Our brains love overthinking things.
And food timing around exercise is an area a lot of us overthink.
We can be sold into the mindset that having eaten, or having not eaten, is a reason that the exercise we were planning is not going to be as effective.
But I’m here to tell you to just simply get on with what you’d planned regardless of how you timed your last meal because it’s really not going to make a massive difference either way.
Unless you’re about to do some kind of activity which requires a good amount of effort for an extended period (running a marathon or climbing a mountain for example), you’re probably not going to gain any particular benefit from eating or not eating before you exercise.
Eating straight before exercise might even make you feel rubbish because food signals your body to move into ‘rest and digest’ mood, which is not quite what we’re looking for when we exercise.
While there is some benefit to getting some exercise done in the morning before you eat, the extra benefits compared to doing the same exercise after you’ve eaten are pretty small.
Likewise, being hungry before you exercise is likely to leave you low on energy and finding it hard to perform in your workout.
As usual, the right approach lies in the middle ground – just eat normally and don’t allow your meal times to put you off a workout.
If you want to exercise tomorrow morning, make sure you eat tonight and have a plan for a meal tomorrow – that’s it.
There’s no need to use your eating schedule as a reason to skip a workout.