JJ Virgin recommends fasted morning workouts after a 12-14 hour fast to deplete glycogen and trigger autophagy. After training, she has a protein shake with 30-40g protein plus carbs like banana or berries to refuel. Morning workouts are easier to stick to, even if it's just short HIIT.
12–14 hours.
About 30–40 grams of protein.
Should I work out fasted or not? So my very favorite thing to do is get up in the morning, meditate, have some coffee and then go work out. I like working out after a 12 to 14 hour fast where I've really started to deplete my glycogen stores in my muscles. I've triggered a lot of autophagy, then my MTOR is low, then I work out and then I go and have a protein first shake. So I get generally 30, 40 grams of protein in and a little bit of carbs so that I've got both the protein and carbs to help refuel my muscle stores of glycogen and help with protein muscle synthesis. So that's my favorite thing to do. If you can pull it off, which means you're probably going to be working out in the morning and guess what, when you work out in the morning, you're less likely to blow it off in the afternoon, right? So get in in the morning if you can and work out fasted if you can still get in a hard workout. And honestly, even if you can't do a big old workout in the morning, if you can just even get in a little bit of high intensity interval training, get something in fasted and then have your lotus smoothie with good clean protein from my all in one shake and a little bit of, say, a little bit of a slightly green banana or some berries and some unsweetened nut milk to really help with that refueling of your muscle stores of energy and rebuilding and building your muscles. There you go.
