Fasted Riding
 

Has anyone done fasted morning rides during a 16:8 Intermittent Fasting?

When I take my bike somewhere nice to ride I'm always more interested in being on it than in eating breakfast. 🙂

I've done plenty of early morning fasted rides 2-3 hours long and then have a breakfast after the ride. I am also a big fan of early morning strength training workouts in a fasted state,

Yeah, back in 2018-2019. I started out on the indoor trainer, just to see how it went. After that I was confident with easy to moderate effort rides outdoors. No bonks if I kept the effort reasonable, after adapting the body to not "needing" a meal before moderate exercise.

But I haven't done fasted rides, runs or workouts in over a year. I'm not really trying to lose weight, since I'm only maybe 5 lbs over my optimal weight. I'm not "training" for anything in particular. So I'm not motivated to lose that bit of pudge. If I was I'd quit buying Braum's A2 chocolate milk and pecan pie, my only remaining vices.

Yep. All the time. Not much success with anything over 90 minutes/a lot of intensity (I don't even try anymore, and make sure I either eat the night before or morning of and have food on the bike), but day to day stuff is fine. Don't even think about it anymore.

A lot depends on the intensity of your rides (someone riding easy pace at 230w is going to burn significantly more kJ than someone at 150w) and how well you're refueling after workouts during the week. Get into a hole and it's quite possible to bonk 20 minutes into an easy ride (not enjoyable).

Yes.

sure, frequently. Just don't go out expecting to kill it. It's a good fat-adaptation trigger, provided you're riding at fat-burning intensities (i.e. z2, lower z3). Or so the internets say.

Yes. All the time. If it's sweet-spot or below, I'll do them in the morning fasted. I was uncomfortably hungry when I first started, but if you stick through it you'll get more used to it. If it's going to be higher than threshold, I feel like I need some extra fuel prior to the workout.

I 've done fasted riding but it's not like I set out to do it. It's just that on some weekends I'll get up and ride before I eat and stop halfway for lunch. I'm not doing it for any particular training reason, though.

Back in the day when I was doing performance distance running (and all of the training that goes with it), most of my early morning runs were done in a fasted state. Most of those weren't more than 1hr in length, but they were fairly brisk, often hard.

Invariably, though, with higher intensity I always found that eating appropriately about two hours prior to a hard effort would result in better performance. Same with longer periods of moderate (say, 2.5 to 3hr runs instead of 1hr runs).

Never did hit it as hard with cycling, myself, so I couldn't say. But I can't see how it'd be much different. At a given level of intensity, beyond a certain amount of time, generally speaking the body can use more fueling. Where that point is, with a given individual, will almost certainly vary from person to person.

Used to do it when I was more into intermitted fasting. Would go at 7am for about 2.5 hour rides, going hard uphill and relaxed riding on the flats, burning about 2000 kcal, was a bit on the limit of what I could do fasted. These days I sometimes skip breakfast when there is no work-out that day, but specially if there is a heavy work-out planned, I would eat slightly more for breakfast.

How far and hard are we riding?

I've done 200km intentionally but kept power under 220 watts.

Braums & Beer are two of my main vices.
I tend to bonk or feel the energy drain when burning from reserves rather than recent intake cals, also why I like to carry a gel pack.

For this stuff, how much low intensity volume are the fasted folks doing otherwise? I thought for the true fat adapt improvements you need to be doing some lower Z2 efforts with less carb demands kind of "80/20" style. With lots of volume in general. Not sure why I have that impression.

I don't train very hard anymore or at least right now.

My typical distribution was more like 88/12. Hard was very hard and slow was steady and long. Mostly just randonneuring brevets. Like a 300K in 11-13 hours or 400k in 13-16 hours type pace depending on motivation and hills. I would never do a hard interval session w/o sufficient glucose in my liver and sufficient glycogen in my legs. Like what would be the point? My yearly volume would range from a low of 9,000 miles to 16,000 miles but 13-14K would be typical. I enjoyed riding. Now, I have a lot of spine pain so, my rides are now much, much shorter and more intensity overall. And I drink beer sometimes and eat a pretzel, too.

for me (and what I tend to ride for, which is general fitness and beer), pretty much every low intensity ride is fasted, or at least I try to. Even if I don't get out until lunchtime, I'll still go fasted and eat afterwards. Going for a ride at 7am without breakfast doesn't seem "fasted enough" for me, for some reason. It's the noon fasted ride that kinda forces you to go slower. From what I've learned (which is arguably rough around the edges), to maximize adaptations, you have to spend time in the zone where fat is the preferred energy path, which is z2/lower z3. Here's one article that covers the bases pretty well: https://sportsmedicineweekly.com/202...ne-2-exercise/

90 minutes is about my limit, but it's really about intensity for me. I tried doing VO2max without eating and I flamed out pretty quickly after a few intervals. It was sort of an experiment and I was doing them on the trainer so I wouldn't be in any danger on the road.

I do *all* my riding fasted.

On multi-day trips I'm essentially OMAD. Nothing but water and electrolytes during the ride.

I am not a believer in fasted cardio. Don't see the point.

For me it's about training my body to function without food...I don't want to be one of those people who can't perform physical activity unless they eat sugar bombs every 20 minutes.

I've done it both ways. The biggest difference for me is I have *never* bonked since I dropped carbs and do all my riding fasted.

The bonus is that I will never develop Diabetes, and almost certainly won't get Alzheimers.

But you do you.

I've never bonked. Maybe once way back when I first started to ride for fitness when I didn't know squat about hydration and fueling. I do know that I can't go as fast or hard without carbs.

Yeah, famous last words. Nothings written in stone until it's on your grave marker.

^^ check back with me in 50 years

Nonsense. I don't doubt there are some people who benefit from restricting carbs but it is so over blown its ridiculous. Moderation in quantity and focusing on quality foods is all most people need to be healthy. Restrictive diets, for the majority of the population, are just a gimmick.