You're depriving your muscles of the amino acids they need to rebuild and recover. You're not replenishing the stored glucose (glycogen) in your muscles which can lead to further muscle breakdown. You'll get hungry a few hours later and likely overeat at that later meal.
Skipping a post-workout meal can lead to muscle breakdown, reduced energy, and slower recovery. To maximize your workout performance and recovery, it's recommended that you eat a meal or snack containing both protein and carbohydrates within 30 minutes to an hour after your workout.
Exercising without eating well can have various consequences, both short-term and long-term. Exercising without proper nutrition can hinder your performance, slow down recovery, lead to muscle loss, weaken your immune system, and make it challenging to manage your weight effectively.
You will lose muscle first before anything else. Your recovery after training will require further calories which will burn more muscle so you lose 2x times the muscle. The retaining of muscle in a caloric deficit is tricky itself and to not eat anything is a complete downhill way to approach lifting.
Not eating after a workout can hinder recovery and muscle growth. It's essential to replenish your energy and provide your muscles with the nutrients they need. A light post-workout snack with protein and carbs will help you recover and support weight loss by boosting your metabolism.
Most adults do not need to eat back their exercise calories because they are doing moderate activities, like walking, biking, swimming, weight-lifting, etc. These activities do not burn enough calories to require a post-workout snack, particularly if weight-loss is the intended goal.
Is Working Out On an Empty Stomach Bad for You? According to Roper, fasted exercise is generally safe for most people, but it may lead to side effects. “Because blood glucose gets depleted during fasting cardio, you can experience some side effects including lightheadedness and dizziness,” she said.
Lifting and doing strength training without adequate nutrition, especially without enough protein, can actually lead to loss of muscle tissue. Furthermore, if you aren't eating right you won't have the energy to do the workouts that lead to muscle gain.
Yes, eating less with a low-calorie diet puts you on the fast track to weight loss—and an intense exercise routine leads to increased metabolism and decreased body fat. In reality, a crash diet and overzealous exercise routine can be hard to maintain which may lead to more weight gain in the future.
"A person who is attempting to lose weight by not eating may lose weight in muscle first before fat," he says. How does that happen? Well, the body likes to go for carbs (glucose) for energy first.
Eat after you exercise
Eat a meal that has both carbohydrates and protein in it within two hours of your workout if possible. Eating after you work out can help muscles recover and replace their glycogen stores. Think about having a snack if your meal is more than two hours away.
That's because exercise can affect hunger hormones so that you may feel as if you have no appetite at all. Still, competitive athletes should try to eat something within an hour of finishing their workout in order to jumpstart recovery.
Your body uses resources more efficiently during evening workouts, allowing you to sustain energy levels and perform at your best. Quickened reaction time during the late afternoon and evening also makes it an ideal time for exercises that require speed, agility, or high-intensity intervals.
Overtraining and undereating can not only cause you to lose efficiency, but it can also cause you to lose muscle mass. If you have weight loss goals, eating less may sound like a good idea, but if it doesn't align with your fitness goals, you won't see the results you're hoping for.
Intense workouts may suppress hunger signals. Refueling can help replenish your energy stores, even when you're not hungry after a workout. Consider nutritious snacks or meals that contain protein and carbs.
Schlichter points to a review of 46 studies published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, which found that eating before exercise was beneficial for performance for aerobic workouts lasting more than an hour—though fasting before shorter workouts wasn't found to be detrimental.
Eating a meal after your workout is ideal for repairing and building muscle mass and preserving muscle while in a calorie deficit. 6 Not consuming a meal with protein and carbohydrates after your workout means you may miss out on benefits only gleaned during the post-workout window.
A very-low-calorie diet (VLCD), also known as semistarvation diet and crash diet, is a type of diet with very or extremely low daily food energy consumption. VLCDs are defined as a diet of 800 kilocalories (3,300 kJ) per day or less.
There are other terms for this, such as build mode, but bulking is a common term for this caloric surplus. Dirty bulking is when an individual is in a caloric surplus to build muscle (build mode). However, the individual is eating foods that are carb dense, unhealthy, and ultra-processed out of convenience.
Lower Energy Levels and Strength – Without enough protein, energy levels may dip, leading to sluggish workouts and decreased performance. Protein helps regulate blood sugar levels and supports muscle function, both essential for sustained energy.
Not eating after a workout at night can lead to low blood sugar, fatigue, and disorientation. Also, exercising subjects muscles to micro-tears which repair themselves to build strength. The body needs ample nutrition to repair itself via glycogen stores.
However, given that we all have to eat, it is better for men to eat after exercising if they want to burn fat. This is because, after exercise, men will use that carbohydrate to replace the carbohydrate in their muscles rather than burn it for fuel and will continue to burn fat instead.
Simply put, the more you exercise, the greater your risk of getting hurt. That's just math. But it's more than that. Working out every day—especially engaging in the same types of workouts that target the same muscle groups—means you're stressing your muscles and joints and not giving them time to rest and recover.
“Evenings tend to maximize physical performance,” says Dr. Glazer. “Core temperature and cardiovascular function peak around 6 p.m., enabling greater strength, speed, and stamina. For hardcore athletes prioritizing gains and PRs, training after work makes physiological sense.