🍳 Is skipping breakfast detrimental or helpful to morning exercise?

Breakfast is often termed the most important meal of the day.

But does it actually help performance?

A new review on the impact of breakfast on types and timing of exercise found that skipping breakfast:

• Doesn’t affect short-duration (< 60 min) endurance exercise in the morning, but it impairs long duration (> 60 min) morning endurance exercise

• Negatively affect evening training performance, despite eating lunch

• Has no impact on either endurance or resistance-training adaptations (e.g. strength, capillary density)

• Can help with fat loss and favourable changes in body composition because of overall lower daily calorie intake

However, Skipping breakfast can impair endurance performance, but this appears to be very evident for longer duration sessions.

If you are resistance-training or performing shorter endurance sessions, skipping breakfast may not matter.

🥊 Punchline

Skipping breakfast can impair long-duration morning endurance exercise and evening training performance, but it may not affect short-duration morning endurance exercise or resistance-training adaptations.

☕️ Does caffeine help with training when on a low carb diet?

The combination of low carb diets and training is an effective method to lose body fat.

However, if not carefully planned, this method may not be sustainable.

For example, severe carbs restriction can impair performance in training sessions.

So can coffee help overcome this performance impairment?

In a novel study, female endurance athletes completed 3 x 2-day exercise blocks.

Each block consisted of high-intensity-interval-training in the evening, followed a 20-min morning training session where volunteers either:

• FASTED = no carbs between sessions

• FASTED + 300mg caffeine pre-test

• FED = 3 g/kg carbs post-HIIT the evening prior

The diet was the same for all (8 g of carbs per Kg), but the timing of carbs differed.

Fat oxidation was measured after training to understand how much fat was ‘burned’

Fat oxidation or burning was significantly elevated in both FASTED and FASTED + 300mg caffeine trials. As expected, as more fat would be used to fuel performance if fasted.

Power output in the morning exercise was highest in the FASTED + 300mg caffeine trial vs both FASTED and FED.

Overall, caffeine before exercise when on low-carb diets can help to overcome performance detriments associated with low carb.

🥊 Punchline

The time of caffeine and carbs intake can help fuel endurance exercise while still benefiting from low carb diets without missing out on training adaptations.

💪 Does taking creatine help if I don’t lift weights?

Creatine monohydrate is considered to be one of the most effective supplements for enhancing strength and lean body mass during resistance training.

However, creatine may influence body water content, potentially confounding lean body mass measurements.

A new study in 63 volunteers explored the effect of creatine (5g/day) on muscle mass with or without resistance training.

Without training, the creatine group gained +0.5Kg more lean body mass than the control group. However, comparing only females, the creatine group gained +0.6Kg compared to the control group.

Although the volunteers were told to not change their diet and lifestyle, there was no way to accurately assess their daily activities.

With training, both groups gained an average of +2Kg in lean body mass.

Overall, 5 g of creatine per day did not enhance lean body mass growth when combined with resistance-training.

🥊 Punchline

Taking creatine without resistance training can lead to modest gains in lean body mass, but it does not enhance lean body mass growth when combined with resistance training. A higher dose maintenance dose of creatine may therefore be warranted to enhance lean body mass gains when combined with training.