Timing — pre-bed vs AM fasted vs pre-workout

Pre-workout is mechanistically suspect because intra-workout glucose/insulin is about to spike anyway from sympathetic drive and any pre-workout carbs. If you're training fasted and pinning 45 min before, it works. If you have anything caloric in the pre-workout window, the pulse is blunted.

The dose you want protected is pre-bed. The other two matter less than people think. Do whatever is logistically easy — AM fasted and midafternoon tend to be easier to keep fasted than pre-workout windows for most people.

I do AM fasted + pre-bed only, 2x/day. The third dose is marginal for me. Feels equivalent to 3x for subjective effect. Cost/convenience win.

Sounds like consensus is: AM fasted + midafternoon fasted + pre-bed is the default. Pre-workout only if genuinely fasted. And 2x/day may be enough for most.

The frequency question is genuinely under-studied in humans. Rodent data suggests 2x vs 3x is small delta on IGF. Stick with what's sustainable.

Yeah but nobody here actually has baseline bloods from a controlled swap. Like did you run AM fasted for 8 weeks, then switch to pre-workout timing for 8 weeks on the same dose, same training, same diet, and get IGF-1 drawn both times? Thought so. Everyone's just running one protocol and assuming it's optimal. The stackbuilder glucose/insulin thing makes mechanistic sense but I'd want to see actual serum data before I'm convinced pre-workout is meaningfully worse if you keep it fasted. At this point it's probably 80% logistics and 20% actual timing.