When you’re committed to a diet and exercise plan and are determined to lose those extra pounds or need to shred the weight, you’ll want to take advantage of any extra help that you can. This is where a quality fat burner can come in.
Fat burners are popular supplements that can help to encourage fat burning and weight loss – assuming you’re already watching your calories and doing plenty of exercise. They often get a bad rep – mostly because of unscrupulous manufacturers making impossible claims – but if you can find a decent fat burning supplement, it really can help you burn more fat and lose extra pounds than you would without it. And here’s the good news – you can take fat burners on an empty stomach, and even while fasting!
Fat burners tend to work in three key ways:
1 – By triggering thermogenesis, raising your body temperature to help burn more calories
2 – By helping you to control your appetite and avoid snacking
3 – By including ingredients to help protect lean muscle mass, often lost when dieting. This aspect of a fat burner is crucial if you want to take it when following a fasting or intermittent fasting diet.
The key is to find a good product that offers all of the above and – in our opinion – does so without the need to cram it full of potentially dangerous stimulants and not much else.
After reviewing dozens of supplements, we believe that Burn Lab Pro is the best fat burner currently available on the market and is ideal for fasted training.
Visit Burn Lab Pro’s Website here
Or read on to learn why we chose this fat burner as our #1 recommendation.
When Is the Best Time to Take Fat Burners?
Many people are unsure when to take fat burners, and question if you can take them on an empty stomach. The question is particularly relevant for those people who are fasting and want to know if taking fat burners is allowed – and advisable – during a fast.
Before we examine the issue, let us issue a caveat: whatever fat burner product you buy, you should take them according to the instructions from the manufacturer on the packet. That’s because ethical manufacturers will know exactly what they put in their supplements and should know if it’s safe to take on an empty stomach or not.
It’s also a good idea to tailor your times to the type of fat burner you choose.
However, as a general rule, taking a fat burner on an empty stomach is ideal. Here’s why…
Taking a Fat Burner Before Breakfast
Take your thermogenic fat burner up to 30/40 minutes before you plan to eat breakfast.
Here’s why taking a fat burner before breakfast is so effective: Your metabolism is slower in the morning after sleep. Taking your fat burner half an hour before breakfast will help to give your metabolism a kickstart, setting up your fat-burning process for the day. As an added benefit, many fat burners now also come with additional ingredients for appetite control and taking them early will help you to better control your appetite and eating habits throughout the day.
You’ll find that many thermogenic fat burners recommend taking them on an empty stomach before breakfast as it means the ingredients are absorbed faster by the body, and you’ll feel its effects quicker. It may also improve the effectiveness of the fat burner.
Research from Northumbria University demonstrates that people can burn up to 20% MORE BODY FAT by exercising on an empty stomach in the morning.
2: Taking a Fat Burner Before Exercise
The next best time to take your fat burner is before you exercise. Taking it just before you work out – by coincidence, usually a time when your stomach will be empty (no heavy meals before exercise) – may give you an extra bout of energy you need to help you through your workout. This is especially true of those fat burners designed to deliver energy and burn more fat during a workout.
A harder workout will mean more calories burnt during your session and during the day.
Note that if you don’t plan to exercise in the morning, it’s still a good idea to take your fat burner first thing in the morning to crank up your metabolism, and then take a second dose just before training.
Taking a Fat Burner while Fasting
Some fat burners are suitable for fasted training and could be ideal for intermittent fasting too. These supplements are usually specially designed and tend not to contain stimulants or caffeine. Instead, they may concentrate on ingredients that help to retain muscle mass. The latter is particularly important when fasting as you don’t only lose fat when limiting your calories, you can lose muscle too. Of course, having more muscle helps to burn more calories in turn, so you want to retain as much muscle as possible.
#1 Best Fat Burner for Fasted Training:
Before we discuss the benefits of fasted training, let’s clarify what we mean by it.
What Is Fasted Training?
In a nutshell, fasted training refers to training on an empty stomach. There’s research to suggest that the body burns more fat during exercise when you’re in a fasted state (you can learn more about that below).
Now, being in a fasted state doesn’t just mean you haven’t eaten for a few hours. Eating a large lunch around noon and getting peckish around 5pm isn’t putting you in a fasted state. BUT if you last ate around 7pm and get up to exercise at 5 or 6am, you’re training in a fasted state!
Intermittent fasting – such as eating between certain hours, such as 3pm-10pm and only drinking water the rest of the time – also qualifies as fasted training if you’re doing it during your non-eating hours.
Here’s why training in a fasted state can be beneficial:
- Burns Fat Faster
Fasted exercise has been shown to increase fat oxidation and lipolysis rates, which allows you to burn your fat faster. Your body automatically seeks to use glucose from food as its energy, but when none is available (ie, during your fasted state), it must begin to convert fat – including visceral fat — into energy instead. As mentioned in the Northumbria University study (above), men who didn’t eat breakfast before working out burned off up to an extra 20% body fat compared to those who did.
- Increased Blood Flow to Areas of Stubborn Fat, Like the Abdominal Region
Studies show that fasted training helps to increase the blood flow to areas of traditionally stubborn visceral fat — such as the abdominals in men and hips and bottom in women. These are areas where the fat can be hard to shift.
Why does this matter? Increasing the blood flow to these regions helps to burn more of this visceral fat and preferentially promote lipolysis (the breakdown of fat).
It’s important to stress that this isn’t targeted fat loss – and you should avoid any product that promises to target specific areas of fat as this isn’t technically possible. However, evidence does point to fasted exercise naturally helping your body to burn fat from more stubborn areas.
- Increased Muscle Growth
Training when fasted helps your body to respond better to post-workout nutrition, helping to begin building and repairing muscle quicker. This, of course, promotes further muscle growth.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity – make sure you have adequate post-workout nutrition. The impressive Performance Lab range of products from Opti-Nutra offer some excellent post-workout supplements including:
Performance Lab SPORT Post: A generous dose of creatine mixed with beta-alanine and L-glutamine (alongside Himalayan Pink Salt and Pomegranate extract) – hard-hitting post-workout ingredients designed to help you repair and recover quicker.
Performance Lab Protein: A top notch organic brown rice complete protein, the only rice protein patented for enhancing athletic performance. Taken post-workout, it boosts muscle recovery and growth.
Performance Lab Carb: Take pre-workout for two or more hours of stim-free energy, and post-workout for ultimate recovery gains.
- Intermittent Fasting May Improve Exercise Endurance
Studies suggest that intermittent fasting can improve overall health as well as reduce risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but there’s also another benefit: it may improve exercise endurance. This could be particularly useful for endurance athletes.
Researchers say fasting has been shown to boost endurance rates of moderate aerobic exercise and could allow you to run farther and last longer, for instance.
Can you take a fat burner while you’re intermittent fasting? Yes, and you should in order to maintain your lean muscle mass.
The Best Fat Burner for Fasted Training
(Or for Working Out on an Empty Stomach)
The key to taking a fat burner on an empty stomach is to choose the right product.
You need a fat burner that:
- Works to help you preserve your lean muscle mass
- Does not contain stimulants
- Doesn’t contain any harsh or synthetic ingredients that could irritate your empty stomach
- Helps to encourage thermogenesis without stimulants
- May help with appetite suppressant
OUR RECOMMENDATION:
#1 Ideal for Fasted Training: Burn Lab Pro
Our favourite fat burner, Burn Lab Pro, is designed for fasted training and meets all of these requirements. It includes:
- HMB: A metabolite of leucine, the BCAA most associated with maintaining muscle, HMB helps to protect the muscles by neutralizing damaging enzymes caused by fasting. It also delays fatigue-causing lactic acid build-up in the muscles to boost endurance and encourages the body to burn fat for fuel rather than muscle. It is 20 times more potent than supplementing with leucine alone.
- Coleus Forskohlii: an Ayurvedic herb that also boosts fat loss while also preserving lean muscle mass, making it a great complement to HMB. Promising evidence that it also strengthens testosterone production, helping to augment muscle gains while fasting.
- Cayenne Pepper Extract: The traditional and highly effective thermogenesis agent, helping this formula to speed up metabolism and burn more calories without any need for stimulants. Also acts as an effective appetite suppressant, useful when fasting.
- BioPerine: A black pepper extract that helps to boost absorption of all other ingredients, making Burn Lab Pro even more effective.
- Also includes calcium and chronium, both of which have been shown to help with weight loss.
Here’s what Burn Lab Pro doesn’t include: stimulants, allergens, GMO, artificial ingredients, soy, gluten, or any animal products or by-products (making it vegan-friendly). It is also banned-substance tested, meaning you can use it safely during competitions.
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Our Conclusion
So, what’s the takeaway from this article? That not only is it possible to take fat burners on an empty stomach, it’s often ideal. And it’s worth investing in a fat burner tailor-made for fasted training, such as Burn Lab Pro, in order to burn fat and lose weight at the same time as maintaining your lean muscle mass.
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