The thought of a stomach full of food jostling around while you take that morning jog may not sound appealing, yet skipping a snack in your rush to the gym works against you in the end.
While some studies have shown athletes burn more fat when they work out on an empty stomach, in the longer term, it comes back to haunt you in terms of metabolism.
For starters, your body isn’t a fan of being starved, and it likes having fat stores. When you burn fat rapidly, your body begins to adjust your metabolism to compensate for that loss. Basically, it goes into a kind of survival mode and starts to burn fewer calories, says Pritchett. By burning so much fat, your body thinks it needs to store more of it when eat your next meal, completely counteracting those fat burning benefits. And as another study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found, extended periods of fasting can lead to a drop in resting metabolic rates. So there’s no real upsides to foregoing food in this type of scenario.
That’s only one way going hungry doesn’t get the job of getting in shape done.
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