Should Action Sport Enthusiasts Intermittent Fast?

Intermittent fasting has been gaining popularity in recent years as a way to lose weight, improve health, and boost athletic performance. But, is it suitable for action sport enthusiasts? Let's find out...

First, what is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting is a type of dieting that involves alternating periods of eating with periods of fasting, typically ranging from 12 hours to a few weeks [1]. The most popular form of intermittent fasting is 16/8, where you fast for 16 hours and eat within an 8-hour window.

Now, let's consider the benefits of intermittent fasting for action sport enthusiasts.

Are there legit health benefits?

Many health-benefits of IF have been proposed including age-related disease risk reduction and lose body fat.

However, strong human evidence is lacking, and existing findings don’t support these benefits independent to regular Calorie intake restriction [2,3]. So in short, any proposed benefits of IF, are speculative at best. 

The narrative of 'gut cleansing' also has absolutely no supporting research. Your digestive organs are more than capable of looking after themselves and fasting to 'reset' or 'cleanse' your gut will practically do nothing (apart from make you tired, fatigued, moody and hangry AF).

What about weight loss?

For weight loss (if that's something you’re interested in). We need to remember that if and when fasting works, it just links back to controlling Calorie intake, which is an outcome not exclusive to fasting diets. 

For some people, fasting can work, however at the end of the day - you simply just need to eat less calories than you burn. For most action sport enthusiasts however, losing fat isn't a primary goal due to expending so much energy in our respective sports.

Can it improve performance?

In high intensity sports, evidence currently suggested a neutral effect or a negative effect [4,5]. So basically IF, will either make no difference to performance or make performance worse… not better. 

And it makes sense for 2 main reasons… 

• A skewed daily protein intake (not spacing protein evenly across the day) may result in sub-par muscle strength and recovery even if total protein consumed is adequate. 
• Avoiding carbohydrates around exercise may result in poor fuelling and refuelling.

So if you regularly hit the slopes, the park or the surf (or any regular mode of exercise), fasting is most likely going to do more harm than good. 

What's the verdict?

Honestly, if you still hit all your daily nutrition requirements the impact of IF is likely very small, or not even worth worrying about for most people. However, if you’re only “allowed” to eat at certain times of the day, or you’re taking full days off eating, achieving the above is either not possible, or very difficult practically. 

So considering the impact of IF is nil or worse… Unless you really want to try IF for preference reasons, don’t bother. 

Post: Mackenzie Baker

References

[1] PMID: 27737674

2] PMID: 35220894

[3] PMID: 31023390

[4] PMID: 30431398

[5]  PMID: 25970668