In response to Jacinda’s question about the health benefits, (and potential negative effects of post-poning the post-workout meal), I would direct you to this great article on Mark’s Daily Apple. Honestly, I am just running my own personal experiments with IF as PART OF MY USUAL CALORIE & CARB CYCLING protocol to cut body fat for competition. After living with my training and coaching partner Jean-Jacques for the last couple of years, I noticed that he often didn’t eat after his workouts, and would often skip his meals depending on how busy he was at the gym. When he did this, he would always come home and eat a huge meal before bed-time, and to no ill-effect, and certainly no muscle loss. On www.leangains.com you can also find a lot of anecdotal evidence in support of IF for maintaining muscle mass and getting lean. Certainly we know from well-documented research that a rise in insulin will blunt the pituitary’s release of growth hormone, but insulin is also needed to start driving the body into protein synthesis…so what should a body-builder do??? Well, so far, I have not lost any lean muscle mass, but I have yet to implement a complete post-workout fast. I usually take a bit of protein, (10 – 30 grams) immediately post workout, along with BCAAs, Now that I’ve reread the research about growth hormone and fasting: http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/50/1/96.abstract I would cautiously say that some people could do quite well without the immediate post-workout meal. It is going to depend, as always, on the individual. Some people simply have a tremendously difficult time putting on muscle, even with a great training program and nutrition, while other people can look at a dumbbell and grow biceps! If you are a hard gainer, you might want to err on the side of eating post workout, but you can probably keep the carbs much lower than many muscle mags would have you believe. Remember, protein also has in insulinogenic effect on the body, and post-workout your muscle cells are primed to shunt nutrients and water back in. Hope that helps!!
