First I would like to greet you all for this Holy month, and wish all of you a blessed Ramadan. Ramadan is sacred month for all Muslims, it’s a month where we get closer to God, abandon body pleasures and show our devotion to God. Fasting helps to show our humility and prevent us from sinning, it teach us patience and self control, remind us of the less fortunate in the world, the silence pain our hungry brother and sisters endure, most important that fasting purify our body and soul and harmonize us inside out, getting as closer to our creator.

I thought it’s a good chance to write an article about Bodybuilding and fasting, being a trainer and bodybuilder myself, I found that most people don’t know how to use the best of this month, and they get opposite results, the thin become thinner and the fat become fatter!

While you can still benefit and improve yourself during this Holy month by doing it right. I will try to give some guidance and tips to follow for both bodybuilder and normal people.

Food intake is one of the most important parts in bodybuilding, and fasting requires abstaining from both food and drinks, so obviously this month is a challenge for any bodybuilder, and many suffer to in maintain their size and strength.
Before I start with how to deal with fasting, let’s check some the health benefits of fasting in general:

• Reduced risk of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, immune disorders, and insulin resistance.
• Slows down the aging process and increase lifespan.
• Improvement in the blood lipid profile, cholesterol level.
• Reduce stress.
• Reduce morbidity.
• Improve weight loss.
• Detoxify the body.

Yes before you put a big smile on your face, and say ahh fasting is great for our body, let me whipe it off, as bodybuilders, fasting is not that good, let’s check the disadvantages of fasting:

• It makes you very very hungry.
• Makes you dumb, low concentration, and cranky mood.
• Slows down your metabolism.
• May burned our hard earned muscles
• May cause dehydration
• Got some negative effect on some internal organ.
• Loss of strength and gives general laziness feeling.

If you look at pro bodybuilders, you will see they eat a meal or protein shake every 2-3 hours, some of them even set the alarm so they wake in the middle of the night and have a meal or protein shake, why do they do that? Because they know that muscles need constant flow of amino acids and other calories to maintain and grow.
In Ramadan this is too hard, and impossible to do, you will be lucky if you finish it without while maintaining your muscles and strength, improvement are kind of hard, but not impossible of course.
Let’s see what modification we should do for each, training, Nutrition, supplement, steroids, and rest, in order to get the best out of this month.

Training:
Training during the fasting is not recommended at all, especially vigorous training, it may cause dehydration, and of course fatigue and maybe be injuries if you try to keep up the same level of training. You can still train during fasting, but make it very low intensity (such as walking) and in good weather conditions. this might help a little with fat loss, since you blood sugar is very low during fasting which switch the body into taking the energy from fat and stored glycogen ( liver and muscles ), at the breaking time you can refuel these sources and take good amount of protein to prevent muscles loss.

However the best time for workouts are after the breaking, 2-3 hours after the breaking would be ideal, do not push yourself too much though, and try making new record or go too hard on your body, just maintain your level, and maybe adding some 20-30 of low cardio training after wise is good for the people that eat a lot during the breaking, you don’t want to lose muscles but at the same time you don’t want to gain fat.

Another idea is to give your body a rest during this month and do every other day training, you will still maintain your level, you will give more time for recovery and you will give your body a rest from all year training, joints, tendon, ligaments and muscles need a rest from all year training.

Nutrition
Nutrition is the most important thing, you would still want to make sure you getting enough protein to support your muscles, even though it’s a shorter period of times from dusk till dawn, but you should try as much as possible to take at least 2 grams of protein per kg, and you should be careful about too much extra calories from fat and sugar, fasting slows the metabolism down, so the body tries to save calories in a higher rate after breaking, that why many people gain weight during Ramadan, with all the food, qatayef and other deserts.

Let’s take a look on the amount of calories in Qatayef:
Fried cheese qatayef 380
Grilled cheese qatayef 250
Fried nuts Qatayef 350
Grilled nuts Qatayef 250
Fried cream qatayef 550
Small qatayef with cream (asafeer) 220

Now if you look at the numbers of calories in qatayef, it kind of scary, a normal person would need about 2000 calories, so eating two pieces of Qatayef is half of the amount need, and we know that sometimes we Bing with qatayef, how many of you actually stopped at number two!!
remember with all the sugar it has it also raise insulin level, making it much easier to store fat in the body, so try to minimize this deserts and have roasted low fat creams/cheese ones.

Post workout and sahoor meal are the most important meals in Ramadan, post workout should consist of a high protein and high carbs meal, to replenish glycogen in the muscles and liver, and fill the muscles with amino acids needed for growth and maintenance. While sahoor meal should contain a low digestive source of carbs (rice, oatmeal, baked potato) and high protein (preferably slow digestive as well such as casein, fish ) with some fibers and healthy fat (peanut butter), the goal is to keep nutrition flow in your body as long as possible.
Drinking a lot of water during non fasting time is very important as well, especially in hot weathers, the body gets dehydrated during the fasting and you will be needing lots of water to compensate, make sure to drink 2-3 liters of water daily.

Supplement:
Supplement can go a long way in helping you cope with Ramadan, since there is a shorter time to get all the nutrition in (dusk-dawn), you can rely on protein and meal replacement powders to help you with that, another thing I advice is taking a during workout drink, mix some BCAA powder/ Glutamine/ creatine with simple carbohydrate as dextrose, this drink won’t require digestion, and will help replenish your muscles with glycogen and amino acids, while creatine will also help retain more water to support hydration.

Casein protein has a Golden use in Ramadan, nothing can beat it as a source of protein in sahoor, its lasts a long time in the body and can help support the muscles, 30-50 grams of casein + 10 gram of glutamine during the sahoor would be ideal.
Glutamine of course known for its ability to save the muscles during hard time so must be added pre, during and post workout in small amounts (3-5gram).

One should also take a good mutli vitamin and increase the vitamin C, its very useful as will, it lowers cortisol, support muscles and recovery and many other benefits, so 1000-3000mg daily on divided dosages should be good.

Steroids and chemicals:
Now it’s very wise to lay off steroids during the month of Ramadan, fasting itself is a good way of detoxifying the body, so taking the month rest will help your body clear everything out.
However if you still want to use steroids as a measure to maintaining and promoting the muscles, it also can be good, especially for high level bodybuilders, or near competitions ones who can’t take the risk of losing any of the hard gained muscles.
I would still recommend a low dosage of steroids with concentrating on the anabolic ones, rather than androgenic, androgenic may not be a good choice during fasting, since you already feeling cranky with low sugar and with some temper, not a good combination.
Best choice for steroids would be Anavar, Primobolan with some testosterone.

A better choice would be taking some Growth hormone, a dose as low as 3 iu daily, can help you keep maintain the muscles and prevent from gaining fat, the ideal time is still hard since its best to take it when your insulin level are low, during the non fasting time it hard to be in this status, I suggest a post workout time would be the best for this.

For people who are worried about fat gain during Ramadan, clenbutrol would be the best choice to use, even though the side effect coupled would fasting effect may be too much for you to handle, it’s still a good way to boost your metabolism and helps with workouts as well, help prevent hunger with some appetite suppression, and it even have positive effect on the mood, check clenbuterol profile for its usage.

Rest:
well the best thing you can do to avoid muscles loss during the fasting period is to limit your activity, just be as lazy as you can be, I know it’s hard since most of us got lives, work and stuff, but as much as you can, be lazy as much as you can.
For people worried about fat gain, you can still can do normal activity, and some low intensity training like I mentioned earlier.but overall, best advice in Ramadan fasting time, be Lazy, your body is already being lazy, just follow it.
Don’t forget about sleeping, it’s one of the best things you can do, make sure you sleep at least 8 hours, an afternoon naps are always a good thing.

Now Ramadan is great for health in overall, as our prophet said "somo tas7o", however it may interfere in our goals as bodybuilders if we don’t know how deal with it, if we deal with it right, we can still have the benefits of this holy month on our spirit and body, hope you benefited from this article.
Wish all of you Ramadan Mubarak and accepted fasting.

Shady Eid is a certified Personal Trainer, writer and competitive bodybuilder based in UAE, for questions and comments you can contact him at: Shady@arabianmuscles.com