Water Fasting And Exercise: Weight Lifting During A 1-Day Fast

The idea of doing water fasting sparked after reading Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile:

Irregularity has its benefits in some areas; regularity has its determinants. Where Jensen’s inequality applies, irregularity might be medicine.

Perhaps what we mostly need to remove is a few meals at random, or at least avoid steadiness in food consumption. The error of missing nonlinearities is found in two places, in the mixture and in the frequency of food intake.

A few weeks ago, I was at a relevantly down and chaotic phase — I hit the plateaus of self-educating digital marketing, the new semester messed up my regular schedule, and etc. Basically, I felt my life was out of control at the time.

To prove to myself that I could still control most parts of my life with determination (I know it sounds a bit stupid…), I decided to do a “1-day water fasting challenge”.

I did achieve it in the end. I want to share my feelings during the day in case you want to try it yourself.

My Ways Of Doing Water fasting

Attention! I’m not a doctor nor do I have a medical background or anything that qualifies me to give out suggestions on your health. Everything in this post is solely my experience. If you decide to try water fasting, don’t blame me when bad things happen 🙁

Here are my ways of doing it, but since I only did it for a day as a test run, there wasn’t that much to be aware of comparing to a 5- or 7-day one.

• No food at all. I guess you could tell from the name that the main point of water fasting is — only drink water during the day without consuming food.

• Drink as much water as I want. Some online articles would suggest you not drink over a gallon of water (~3,785 mL), but I drank as much as I want whenever I was thirsty. One thing to point out is that I didn’t drink an excessive amount all at once. I drank multiple times that day to avoid electrolyte imbalance, leading to water intoxication.

• Regular activity level. I have heard a few people saying that during water fasting, they would decrease the amount of exercise as much as possible to save energy. Bust during mine, I still have my usual life routines, such as going to classes and even working out.

My Regular Routines

Everyone’s experience of water fasting varies and I think the reasons not only result from our physical differences but also our dietary habits. In my case, I would say my regular diet helps a lot, so I want to list them out as references.

1. I don’t (usually) eat breakfast

I have adopted a “non-brekkie” lifestyle for a few months. Only when I feel a lack of energy and still need to go to the office, would I have a cup of iced latte or a piece of bread in the morning. But mostly, I delay my first meal to 12 pm.

2. I work out with an empty stomach

I used to be those people saying “I need to eat something first, so I could have enough energy to workout!” Now, if I eat anything before a workout, I feel bloated and uncomfortable.

My morning routines would be waking up, drinking some water, and heading to the gym with only water in my stomach.

3. I drink A LOT OF water

If you are my friends in real life, you would know how big my water bottle is. (You will see the picture later.) I can literally use it as a defensive weapon. I drink nearly 2900 mL of water a day, which equals to 4 regular bottles of water you can get from a supermarket.

With these habits, water fasting for me is, more or less, an extreme version of my daily life — delay my first meal even later, drink even more water, and work out with no food afterward.

1-Day Fasting And Exercising

Research about whether working out during fasting (or you can call it fasted training) is a good idea has been conflicting, but it’s possible.

Your workout is fueled by the glycogen stored in your muscle tissue, so even if you don’t consume any food in a day, your muscles will have enough stored glycogen to get you through a workout session.

Will It Affect My Workout Performance?

I would say that whether you think working out while fasting will affect your performance or not — it’s only a feeling. 

I have experienced both scenarios — working out with and without food consumption prior — before, and the average performance is the same for me. From my experience, I can still keep up with the usual weight I lift even if I don’t eat anything in advance.

There is an interesting research studying the effect of fasted and fed training during Ramadan fasting (no food from dawn to sunset). At the end of the study period, the performance of the fasted training group didn’t get affected, nor the bodybuilders’ body mass or composition.

Don’t Do Fasted Training For Losing Weight

I would not suggest you work out while doing water fasting if your intent is to lose weight, although it’s true that your body will burn more fat if you exercise in a fasted state.

Lots of people would use this trick to lose fat faster, but the overall weight loss depends on long-term caloric deficits rather than increased fat oxidation in the short-term.

If you eat a greasy hamburger and crispy fries after doing fasted training, your calorie intake might still outweigh your calorie consumption. The efforts you make will be in vain.

The Day Before Fasting (Tuesday)

As when people will fill up the oil tank in advance to save money when expecting the gas price to rise, lots of people will devour big meals a day before fasting to store calories.

I did not do that. Water fasting was an instant decision I had after finishing my dinner on Sep 3rd (Tuesday). I knew my next day will be busy with errands, so cutting down the time to eat didn’t seem like a bad idea.

The Water Fasting Day (Wednesday)

During the day, I still did all the tasks I needed to: waking up early, reading, going to classes, working out for an hour, and etc.

In terms of water consumption, I used my 32-oz (~946 mL) Hydro Flask as the measuring unit. After the whole day, I drank nearly 4.6 bottles of water, which equals nearly 147.2 oz (~4352 mL).