A common dietary technique called fasting involves limiting one’s consumption of meals for predetermined amounts of time. Combining fasting with exercise has become a common tactic for achieving various fitness and body composition objectives.
Due to the wide range of fasting methods and exercise modalities that have been studied, research on fast exercise can be difficult to understand.
Let’s be clear about one thing before I get to the heart of this post: You should continue to be active while fasting. You must not remain idle. You must persevere. You must work out while fasting.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
People who practice intermittent fasting eat very little during predetermined times. Among the most well-liked fasting, diets are:
- Time-Restricted Fasting: This daily eating plan limits eating to certain hours of the day. Following a 16:8 split, where people fast for 16 straight hours followed by an 8-hour window during which they can eat, is the most popular strategy to implement this diet.
- Periodic Fasting: These fasts are observed at intervals that are longer than those that are time-limited. The 5:2 split, which entails eating normally for 5 days and fasting for 2 full days out of the week, is a popular periodic fast.
- Alternate Day Fasting: This entails observing a fast every other day. On days when they fast, people may consume no calories under certain protocols, but up to 25% of their daily caloric needs may be consumed under others, such as a Modified Alternate Day Fast.
How to Exercise During a Fast?
Do as much Walking as You Can
Walking is the most basic exercise that is recommended for everyone to perform during a fast. Walking during fasting is not a science or a technique.
You simply move around without eating. You can accomplish as much as you can because fasting and walking are not only simple and stress-free but also anti-stress. It keeps you occupied when all you can think about is eating and fasting starts to seem like work.
Lift Weights to preserve Muscle
It’s essential to lift weights during a prolonged fast. Lifting weights is an excellent strategy to break a short-term fast and boost the anabolic response to feeding. You’ll have different approaches for each.
If you want to prevent muscle loss when you’re on a prolonged fast:
- Lift with greater force for fewer repetitions.
- Don’t raise until you can no longer move.
- Don’t go over the top.
- Stay between a 6 and 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being effortless and 10 using all of your energy.
This will provide you a powerful enough stimulation to keep your muscle mass up while not being so stressed that you start losing more muscle than you can keep up.
Do Easy Cardio
Keep your effort low to stay in the “aerobic zone,” or the heart rate range where you are predominantly burning body fat if you plan to engage in “cardio” or endurance exercise during a prolonged fast.
Without much, or any, food, a fasting person should be able to stay active in that region virtually indefinitely. Subtract your chronological age from 180 to get your aerobic heart rate:
- Your aerobic heart rate zone would be 160 beats per minute if you were 20. When doing fasted endurance training, don’t go beyond 160 BPM.
- Your aerobic heart rate zone would be 130 BPM if you were 50 years old. When performing fasted endurance exercises keep your heart rate under 130 BPM.
