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^This is a great jumping off point:
I understand people do this because it’s the most time efficient/fastest way to start for any schedule & it works for them, but from a performance perspective this is inferior. It’s mainly good for maximal fat liberation if in a deficit, but even then it’s suboptimal for retaining muscle unless the workout is really quite brief - it’s mainly for overall weightloss.
Now obviously, not digesting anything and having a lump of uselessness in your gut bogging you down is also not optimal, so carb timing and exact fuel sources need to be based on the lifter to allow stable and ready blood sugar.
Something I learned from Mike Mastell’s writing is the idea that you want to be loaded up from the previous day/night’s food, and a heavy breakfast if later in the day, then using super fast carbs that bypass gut digestion to dictate blood sugar levels. This would be done with cyclic dextrin, glucose tabs, and/or honey. Everything else has to move through the gut, so whatever you can get down prior/intra needs to be useable for you.
So a bagel is great, but if Wes walks downstairs immediately after then any peanut butter will almost guarantee a big loss in available energy because pb slows the digestion and as soon as training begins gut motility will also greatly diminish. Needs to stick with jam, a fake butter spray, something fat-free or just naked. But If he is going to train 45 min after eating the bagel, he needs the tbsp of pb or the bagel will already be burning up by the time he’s down with warmup. Fat sources besides nut butters don’t really slow things down the same and mainly just add calories.
My wife usually doesn’t even finish her Belvita cookies, and mainly relies on a scoop of Karbolyn and some EAAs with salt intra. You just need enough in you to keep blood sugar up & muscles hydrated. You don’t want to rely on fat reserves if you care about optimal performance.
