Training when you haven't consumed many calories

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi Dr,

I know you must hear this a lot, but first I’d like to give thanks for all the quality, life-changing content you and everyone at BBM puts out. I’d like to get your advice on something. What are your thoughts on training in a low calorie state? I know you don’t recommend training while fasted. Is this case any different?

For context, my situation is at 7am I eat breakfast, usually whey and some oats, which totals around 300-400 calories. At 12pm, I get an hour for lunch. Up til now, I’ve been eating lunch during this hour, and training around 2pm as that’s when my work day is mostly over. At this point I’ve consumed around 1000-1200 calories. I work from home in the afternoons and have a home gym, and I’m considering the idea of training during my hour lunch instead of eating, and taking a working lunch afterwards. Reasons why I want to do this:

  1. Works out better for my schedule. Past 2pm is when other responsibilities pop up that frequently makes me have to rush training or rush other errands that I need to do afterwards.
  2. Preference. I don’t like starting training anytime after 2:30pm. Don’t know why, just throws me off. Typing this out I realize I have a series of questions. Are there any concerns with training 5 hours removed from my latest meal where I only consumed 300-400 calories? Do you think this will have a substantially negative effect on performance and adaptions? Would you recommend I keep doing what I’m doing instead of the proposed plan or is it not a big deal? Thanks for everything in advance.​​
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Jacob,

Thanks for the kind words! A few thoughts:

  1. No concerns with training 5 hours from previous meal. I think you’re likely to have higher performance if you ate something small ~ 60- 90 min prior to exercise, e.g. a bar or shake, but it’s mostly personal preference.

  2. Performance difference may be significant, though I doubt it in the resistance training setting unless we’re talking about high volume workouts (probably not in an hour though). Zero effect on adaptations.

  3. I don’t think it’s a big deal, though it is relatively easy to modify by having a small snack around 11am if you’re going to train at lunch.

1 Like
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Thank you for your advice, I’m going to try eating a snack around 10:30am and training at 12 and see how that goes. As an aside, I’m almost finished running Powerbuilding II and I’m having more fun in training than I have in a long time, Powerbuilding III came out just in time for me.

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Awesome to hear dude! Let me know how you like it.