Ramadan and Working Out - Lifting, Cardio, Fasting | Eating 101 | Forum

Ramadan – a month-long holy time for Muslims – is starting soon.  This article will help those of you who practice Ramadan fasting (or actually, just about any intermittent fasting) understand how your eating, lifting, and cardio should be adjusted.

Important Note #1:  I am not Muslim, so am not qualified to discuss the spiritual aspects of Ramadan.  If I get something wrong, please forgive my ignorance.

Important Note #2:  I'm commenting here about body composition goals:  muscle building and/or fat loss.  I am not commenting on athletic performance or competition.  (A short summary of Ramadan fasting and sports performance is here and here but there are many studies on soccer/football performance impacts of Ramadan fasting if you search PubMed.)

What Is Ramadan Fasting?

From Wikipedia, on Ramadan:

The most prominent event of this month is fasting. Every day during the month of Ramadan, Muslims around the world get up before dawn to eat Sahur or Sehri or Sahari (meaning "something we eat at Sahar"), then they perform the fajr (or Sobh) prayer. They have to stop eating and drinking before the call for prayer starts until the fourth prayer of the day, Maghrib. Muslims break their fast at Maghrib (at sunset) prayer time with a meal called Iftar. Muslims may continue to eat and drink after the sun has set until the next morning's fajr prayer call. Then the process starts all over.

For those of you non-Muslims, this sounds an awful lot like intermittent fasting, or semi-fasting.  Except for one important thing:  the timing is reversed.

When I've written about semi-fasted cardio and lifting, I've assumed that you would be fasting all night, then exercising in the morning before eating.

Please read those previous articles before continuing:

10 Steps Towards Semi-Fasted Morning Cardio For Fat Loss

Fasting for Fat Loss and Muscle Building

Seriously, read those right now because the rest of this article will be based on those.

Can I Gain Muscle During Ramadan?

Absolutely you can.  But let's remember, muscle gain is hard any time of year, except for beginning lifters.  Key to gaining muscle – and not fat – during Ramadan while fasting, is timing your lifts and the type of food you are eating.

To back up my statement that you can gain muscle while fasting during Ramadan, I cited some studies in my original articles on fasting about hormone levels.  Another good references is  Ann Nutr Metab. 2008;52(4):261-6.  Ramadan fasting and the GH/IGF-1 axis of trained men during submaximal exercise. This study showed that your natural growth hormones are unaffected if you are training in a submaximal way (not to failure).  Some other studies have shown a spike in hormones from fasting, but you need to fast for longer to see those.

To get the best bang for the buck for muscle gain, after you break your fast at sunset you should immediately eat a fast carb, fast protein meal (or shake).  By fast carbs, I mean sugars.  By fast protein, I mean something like a whey drink.  This will spike your insulin (which is a good thing around lifting time).  Within 30 minutes head to the gym and do your lift but bring a protein/carb drink and sip that during your workout.

I would not recommend max lifting.  In other words, don't do heavy sets of 2 or 3 reps.  Target 6 to 10 reps (if you are using either my Full Body Attack or my 6x6x6 Routine, you'll be fine, but in the 6x6x6 just skip the wave loading 3-rep sets).  I say this only for precaution – after not eating all day, and depending on how fast your first meal gets into your blood, I don't want you failing with a heavy load.

Then after your workout, eat another really good meal preferably no fats and not heavy with fiber – you want this meal to be fast digesting as well.

Now by this time it might be late enough that you can't get in another meal.  But if your goal is to build muscle during Ramadan, you've got to get another meal in before bed, a meal of real food.  This final meal should be proteins and healthy fats, very little carbs.  Good fats like olive oil, nuts, eggs, etc.  Meat fats aren't entirely bad but don't rely on that for your fat intake.

Then when you wake the next morning, I would recommend your meal (or meals, if you have time to fit in two before dawn) should be big but balanced – proteins, carbs, and fats.  Choose carbs that are slower carbs – like whole grains and such.

What About Fat Loss Goals During Ramadan?

Now, if your goals are not to build muscle but rather to shed fat, you have many more scientific studies to support your aim here.  In addition to those mentioned in my original articles (you read those, right?), there are many more talking about how fat loss during Ramadan is almost "easy".  But the science (of course) has some contradictory conclusions depending on the specific study.

First off, you can make use of semi-fasted cardio.  But unlike my previous article you won't be doing slow cardio when you wake up – you'll be doing it at the end of the day, since you will have fasted all day.  This will help a little bit to burn more fat calories than glycogen calories.

BUT YOU NEED TO BE VERY CAREFUL OF DEHYDRATION.

So wait until after sunset so you can drink some water and ideally take in some branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs, a powder) with water about 15 minutes before doing your semi-fasted cardio.  The BCAAs will be "zero calorie" protection against muscle loss.

If you want to add HIIT in to your routine, do that in the morning about an hour after your last meal.

But that's just when to do your cardio during a Ramadan fast.  More important to fat loss is your overall calorie intake.  It requires discipline.

For example, in J Sci Med Sport. 2008 Sep;11(5):510-7. The effect of participation in Ramadan on substrate selection during submaximal cycling exercise, the first week showed fat loss but then subjects changed their eating habits during the second, 3rd and forth weeks.  In particular, they ate less food that first week but then ate more food the remaining weeks.  Calories increased so fat loss stopped.  A possible conclusion is that if they had kept in a caloric deficit, they would have continued to lose weight, though that's not proven.

All the things I've written about in previous articles still apply though.  For fat loss, without muscle loss, you need to eat fewer calories than you burn AND you need to be doing resistance training to prevent muscle loss.

It's really very simple conceptually.  Yet difficult to do.

Read original blog post