Diet Smart

If you are trying to lose weight, the time of the day when you exercise is as important as how much you exercise, because what you are aiming at is getting your body in fat burning mode. Exercise consumes calories and these calories may come from a number of sources, like glycogen stored in the muscle and liver, fat tissue or even muscle tissue. Glycogen is the body’s first choice of fuel, so before getting into serious fat burning the body depletes the glycogen it has stored. Therefore if you want your body to consume calories from fat from the start of the exercise session, you should choose for exercising a time when the body’s supply of glycogen is already low.

Glycogen builds up when you consume carbohydrates and especially sugars. After that, the glycogen is stored in the muscles and used to fuel muscle contractions when you make physical effort. The amount of glycogen is highest right after a meal or a snack, and thus these are the worst times for fat burning workouts. For example, if you exercise an hour after a meal you have to go through almost the entire amount of the glycogen stored from the carbohydrates consumed before starting to burn fat tissue for calories. On the other hand, if you exercise four hours after the meal, you get to the fat burning part of the exercise a lot faster because of the three extra hours throughout which glycogen was consumed on effort involved with everyday tasks.

Apart from avoiding exercising right after meals, you should seriously consider exercising in the morning. The morning is the best time for fat burning exercises because you have had many hours of not eating behind you (unless you are one of the midnight snackers) and the glycogen supply of the body is thoroughly depleted. A short jog before breakfast or half an hour on the bicycle can do wonders for your waistline, and this is one of the reasons for which morning is such a popular exercise time for many busy people.

The strategy of exercising before breakfast and long after meals only applies for weight losing exercise. For muscle gaining exercise you should do exactly the opposite: you want a maximum supply of glycogen for the workout. That is because muscle mass exercise is highly intense and quickly consumes glycogen without which the muscle can’t contract to the maximum intensity and you can’t get the full benefits of the workout. This does not mean you should go weightlifting as soon as you get up from the table. You should never lift weights on a full stomach. But also you should not do a muscle gaining exercise session if you haven’t eaten at most three hours before. Two hours after a big meal is considered by many bodybuilders to be the best time for a weightlifting workout.