Plan on conquering Athens? Eat a banana first!

I believe it was the ancient Spartans who first asked the question, "Should we have a small snack before we conquer Aigitida? Or is it best to pillage on an empty stomach? After all, while we want to be at our blood-thirsty best, we also wish to continue shedding fat, as to accentuate our glorious, hard-earned abs." Now, finally, science seems to have answered this ancient quandary. A study out of the University of Birmingham shows that it's a question of what your goals are. From the Associated Press:

In a study published in April, researchers at the University of Birmingham and elsewhere assigned seven people to cycle three days a week, followed by an intense session an hour later without eating. Another seven people followed the same regime, without the instruction to fast.

Though members of the group that didn't eat performed worse on the intensive training, they burned a higher proportion of fat to carbohydrates than the group that ate. The results were published by Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

So, you wanna burn fat, skip the meal. You wanna kick ass, power-up. The AP article goes on to explain how to capitalize on this trick:

"Science is finally catching up with what smart runners have always known," said Ron Maughan, a professor of sport, exercise and health sciences at Loughborough University in Britain. "If you have a long, hard run without breakfast once a week, that hard run will train you to burn fat," he said. "And for the rest of the week, have plenty of carbohydrates so you can train hard."

Maughan cautioned against doing too much exercise on an empty stomach. "That might help you get very good at burning fat, but you won't be very good at whatever exercise it is you're doing," he said. "Without enough fuel, you won't get the intensity of training you need to get improvements."

With that in mind, if you're eating right, your body should be good for about an hour on glycogen stores before you run out of gas. Any longer than that and you probably need to fuel up with a sugar hit - sometimes like a banana - beforehand.

Of course, the Spartans didn't have bananas. Instead, they dined on figs, barley, wine, cheese and broth. Nothing in there I'd call energy food, unless by "energy," you mean "flatulence," which is technically a form of energy. Yet, with nary an NO supplement or caffeine drink in sight, they managed to be the dominant military land power in ancient Greece for over 275 years, so maybe we all need to spend a little less time worrying about what to eat when and just devote that energy to working hard.

That, and we should all get big, Spartan shields. That won't help our workouts, but we'd look cool.