getting more fuel, when you're in need of getting more energy, then your glucose metabolism will make you convert your own lean tissue into glucose. So it's like an addictive cycle or a vicious cycle where you're in a negative energy balance or in a caloric deficit, i.e. you're fasting, and then you start working out, you deplete your glycogen stores quite fast, and to get more energy, then you're gonna start burning off your protein. That's the biggest, you know, myths about intermittent fasting as well, that you're gonna lose muscle. You're gonna lose it, of course, you're gonna lose muscle, but only if your body feels the need to burn its muscle stores.

There are two options when you're doing intermittent fasting. You can either work out in a fasted state, or you can work out after you've consumed some calories and within your time frame. If you want to burn exclusively your bone body fat, then doing some fasted training is the probably the best option for it, because yeah, and if you exercise on an empty stomach, then you will allow your body to enter ketosis faster as well. So for instance, today, I did some fasted cardio. I had been fasting for about, let's say, 14 hours before the training. Then I drank some black coffee to have some caffeine in my system, because caffeine itself is also going to promote ketone production, and it's also going to boost your fat burning. So it's a great combo to do fasted cardio with caffeine. What I did, I did some steady state cardio for about 40 minutes at a quite moderate pace, not too intense and not too slow either.

Just this regular jogging, because the problem with cardio is that if you do it too intensely or do it too long, then that will also lead to some muscle loss.

And the reason itself is again because of glycogen depletion. If you empty your glycogen very fast, and if your body still feels the need that you need some glucose to maintain the intensity of your current exercise, then your body will still convert your protein to sugar through glycogenesis. And yeah, to prevent that, you would want to maintain your cardio intensity at about 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate.