Gaining strength & weight during fasting

[Reversed]

Rip,

The fasting month is coming up for Muslims in a couple of weeks and it is unfortunate that I just started on the program last week. I'm motivated to keep going but I'm afraid the fasting month might affect my gains.

I plan to train about 1-2 hours right before I break fast. Is it still possible to progress in the lifts and gain weight during this month?

Thanks.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It would be more productive to stop being a Muslim, at least for this month. You're not afraid of going to Hell, are you?

[TTT]

Actually RIP, it's the 1 month where they have to do something..

so he should just stop training for 1 month, and focus on the other 11.

To the OP, people struggle with recovery when they eat a regular person diet and doing this lifting, what do you think is going to happen when you don't eat from sunrise to sunset.

If you want to keep your belief, then stop training for a month.

It's not that long.

[Brad Davis]

You get to eat for a substantial chunk of the evening, right? Just eat two huge meals, one at 8 pm and one at 11 pm or whatever. Sounds about like Intermittent Fasting to me. Might not be optimal, but I bet it'd be OK.

[zephed56]

It is my understanding they can eat during a small window of time, is this correct? I think he should just go to town on as much food as possible during this window. Do your workout a couple hours after breakfast/first meal since this will give you some immediate energy to lift.

I know I could certainly gain weight eating once or twice a day.

[TrackJunkie]

Have you considered reversing your sleeping schedule? Sleep as much as possible during the required fasting hours so that you can be awake when it's okay to eat, and just pig out.

Maybe fix a bunch of meals during the day, and set alarms for yourself so that you wake up and feast a few times in the middle of the night?

[TTT]

it's between sunset and sunrise where you get to eat.
once you've eaten your pre-sunrise meal, you say your prayer etc, then that is it.
no food, no liquids until sunset.
then you feast etc.

[Reversed]

Yes my feeding window is after sundown and before sunrise.

I've heard people actually gain weight during fasting because of big feasts. I guess I could give this a try, eating as much as possible when I can as well as reversing my sleeping time.

If after about a week it ends up being counterproductive, then I'll just stop training for the month.. I'm rather pious so skipping the fasting month seems rather unlikely for me.

Thanks all. Will start a log to see where it goes.

[Dastardly]

If you only started training last week your body is really going to be craving food & sleep when you train. You will really burn yourself out and get a poor experience of starting strength if you try to do it while fasting. Possibly so much so, that you will get put off training altogether. Its a lot to expect your body to be able to do all of a sudden.

That mehdi guy with the stronglifts website wrote an article about how to train through Ramadan. Gives some decent example of how to schedule your training and eating.


I personally would not embark on trying to do a full programme involving squats, deadlifts & bench press now. Maybe if you had been training for a few months already, you would have worked up the right tolerances and have the right mental fortitude to work through it. But I think doing something a lot more abbreviated would be better.

[Gunnhild Bruno]

Isn't the fasting only between sunrise and sunset? Can you get up early, eat and train in the wee hours? Not ideal to follow that with a whole day of fasting, but I'm sure you won't spontaneously combust or wake up a withered husk the next day or anything like that.