42 hr fasting, best time to work out for muscle building?

#1

Hi,
I am planning regular 42 hour fasting … and am wondering what’s the best schedule for building muscle…beginning or towards end of fast?
I work out on Monday and Wednesday mornings.

(Carl Keller) #2

Thomas DeLauer has several videos about fasting and workouts. You migh find some of his advice helpful.

#3

Thank you so much!
Fabulous information.

This one is pretty helpful too in terms of timing training.
The quality of the info is better than the image suggests. :slight_smile:

(Marius the butter craving dude) #4

I usually do worckout on Omad 6 hours after my meal.
For extended fasting I do it at the 24h mark or 36 hour mark. beyond that I did not feel it was safe to exercise

(DougH) #5

I just started doing 40 hour water fasts at the beginning of my week, and also started my power-lifting program back up. I start my fast Sunday so my Monday evening workout is close to 24 hours in, and I break the fast between noon and 2pm on Tuesday.

I am going to be following the 5x5 program because I have had great success on it in the past.

I keep keto the rest of the week, and have been doing time restricted eating for the rest of the week, but weekends are normally feast days with three meals, and maybe one cheat meal that isn’t keto if I find myself in social situations where keto would be tough. If there is a cheat meal I try to avoid having it be the dinner meal on Sunday, I find the fast so much easier if I am already in ketosis.

The only additional consideration that I am giving to the fast is to make sure I really push up the calories on Tuesday, and then moderately increase on the other days.

Just winging it here but I think it will be a good combination of feast and famine cycles. The fast should cut body fat and spare protein and then my hunch is that on Tuesday my HGH will still be elevated from the fast and heavy workout from Monday night so I should be able to put down some more lean muscle mass. We shall see how it goes as a n=1 experiment.

#6

I am not worried about safety of fasting and exercise since Dr Fung in his book Fasting says its fine.
I am more interested to get the best result for my effort and hoping to build more muscle that way.
Trying today at the 14 hour mark and will see how it goes and will change it next Monday.
Since eating turns on the cell building pathway and fasting is the trigger for autophagy, makes sense to me that eating not long after training would be best… but I am still not actually sure need to go back and re-look at the guy in the clips above. Pretty information dense.

(Alex) #7

just in case you didn’t come across this video while browsing his stuff. he addresses what you’re asking about specifically, from 4 minutes in until the end. from what i gathered from the vid, i’d imagine the ideal time frame for weight training while fasting for a period of 42 hours (for the most beneficial results) would be somewhere between hours 18 and 36. definitely long after your last meal has digested going into the fast

#8

Thank you very, very much! :slight_smile:
This is precisely what I wanted to know.

(Windmill Tilter) #9

@anon13588705: Great question. I’ve been wondering something similar myself!

@adp: Thanks for posting the DeLauer video. I had never watched anything by him before but he seems like he knows what he’s talking about; I’ve saved a bunch more of his vids to my queue.:slight_smile:

In this video though DeLauer is talking about intermittent fasting so it sounds like he’s talking about sub 24hr fasts. The trouble you run into on more extended fasts is that you need to balance the optimized GH with the presence of nutrition. Autophagy only goes so far. For example if Matrika lifted at 18hrs, she’d have to wait 24 more hours to eat rather than the 8 hours recommended. That’s probably suboptimal. On the other hand if she ate at 34hrs, I’m not sure there would be any food left to actually build muscle with for the 8hrs before breaking the fast. That’s probably suboptimal too. Maybe the key is figuring out how long protein is available after a meal and then limiting the fast to 8 hrs after that window?

In my case, I fast 84hrs every week and then lift weights at hr 83. There just isn’t any “food” left over from my meal 4 days prior. I’m starting to think I might need to figure out how long protein is available after a meal and work around that.

(Alex) #10

that’s a fair point in that he does only talk about fasts lasting up to 24 hours. a bit more internet research could probably more specifically address the ‘best’ time to workout during extended fasts. i’d definitely say it’s fair to assume that you have a bit more leniency once you’re properly fat-adapted regarding optimizing your fasted workouts. i also implement occasional fasts ranging from 72 to 96 hours, workout consistently at various times inbetween, and have had good results with muscle building.

(Windmill Tilter) #11

Here are the best 2 articles I could find on protein timing/anabolic window. Unfortunately, the windows they evaluate are only a couple of hours before exercise to a couple of hours after exercise. It doesn’t address the question at hand directly, but it does serve to validate that hypertrophy is ambivalent as to whether the protein comes before or after working out. One interesting statement from the first study regarding exercising in the fasted state is in block quotes below. Bear in mind that when they say fasted state, they’re referring to an 8-10 hour overnight fast that most normal people do. Far from definitive, but interesting. I couldn’t find any research about resistance training during extended fasts. Maybe some is out there?

Despite claims that immediate post-exercise nutritional intake is essential to maximize hypertrophic gains, evidence-based support for such an “anabolic window of opportunity” is far from definitive. The hypothesis is based largely on the pre-supposition that training is carried out in a fasted state. During fasted exercise, a concomitant increase in muscle protein breakdown causes the pre-exercise net negative amino acid balance to persist in the post-exercise period despite training-induced increases in muscle protein synthesis [36]. Thus, in the case of resistance training after an overnight fast, it would make sense to provide immediate nutritional intervention–ideally in the form of a combination of protein and carbohydrate–for the purposes of promoting muscle protein synthesis and reducing proteolysis, thereby switching a net catabolic state into an anabolic one. Over a chronic period, this tactic could conceivably lead cumulatively to an increased rate of gains in muscle mass.

(Windmill Tilter) #12

I’ve done a couple of resistance training sessions at 40hr mark of my weekly 84hr fast and I’ve been surprised how good I feel for the remaining 44hrs. I’m still building muscle overall, so I don’t think that it’s necessarily as catabolic as many might worry, but that doesn’t mean that any muscle was built during the mid-fast sessions either. It’s entirely possible that slightly more muscle would have been built in the absence of the mid-fast workouts. Hard to say I guess.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll keep on fasting 83hrs, lifting, and breaking the fast 1hr later. Based on the two studies above, it looks like it’s pretty well established that eating within an hour or two of lifting after a workout is just as good as getting protein before it, especially in a fasted state. DeLauer might be correct that there is a magical cocktail of hormones in the hours following a workout, but I don’t think protein remains available after 80hrs. For right now, what I’m doing seems to work. I’m building muscle, and strength keeps going up every week. When that stops happening, it’ll be time to figure something else out I guess. :slight_smile:

#13

Makes no difference in my experience, I’ve worked out day and night 5x/week during week long fasts and never noticed a difference.

(Alex) #14

if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!!

#15

Thank you for the info.
You are right Don. I have no particular committment to 42 hours (or any time frame really) just settled on it for the autophagy benefits. I may go for shorter fasts and eat in the evening on training days and fast before as DeLauer describes… but I have read @Brenda is doing 5 days a week fasting and am waiting anxiously for her report on how that has affected her muscle building…if it is accellerated or reduced.
With my new routine of Monday and Wednesday on beautiful Keiser machines at 80% of my capacity( with a sports physiologist one-to-one tracking and pushing me), I want to get as much benefit as I possibly can in this 3 months.

I have old ligament damage in both knees which I am trying to push past and heal at the same time. It’s 20 years old so it’s time to throw it off I figure and my only strategy is autophagy and fasting and training. I only have 3 months of this supervised training, then I will be back on my own in a regular gym… hence my interest in building as much muscle as I am able in this window.
It interests me that all the other people there have a protein drink after working out. No fasters there but me.
I declined the protein drink and the staff were surprised to discover (with a DEXA) that I have no sarcopenia…which they take as a given for any new unfit participants at their geriatric gym. :slight_smile:

I think the high muscle % I have may be down to the keto diet and fasting.
Thanks for all the informed responses here. Really helpful. I am way out of my depth.

(Windmill Tilter) #16

Yup. I’m really curious about this too. She was talking about it in the Dec 2018 Zornfast thread. I think her goal was to put on something like 4lbs of lean mass in 4 months which is pretty amazing for an advanced weightlifter, never mind the back to back 4 x 5:2 fasting regimen.

Yup. Me too. I’ve got 100lbs to lose, and when I get there I want as little loose skin as possible. Some is probably inevitable, but I’d like to give myself a fighting chance. I think it probably comes down to picking priorities. For me it’s healthy weight > stronger > loose skin. So far I think 84hr fasts followed by high calorie 2 day refeeds is getting the job done. I’ll just keep plugging away until progress slows down and it’s time to switch things up. I don’t think anybody knows the optimal way to mix extended fasts and weightlifting at this point. We’re probably .0001% of the weightlifting population, so not too many journal articles on the topic yet. :smile:

#17

I hear you!

Sounds like a good plan to me.
I am on a similar path.
I believe we will get to our goals if we keep on.

We have to wait til April! I want an interim report!