If you’ve made your way to TrainingBeta, then chances are you’re looking to improve your climbing performance. As climbers, we can be pretty maniacal in our pursuit of higher and higher grades. For many of us, manipulating our diet in an effort to either lose weight or improve athletic performance is standard. Intermittent fasting is something climbers are experimenting with towards these ends.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with trying to optimize your diet as long as you do so in a healthy way. However, much like rewriting your training plan every time you see new exercises, following every new dietary trend isn’t going to help in the long run. Changes need to made deliberately and tested over time. Additionally, decisions need to be made based on quality information.

To help arm you with quality information to make your dietary decisions, here’s an article by Brian Rigby of Climbing Nutrition all about intermittent fasting and it’s value for climbers.

“People use intermittent fasting for a number of different reasons, but these reasons can generally be summarized to weight loss, health, and performance. There are also people who just happen to follow a dietary pattern very similar to intermittent fasting, but for no reason apart from that’s how they typically eat; we’re not really talking about them, they just do exist.”

“As with any popular diet, there’s a lot to unpack about intermittent fasting, and that’s where we’ll begin this article: the science and pseudoscience surrounding it.” – Brian Rigby

Intermittent Fasting

As with all his articles, Rigby attempts to take an objective look at intermittent fasting. To do so, he looks at:

• The science and pseudoscience behind fasting intermittently
• Does it help you lose weight?
• Is it good for performance?
• How fasting intermittently affects protein kinetics
• Should climbers fast intermittently?

Click through below to read Rigby’s full article and get the answers to all these questions. As we said above, there’s nothing wrong with trying to optimize your diet for climbing performance as long as you’re doing so in a healthy way. Taking the time to make sure you’re making informed decisions is a good first step.

Full Article: Climbing Nutrition – Intermittent Fasting

(photo courtesy of climbingnutrition.com)

Other Articles You Might Like:

• Climbing Nutrition: The Rules of Losing Weight
• Climbing Nutrition: Food and Diet Attitudes
• Rock Climbing Nutrition: Performance Day Guidelines
• Rock Climbing Nutrition: Rest Day Guidelines