Why not do your cardio in the morning on an empty stomach therefore setting up your body to burn cals the rest of the day, then later in the day after glycogen levels are back up, then pump it out...
The "Empty-stomach" approach has gone the way of disco....
The whole idea is that after fasting all night your blood-sugar is low...so any exertion or physical demand will be met with the body burning fat (seeing as you have no food in your stomach). So you figure you'll go straight into fat-burning mode, eh? Certainly sounds good, but....er, no.
Much like your body's temperature....your body regulates the blood-sugar level within a band. If it goes too high, the pancreas releases insulin to facilitate the excessive glucose (blood sugar) being stored in fat.....and if it goes too low, the body spins-up some glucose from several sources: glycogen in the liver, glycogen in the muscle, but at rest, the majority of energy is sourced from FAT. On a percentage basis, your body is burning the most fat during sleep!
Anyways, if you do cardio on an empty stomach you are more likely to sooner be diggin into the fat, but don't kid yourself, you still have lots of glycogen and other stuff on tap & ready. The downside of doing cardio on an empty stomach is that you'll lack the energy to perform a more intense workout. Ever hear the saying "Fat burns in a carbohydrate flame"? I monitor my cardio workouts and I can honestly say that by eating a reasonable breakfast and snacking a bit through the workout, I've seen more overall calories burned then had I not eaten.
Really....it still comes down to calories in vs. calories out. There is no magic timing sequence or way to trick your body into revving-up the metabolism.
It seems like some people say not to do HIIT and weight training on the same day.
Trick question.....
Let's examine HIIT for a better understanding, but let's start ground up:
When you weight-lift, you generally move heavy weights and do sets/reps until failure....it's intense, anaerobic and generally places a strain on the muscle which in turn builds more muscle. Please re-read that. Your building muscle...this process stimulates your metabolism for up to 2-3 days, the affects continue after the work is done.
Cardio...burns calories as you perform it, BUT the calorie-burning generally stops after you do it. The benefits are there & then (barring respiratory, circulatory and the hundreds of other benefits
).
Okay....here's something I've never seen anyone write on Fitness-Chat....but it's this simple: HIIT is nothing more then incorporating the same weight-training approach to cardio....you go mild/med for a duration, and then you go full-bore hog-wild for an interval. What you're basically doing is placing an intense anaerobic demand on your muslces such that you derive the similar benefits as you get from weight-training: EPOC (do a search for EPOC, I'm not going to cover it)....but this is why HIIT is beneficial. It's merely a hybrid fusion of weight-lifting & cardio where you're pushing your body past thresholds to make gains.
SO....would you do massive chest-presses and then later that day do the same chest-presses??? No, of course not...we all know we're supposed to let a day pass before hitting the same area. Right?
So let me ask you this....would it make sense (in the same manner) for me to do massive chest-presses and really burn my muscles....and then the same day go swimming and do HIIT laps in the pool? Nope!
So here's the thing: if you wanna do heavy weights for your upper body in the morning, that's fine. Have your protein shake afterwards and eat some food. Later in the day you can do some running, biking or lower-body HIIT....but don't do HIIT work on your chest, cause you burned it earlier in the morning.
So yes, you can do weights and HIIT in the same day, but not in the same area. Don't conflict the areas, simple as that.
I spin/run/spin/swim on Wed, Fri and often Sunday. I do weights Tues, Thurs and Saturday. Monday is a busy day in the office so I keep it to some light elliptical and run lean on the diet. But the thing is, I keep the weights and cardio (HIIT cardio even) on alternating days.
I am trying to lose weight while maintaining muscle mass.
If you don't exceed a 20% calorie deficit you shouldn't lose muscle mass....and you ensure not losing muscle if you place even a reasonable "toll" on your muscles; just exercise and use them enough so that your body essentially realizes you're using them and they can't be shed in an effort to alleviate the reduce energy cost on your body. If you don't use your muscles much and you're on a severe cut, your body will cut-loose lean muscle: each pound of muscle requires 20-50 calories per day to be on your body even if not used! (we used to think 80-100 calories per day, but recent research has proven it's much less).
Despite erroneous belief, you can totally gain muscle AND lose fat at the same time.
