8 ms·

Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

arkadiyt 4y ago
> Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity I believe them that this is correct but does anyone know why? I thought all the "intermittent fasting" folks were losing weight?
- defaultname 4y ago
  They are saying that a "modern lifestyle" may lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. They are not saying that meal skipping leads to that, but rather it's a reaction to it.
- sgc 4y ago
  Anecdotally only, I know I come home absolutely ready to murder a steak and a beer etc if I skip lunch. I think it's because you really need to use your mind and not your sentiment of fullness to check yourself afterwards, it just takes a while to register you are full but you are in hungry-eating mode.
- jasonhansel 4y ago
  I think they're talking, less about intermittent fasting as an intentional diet, and more about people who just "don't have time" to eat breakfast and skip it habitually. They say the diets were "isocaloric."
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  I don't believe them that this is correct - almost all the studies I've seen point to the opposite. Here's a review of related RCTs that comes to the opposite conclusion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8469355/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8469355/
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I’m not sure that’s the case from your linked meta-study. As usual the summary hides the nuance and issues in the individual studies. I went though a bunch of them, and to give my own summary lacking nuance: not convinced. Looking at the linked studies that went for more than a week, we have this one for instance that appears to show good results for IF: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6682944/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6682944/ Except it’s a trial on 10 people in an already severly pathological situation. That might apply to some of us, but it’s far from a generic study. Or this one, which reports memory issues from IF (an also only targeted subjects with obesity) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7146388 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7146388 Or this one, which showed improvement through the trial, but with no significant distinction between the two method tested, which could mean the effect could be from the observation of the subjects themselves: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29778565 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29778565 Most of the study were interesting, but no brazing praise of IF really.
- jat850 4y ago
  Only by way of anecdotal experience, but if I skip a meal (or worse, two) I tend towards massive overindulgence at a later meal, and I don't have an innate sense for calorie intake estimation. So I will often end up eating far more calories at the later meal than I might have skipped in the earlier one. Not at all scientific, just 2 cents.
  - paulpauper 4y ago
    Same here. I find it too easy to overeat at night, during dinner and after.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      This is common with people struggling with Obesity, often it is due to dehydration as people eat a lot of salt with their dinner and then stop drinking water so they do not have to urinate at night, the result is signals of hunger late in the evening In my Experience, the best combo is One should stop eating by 6pm, and have 8-10oz of plain water between 6pm and 8pm... //not a health expert, but my own experience this is not medical or nutrition advice...
  - jonahbenton 4y ago
    Yeah, I have observed this in my personal noom data. Super interesting. Couple of caveats/exceptions for me- there is a level of diminished calorie intake on a given meal that does not trigger huge compensation on an immediate later meal, around 100 calories or so (for me). I can compensate a little bit but I don't feel unsatisfy-able, like I do when I skip, which leads to overcompensation. Also, one event of skipped dinner and winding up at, like, 1500 calories for the day can result in normal eating the next day for me if I drink an extra heavy amount of water. But I have to be conscious about it. In general for me skipping and intermittent fasting is extremely unpleasant and ineffective. Eating 400-500 calories every 3-4 hours- 1800-1900 in all- is far more scalable and enjoyable to maintain or lose a little. I do believe that extended fasts can be good (for me) but I can't do them and participate in any activities, whether family or work or whatever. An extended fast would need to be a solo week vacation.
  - 4y ago
- pitched 4y ago
  > Compared with 3 meals/d, meal skipping increased energy expenditure. In contrast, higher postprandial insulin concentrations and increased fat oxidation with breakfast skipping suggest the development of metabolic inflexibility in response to prolonged fasting that may in the long term lead to low-grade inflammation and impaired glucose homeostasis. So, it sounds like short-term fasting is a good way to stress the system. Long-term stress might lead to bad outcomes though?
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    I believe one of the benefits is that, compared to the typical 3-means-plus-17-snacks diet, it actually gives the body some time to destress from constantly eating and digesting. Kind of like working out is good, but only if you give the body enough time to overcompensate between workouts. E.g. if you snack on sugary stuff every few hours, your body will quite literally never get blood glucose under control except during your sleep, which is basically the definition of Type 2 diabetes.
- mistersquid 4y ago
  > > Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity > I believe them that this is correct but does anyone know why? This would have been better written as "Because the modern lifestyle may lead to obesity, meal skipping has become increasingly popular".
- paulpauper 4y ago
  This is the problem with all weight loss and dieting studies and anecdotal evidence. Nothing is ever fixed or set in stone. Some people lose weight with lots of small meals. Some lose weight with one big meal. Some find low carb works, others eat carbs and lose weight. Human metabolism and body weight regulation is very complicated and doesn't readily yield to simple rules or heuristics (beyond CICO).
  - sethammons 4y ago
    Even CICO is not straight forward. It is a dynamic system. Eating more can cause increased metabolism and easting less can slow the metabolism.
    - doc_gunthrop 4y ago
      It's not that complicated. Eating more leads to greater body mass, which requires higher caloric intake to sustain. Eating less leads to the opposite. If you gain 20 pounds, then you need to eat more relative to your previous weight in order to maintain your current weight (including that extra 20 pounds). If you lose 20 pounds, you have to eat less to maintain that new weight.
      - sethammons 4y ago
        I've lost weight eating more while maintaining the same exercise routine. You can try to feel better with any "well actually" you can muster. I increased the same kind of food I always eat and lost weight.
        doc_gunthrop 4y ago
        Sounds like a miracle. Good for you
        amalgamated_inc 4y ago
        Not a miracle - there are actually lots of anecdotes like this. Typically from people who aren't currently or never have been fat. Turns out if your fat regulation works fine, eating more doesn't necessarily cause fat gain, especially if you're lifting or otherwise stimulating muscle growth.
- MrZander 4y ago
  My best guest, and this is pure speculation, is that skipping a meal makes people believe that they can eat whatever they want for the other meal(s) of the day. As such, they eat awful food and never develop good eating habits. I did OMAD (one meal a day) for a while and when I was researching it, many places encouraged this behavior. The idea being that if you skip 2 meals, even if you eat like garbage for your one meal, you won't be able to eat as many calories. This worked for me, I ate whatever I wanted for dinner and I lost ~20lbs in a month, but my cholesterol levels increased so I put a stop to it. Then, I put the weight right back on because, well, I never actually changed my eating habits -- only the frequency.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  Intermittent fasting and "meal skipping" can be different, as Intermittent fasting does actually require more than just skipping a meal. It is a process for caloric reduction, if you skip 3 eggs in the morning, but then eat 6 eggs plus a sandwich at lunch you are not going to lose weight. Normally while doing Intermittent fasting, you need to fast for 16 hours or more (not the 8-12 that meal skippers normally get) and often Intermittent fasters will do a single sensible meal and then snack with low carb snacks during the rest of the eating period.
  - vinni2 4y ago
    One can easily get 16 hours by skipping breakfast. I eat dinner at 7pm and skip breakfast and eat lunch at 12 pm. That gives me 17 hours fasting. I guess skipping lunch doesn’t give you same gap.
- smcl 4y ago
  I can't give you any good reason why this happens with "intermittent fasting" in particular, but I can tell you that it follows a similar pattern to every other fad diet. Almost everyone who follows them starts controlling what they eat, focussing on losing weight and they generally succeed in doing so for the first ~6 weeks. Then for whatever reason, a small number continue to lose weight and the remainder (the majority) plateau and inevitably fall off and give up. There are those who these diets work for, and some of those near religiously insist that it's simple and it should work for everyone and that if it isn't working then that's probably down to some personal failing. But the truth is that this is a pattern and it's not specific to any given diet, and it's not necessarily down to someone doing something wrong. For all that we think we know about diets, fat and weight - we haven't quite cracked weight loss and it's certainly not as simple as measuring calories in/out.
  - haskellandchill 4y ago
    as far as cracking it I heard there's a drug now that pretty much solves obesity but insurance isn't covering it well. Wegovy maybe? Or Mounjaro? Maybe both: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04505-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04505-7
    - smcl 4y ago
      Yeah so that would be a little odd. There’s been a lot of talk about how most spending in healthcare is down to “obesity” and a lot of scaremongering about how that is growing. So you’d think if they had a solution to that, it’d be getting a lot of support. It sorta suggests that obesity isn’t one of the main costs in the US for healthcare (I suspect it isn’t) and that there isn’t a pill that will ”fix” obesity (I suspect there isn’t)
- doc_gunthrop 4y ago
  Based on my own personal experience (and, to a lesser degree, some other sources I've read online), intermittent fasting (IF) leads to the opposite of obesity. With a smaller eating window (e.g. less than or equal to 8 hours in a day), there is a greater likelihood that less food will be consumed. This relies on CICO (ie. calorie consumption being less than TDEE). I read the linked abstract but there was no mention of number of calories consumed by the test subjects; I estimate that this would be the most critical factor with regard to weight loss. As far as the claimed likelihood for type 2 diabetes, it seems to run counter to everything I've read about IF. When a person restricts their eating to a smaller window of time, their body's insulin resistance decreases, thereby lowering the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  For me, not for health. I work from home, we home school kiddo. That means they're not up and around until 11am or noon. For me, I fall out of bed and jump on Zoom meetings, because I'm in a different time zone from most of my team. I don't get clear of meetings until around noon, when I can eat. My family's late schedule keeps me up late, hence falling out of bed and into Zoom. Probably not the healthiest, and definitely not "intermittent fasting" with deliberation.
somid3 4y ago
Is the basic conclusion to skip dinner, and not skip breakfast?
- kryz 4y ago
  Yes. Lots of other good research out there that suggests Dinner skipping > Breakfast skipping
  - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
    Is it because you have more awake time after to burn the same calories?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Jensson 4y ago
      The study seems to suggest it goes the other way: when you are awake your body needs to burn calories so being awake on an empty stomach will stress your body. Note that the participants weren't overweight, if you are an average American this might not apply to you.
- jakeinspace 4y ago
  I would need to see some pretty incredible benefits to give up dinner over breakfast, that sounds miserable. I suppose if you’re someone who gets up at 5 and sleeps at 9 or 10 every night, then skipping dinner might be easier.
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    +1 Also take into account your circadian rhythm. Humans have a variability of ~4h in our internal clocks, so when they eat lunch that might be breakfast for me. If I eat dinner at 7pm and stay up until 2am (pretty normal for me), is that fine? Or did they toss me in with somebody who wakes up at 6am and goes to bed at 10pm, and thus only had maybe 2 hours between dinner and bed time?
bckr 4y ago
> Background: Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. That is not what I was expecting this to be about. Now I'm thinking, how does this relate to the intermittent fasting trend? Are people meal skipping and calling it intermittent fasting? Or are the people who are meal skipping generally not interested in "wellness community" trends like IF?
- lebski88 4y ago
  It's just a clumsy sentence. They are trying to say that modern lifestyle leads to obesity, not fasting.
  - Brybry 4y ago
    > Eating in misalignment with the biological clock (e.g., skipping breakfast and consuming bigger meals in the evening or eating late at night) is associated with an increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes (1, 2). On the other hand, popular trends such as breakfast or dinner skipping are advertised for weight management; however, conclusive scientific evidence to support these suppositions is lacking (3) First sentences of the introduction. > In conclusion, a causal role of breakfast skipping for the development of obesity is not supported by the present data. Last sentence of the paper.
- Terretta 4y ago
  > Are people meal skipping and calling it intermittent fasting? Yes, including when they snack all the time.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Yea, there are people calling "meal skipping" intermittent fasting. IF is pretty vaguely defined at best and all kinds of things fall under that label. E.g. Eat Stop Eat, where IIRC you eat normally every other day, and then you eat only 500kcal or so on the alternate days. So that might be done by skipping a meal every other day. Other people do a daily fasting/feeding window, e.g. 16/8 up to 23/1. The latter basically means you eat only 1 meal a day (unless you somehow manage to eat 2 "meals" within one hour) whereas 16/8 typically means skipping breakfast or dinner. Yet other schemes are 3 days eating/1 day fasting. Still an "intermittent fast." I think IF basically just means "any deviation from the standard 3 squares a day eating pattern."
Maursault 4y ago
There is little point in measuring the impact of skipping lunch. Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
- keepquestioning 4y ago
  True. There really should be two meals a day Breakfast and Dinner
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Terretta 4y ago
    You forgot Second Breakfast and Elevenses.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    any meal for which you break your fast is breakfast It is impossible for anyone to skip breakfast ;)
johnday 4y ago
n=17, so read nothing into this result. Also, what they tested is having no fixed eating schedule. The effects (if any) of skipping breakfast every day consistently are not measured.
- jasonhansel 4y ago
  I agree that we shouldn't read much into this. But I do suspect that, if an n=17 study came to the opposite conclusions, supporters of intermittent fasting would never stop citing it.
  - mrighele 4y ago
    I doubt so, since the study is not about intermittent fasting, but intermittent meal skipping at best :-). I think that skipping a meal every once in a while, and regularly skipping meals according to a specific pattern for one, two or ten years, are completely different activities with very different outcomes
- paulpauper 4y ago
  i don't get why some studies have so few partipants. How hard is it to recruit people for something like this? We're not talking rare diseases.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - subharmonicon 4y ago
    From what I have read in the past this is just how the funding tends to work. You write a grant proposal for a study with 20 people, get funding, get results, use that to get funding for another study with 200, then 2000, etc. Frequently they don’t manage to make it past the first couple levels because the results aren’t interesting.
    - 3pt14159 4y ago
xutopia 4y ago
This is such a small sample size it doesn't merit our time.
mariambarouma 4y ago
Great study! Amazing that so much of the fasting world aren't aware of the difference between breakfast Vs dinner skipping.
Invictus0 4y ago
Unpaywalled: https://sci-hub.se/10.3945/ajcn.116.151332 https://sci-hub.se/10.3945/ajcn.116.151332
simple10 4y ago
This is only n=17 and 7 days long. Not particularly useful. AFAIK it's pretty well accepted in the keto fasting world that prolonged skipping of meals can lead to insulin inflexibility. Meaning it's good to have a cheat day to prevent your body from becoming overly adapted to fasting.
citilife 4y ago
Should say (2017)
calr 4y ago
I have skipped breakfast since college when I was much more concerned about bulking up. I drink two coffees and that gets me through til lunch. I’ve never really considered alternatives to this routine. If I wanted to experiment with breakfasts what do people recommend eating? The priority would be energy levels, and mental clarity since I tend to work better in the morning.
- vasco 4y ago
  Boiled egg(s) and a banana are my go-tos when not skipping. Most days I skip.
- xoac 4y ago
  Eggs and some veggies.
- will5421 4y ago
  Banana on toast, or just a banana to begin with
  - calr 4y ago
    Will try this for sure. Love that bananas are portable by design.
- krona 4y ago
  I'm the same as you but I'll usually have half a banana or an apple.
- sonofhans 4y ago
  A good breakfast, in my experience and readings, is mostly fiber, with some fat, and a little naturally-occurring sugar. Peanut butter toast and a banana does that perfectly. Yogurt with honey and a banana. Bread, cheese, and an apple. A boiled egg and butter toast. Cold leftover pizza :) The fiber is most important, to provide some grist for your digestive system. The fat quenches some hunger and allows you to put off your next meal/snack with less discomfort. A little sugar provides some early energy.
- 4y ago
redgrange 4y ago
Any analysis on skipping lunch? People do that too. Lots I imagine
m3kw9 4y ago
Maybe meal skipper double up and is more undisciplined on their meals because they think skipping one gives them a free pass
TaupeRanger 4y ago
Disappointing design. The "skipped meal" days included just as much food as the 3-meal days, they just stuffed it into fewer meals. Of course this will lead to increased glucose...the people are gorging on extra food. The normal recommendation is to eat a snack, not a full meal, between lunch and dinner when skipping breakfast. You take in fewer calories, fewer carbohydrates, and gain the (not unfounded) benefits of fasting purported in dozens of other studies.
glofish 4y ago
Recruited 17 (most likely non-random) people each of whom skipped a SINGLE breakfast, then had 3 regular days, then skipped a SINGLE dinner ... Basic common sense indicates that it would be highly unlikely that anything of value could possibly be learned. The variability between people, meals, state of their lives, backgrounds, habits, behaviors, schedules, etc must be staggering. Scientists will never admit to this but about 95% of published research, just like the one above, are more like practice runs where they are honing the skills of doing the research. Right down to writing papers. There should be nothing wrong with practicing, alas since you can't get funded for practicing and training - everyone has to always be bullshitting each other how they are producing new insights.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Science is about testing over and over. This small study is just one step. Where did you get 95% from anyway? This limited study has more evidence for its conclusion than you do for making the statement "Scientists will never admit to this but about 95% of published research..."
  - ygmelnikova 4y ago
    [dead]
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  +100 Big Science in nutrition, diet, and exercise is a grift. If the researcher is not also a practitioner (e.g. body builder or losing lots of weight) you can usually ignore the results. Also ignore any studies involving mice, food questionnaires or other self-reporting, meta-analyses..
  - themitigating 4y ago
    "Big Science in nutrition, diet, and exercise is a grift" What's "Big Science"? You are also claiming it's all a scam? Every scientific study related to diet, nutrition, and exercise? "If the researcher is not also a practitioner (e.g. body builder or losing lots of weight) you can usually ignore the results." Why do they have to practice some fitness or nutritional art to study it? Wouldn't that make them more bias if they did? "Also ignore any studies involving mice, food questionnaires or other self-reporting, meta-analyses.." Why? Many times in the past people have stated that mice and other rodents aren't ideal subjects in studies that relate to humans but that doesn't appear to be the case https://www.livescience.com/32860-why-do-medical-researchers-use-mice.html https://www.livescience.com/32860-why-do-medical-researchers... And another article states 'Nobel-winning scientific achievements such as the discovery of vitamin K, the development of the polio vaccine, the invention of monoclonal antibody technology now used for cancer treatment, and the unravelling of how neurons talk with each other in the brain all would not have occurred without mice." https://www.blood.ca/en/research/our-research-stories/research-education-discovery/why-do-scientists-use-mice-medical https://www.blood.ca/en/research/our-research-stories/resear...
fwungy 4y ago
I pretty much just believe the opposite of what the government says at this point. Lol. The only people I know who have beaten obesity long term have done it with some combination of IF/keto/paleo. Everybody else backslides.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Even there, the success rate is only maybe 25%. But at least they have some successes to show :)
pcdoodle 4y ago
I like AvE’s take on skipping breakfast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u3c1362zoGg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u3c1362zoGg
zackmorris 4y ago
The best thing I did for my health the last year or two was taking a few weeks to form the habit of cooking a substantial breakfast every day. With no affiliation for the brands: * 2-3 eggs * an Impossible breakfast sausage (bacon is fine too but the ethics of it are hard for me) * a bowl of Nature's Path pumpkin seed granola with whole milk * a cup of OJ * 1-3 cups of coffee for ADD-like symptoms, depending on how compressed I am with work * multi vitamin, "stress" B-complex with ~100% RDA (instead of 5000%), omega-3 * zinc, low 1000s D3 for immunity a few times per week * something with an adaptogen like RESTOR cycled as needed, I hear that mushroom coffee substitutes like MUD\WTR are good too I also try to have a bowl of corn or rice cereal (wheat can be inflammatory) and Orgain veggie protein before bed. The main reason for this is that the body can't store protein for more than 4 hours before it starts going catabolic. So most athletic training generally improves with eating every 2.5-3 hours and never skipping meals. The above menu is admittedly ableist. Conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar are primarily genetic. Unfortunately western medicine has to look at averages and make assumptions like "patients never exercise". So it's good practice to generally disregard well-meaning advice and adapt diets and workout programs to your own physiology. I don't put any stock in intermittent fasting. It's always better to eat, even if the meal is a plain lettuce salad with little or no dressing other than an acid like vinegar diluted with water, maybe a dash of olive oil. -- not that anyone cares, but since it's Saturday: The best workout I have found so far is 2 working sets of 12 reps, starting with the bar and adding 40-50 pounds per warmup set, 1.5 hours every other day on a legs/chest/back/shoulders split each week. Always full range of motion, with light runner's stretch afterwards and corner or door stretches to open the chest. 5 minutes of cardio on the treadmill before workout and after stretching to warm up and flush lactic acid. Why 12 reps? Because the "giving 110%" is built-in and it stays around a rated perceived exertion (RPE) of around 8-9 for maximum muscle growth without overtraining. I spent years plateaued at 3 sets of 8-12 reps, and 5x5 works great but with a higher risk of injury. 3 reps hacks the nervous system so sets get easier as they get heavier, but injury goes up, so I reserve those for deadlifts under ultimate concentration. A set of 20 reps at 50-60% working weight once per week 2 days before a body part overdrives work capacity and all but guarantees a 12 rep success on the later date. And 1 rep heavy singles as a warmup 40-50 pounds heavier than the working set primes the nervous system for a 12 rep success as well. So an example intermediate bench press program might look like: BARx12/95x12/135x12/185x6(reserve)/225x1/185x12x2, adding about 10 pounds to the working set every other week until another warmup set is added. Warmup rep count above 135 is usually a pyramid down from 75% or less to the heavy single to reserve endurance, for any exercise. All priming the body to expect another 50 pound set, so 1 RM PRs don't feel like they take everything you've got to achieve anymore. They might even happen next week! This might not sound like much, but the above blueprint could have saved me a decade of plateauing, so I'm writing it out for past me. All you need is this: https://strengthlevel.com/one-rep-max-calculator https://strengthlevel.com/one-rep-max-calculator I squat/bench/deadlift, overhead press, row and pull up more weight now at 45 than in my 20s, having never used performance-enhancing drugs. And more importantly, the high reps rebuilt my connective tissue so I'm injury-free after hurting my lower back over 2 dozen times. I feel that it's not possible to change one's weight healthily without exercise. In fact, I would say that the main struggle with weight control is around overcoming the workout avoidance and giving oneself 90 days to experience what it's like to change the body. That's where my love of working out started. Once it clicks, there's just no way to eat enough food anymore. And each day in the gym is a day younger, like aging backwards.
perrygeo 4y ago
> Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity Citation needed. Virtually the entire planet has constant access to food, available 24/7/365, something that has never happened at any point in human history until very recently. Is there an actual statistically-significant trend of conscious meal skipping? In what population? Or are they just parroting something they heard on the internet? I can't access the article but I'd be very curious how they back this claim up. Humans evolved under conditions of highly variable food stocks. I guarantee our distant ancestors ate when food was plentiful, fasted when it was not (no choice), and were certainly not eating 3 square meals on a regular schedule. Not saying that our hunter-gatherer diet was ideal, but if we evolved under those conditions, our default assumption should be that our bodies can handle it. Even the language ("skipping a meal") assumes that 3 meals is the natural baseline. Seems like the burden of proof runs the other way. That, combined with the low sample size and the questionable research methodology, leads me to believe this is garbage science. Not worth reading.

> Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity I believe them that this is correct but does anyone know why? I thought all the "intermittent fasting" folks were losing weight?

defaultname 4y ago
They are saying that a "modern lifestyle" may lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. They are not saying that meal skipping leads to that, but rather it's a reaction to it.
sgc 4y ago
Anecdotally only, I know I come home absolutely ready to murder a steak and a beer etc if I skip lunch. I think it's because you really need to use your mind and not your sentiment of fullness to check yourself afterwards, it just takes a while to register you are full but you are in hungry-eating mode.
jasonhansel 4y ago
I think they're talking, less about intermittent fasting as an intentional diet, and more about people who just "don't have time" to eat breakfast and skip it habitually. They say the diets were "isocaloric."
idopmstuff 4y ago
I don't believe them that this is correct - almost all the studies I've seen point to the opposite. Here's a review of related RCTs that comes to the opposite conclusion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8469355/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8469355/
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I’m not sure that’s the case from your linked meta-study. As usual the summary hides the nuance and issues in the individual studies. I went though a bunch of them, and to give my own summary lacking nuance: not convinced. Looking at the linked studies that went for more than a week, we have this one for instance that appears to show good results for IF: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6682944/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6682944/ Except it’s a trial on 10 people in an already severly pathological situation. That might apply to some of us, but it’s far from a generic study. Or this one, which reports memory issues from IF (an also only targeted subjects with obesity) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7146388 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7146388 Or this one, which showed improvement through the trial, but with no significant distinction between the two method tested, which could mean the effect could be from the observation of the subjects themselves: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29778565 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29778565 Most of the study were interesting, but no brazing praise of IF really.
jat850 4y ago
Only by way of anecdotal experience, but if I skip a meal (or worse, two) I tend towards massive overindulgence at a later meal, and I don't have an innate sense for calorie intake estimation. So I will often end up eating far more calories at the later meal than I might have skipped in the earlier one. Not at all scientific, just 2 cents.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  Same here. I find it too easy to overeat at night, during dinner and after.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    This is common with people struggling with Obesity, often it is due to dehydration as people eat a lot of salt with their dinner and then stop drinking water so they do not have to urinate at night, the result is signals of hunger late in the evening In my Experience, the best combo is One should stop eating by 6pm, and have 8-10oz of plain water between 6pm and 8pm... //not a health expert, but my own experience this is not medical or nutrition advice...
- jonahbenton 4y ago
  Yeah, I have observed this in my personal noom data. Super interesting. Couple of caveats/exceptions for me- there is a level of diminished calorie intake on a given meal that does not trigger huge compensation on an immediate later meal, around 100 calories or so (for me). I can compensate a little bit but I don't feel unsatisfy-able, like I do when I skip, which leads to overcompensation. Also, one event of skipped dinner and winding up at, like, 1500 calories for the day can result in normal eating the next day for me if I drink an extra heavy amount of water. But I have to be conscious about it. In general for me skipping and intermittent fasting is extremely unpleasant and ineffective. Eating 400-500 calories every 3-4 hours- 1800-1900 in all- is far more scalable and enjoyable to maintain or lose a little. I do believe that extended fasts can be good (for me) but I can't do them and participate in any activities, whether family or work or whatever. An extended fast would need to be a solo week vacation.
- 4y ago
pitched 4y ago
> Compared with 3 meals/d, meal skipping increased energy expenditure. In contrast, higher postprandial insulin concentrations and increased fat oxidation with breakfast skipping suggest the development of metabolic inflexibility in response to prolonged fasting that may in the long term lead to low-grade inflammation and impaired glucose homeostasis. So, it sounds like short-term fasting is a good way to stress the system. Long-term stress might lead to bad outcomes though?
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  I believe one of the benefits is that, compared to the typical 3-means-plus-17-snacks diet, it actually gives the body some time to destress from constantly eating and digesting. Kind of like working out is good, but only if you give the body enough time to overcompensate between workouts. E.g. if you snack on sugary stuff every few hours, your body will quite literally never get blood glucose under control except during your sleep, which is basically the definition of Type 2 diabetes.
mistersquid 4y ago
> > Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity > I believe them that this is correct but does anyone know why? This would have been better written as "Because the modern lifestyle may lead to obesity, meal skipping has become increasingly popular".
paulpauper 4y ago
This is the problem with all weight loss and dieting studies and anecdotal evidence. Nothing is ever fixed or set in stone. Some people lose weight with lots of small meals. Some lose weight with one big meal. Some find low carb works, others eat carbs and lose weight. Human metabolism and body weight regulation is very complicated and doesn't readily yield to simple rules or heuristics (beyond CICO).
- sethammons 4y ago
  Even CICO is not straight forward. It is a dynamic system. Eating more can cause increased metabolism and easting less can slow the metabolism.
  - doc_gunthrop 4y ago
    It's not that complicated. Eating more leads to greater body mass, which requires higher caloric intake to sustain. Eating less leads to the opposite. If you gain 20 pounds, then you need to eat more relative to your previous weight in order to maintain your current weight (including that extra 20 pounds). If you lose 20 pounds, you have to eat less to maintain that new weight.
    - sethammons 4y ago
      I've lost weight eating more while maintaining the same exercise routine. You can try to feel better with any "well actually" you can muster. I increased the same kind of food I always eat and lost weight.
      - doc_gunthrop 4y ago
        Sounds like a miracle. Good for you
        amalgamated_inc 4y ago
        Not a miracle - there are actually lots of anecdotes like this. Typically from people who aren't currently or never have been fat. Turns out if your fat regulation works fine, eating more doesn't necessarily cause fat gain, especially if you're lifting or otherwise stimulating muscle growth.
MrZander 4y ago
My best guest, and this is pure speculation, is that skipping a meal makes people believe that they can eat whatever they want for the other meal(s) of the day. As such, they eat awful food and never develop good eating habits. I did OMAD (one meal a day) for a while and when I was researching it, many places encouraged this behavior. The idea being that if you skip 2 meals, even if you eat like garbage for your one meal, you won't be able to eat as many calories. This worked for me, I ate whatever I wanted for dinner and I lost ~20lbs in a month, but my cholesterol levels increased so I put a stop to it. Then, I put the weight right back on because, well, I never actually changed my eating habits -- only the frequency.
phpisthebest 4y ago
Intermittent fasting and "meal skipping" can be different, as Intermittent fasting does actually require more than just skipping a meal. It is a process for caloric reduction, if you skip 3 eggs in the morning, but then eat 6 eggs plus a sandwich at lunch you are not going to lose weight. Normally while doing Intermittent fasting, you need to fast for 16 hours or more (not the 8-12 that meal skippers normally get) and often Intermittent fasters will do a single sensible meal and then snack with low carb snacks during the rest of the eating period.
- vinni2 4y ago
  One can easily get 16 hours by skipping breakfast. I eat dinner at 7pm and skip breakfast and eat lunch at 12 pm. That gives me 17 hours fasting. I guess skipping lunch doesn’t give you same gap.
smcl 4y ago
I can't give you any good reason why this happens with "intermittent fasting" in particular, but I can tell you that it follows a similar pattern to every other fad diet. Almost everyone who follows them starts controlling what they eat, focussing on losing weight and they generally succeed in doing so for the first ~6 weeks. Then for whatever reason, a small number continue to lose weight and the remainder (the majority) plateau and inevitably fall off and give up. There are those who these diets work for, and some of those near religiously insist that it's simple and it should work for everyone and that if it isn't working then that's probably down to some personal failing. But the truth is that this is a pattern and it's not specific to any given diet, and it's not necessarily down to someone doing something wrong. For all that we think we know about diets, fat and weight - we haven't quite cracked weight loss and it's certainly not as simple as measuring calories in/out.
- haskellandchill 4y ago
  as far as cracking it I heard there's a drug now that pretty much solves obesity but insurance isn't covering it well. Wegovy maybe? Or Mounjaro? Maybe both: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04505-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04505-7
  - smcl 4y ago
    Yeah so that would be a little odd. There’s been a lot of talk about how most spending in healthcare is down to “obesity” and a lot of scaremongering about how that is growing. So you’d think if they had a solution to that, it’d be getting a lot of support. It sorta suggests that obesity isn’t one of the main costs in the US for healthcare (I suspect it isn’t) and that there isn’t a pill that will ”fix” obesity (I suspect there isn’t)
doc_gunthrop 4y ago
Based on my own personal experience (and, to a lesser degree, some other sources I've read online), intermittent fasting (IF) leads to the opposite of obesity. With a smaller eating window (e.g. less than or equal to 8 hours in a day), there is a greater likelihood that less food will be consumed. This relies on CICO (ie. calorie consumption being less than TDEE). I read the linked abstract but there was no mention of number of calories consumed by the test subjects; I estimate that this would be the most critical factor with regard to weight loss. As far as the claimed likelihood for type 2 diabetes, it seems to run counter to everything I've read about IF. When a person restricts their eating to a smaller window of time, their body's insulin resistance decreases, thereby lowering the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.
slowmovintarget 4y ago
For me, not for health. I work from home, we home school kiddo. That means they're not up and around until 11am or noon. For me, I fall out of bed and jump on Zoom meetings, because I'm in a different time zone from most of my team. I don't get clear of meetings until around noon, when I can eat. My family's late schedule keeps me up late, hence falling out of bed and into Zoom. Probably not the healthiest, and definitely not "intermittent fasting" with deliberation.

somid3 4y ago

Is the basic conclusion to skip dinner, and not skip breakfast?

kryz 4y ago
Yes. Lots of other good research out there that suggests Dinner skipping > Breakfast skipping
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  Is it because you have more awake time after to burn the same calories?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jensson 4y ago
    The study seems to suggest it goes the other way: when you are awake your body needs to burn calories so being awake on an empty stomach will stress your body. Note that the participants weren't overweight, if you are an average American this might not apply to you.
jakeinspace 4y ago
I would need to see some pretty incredible benefits to give up dinner over breakfast, that sounds miserable. I suppose if you’re someone who gets up at 5 and sleeps at 9 or 10 every night, then skipping dinner might be easier.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  +1 Also take into account your circadian rhythm. Humans have a variability of ~4h in our internal clocks, so when they eat lunch that might be breakfast for me. If I eat dinner at 7pm and stay up until 2am (pretty normal for me), is that fine? Or did they toss me in with somebody who wakes up at 6am and goes to bed at 10pm, and thus only had maybe 2 hours between dinner and bed time?

bckr 4y ago

> Background: Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. That is not what I was expecting this to be about. Now I'm thinking, how does this relate to the intermittent fasting trend? Are people meal skipping and calling it intermittent fasting? Or are the people who are meal skipping generally not interested in "wellness community" trends like IF?

lebski88 4y ago
It's just a clumsy sentence. They are trying to say that modern lifestyle leads to obesity, not fasting.
- Brybry 4y ago
  > Eating in misalignment with the biological clock (e.g., skipping breakfast and consuming bigger meals in the evening or eating late at night) is associated with an increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes (1, 2). On the other hand, popular trends such as breakfast or dinner skipping are advertised for weight management; however, conclusive scientific evidence to support these suppositions is lacking (3) First sentences of the introduction. > In conclusion, a causal role of breakfast skipping for the development of obesity is not supported by the present data. Last sentence of the paper.
Terretta 4y ago
> Are people meal skipping and calling it intermittent fasting? Yes, including when they snack all the time.
amalgamated_inc 4y ago
Yea, there are people calling "meal skipping" intermittent fasting. IF is pretty vaguely defined at best and all kinds of things fall under that label. E.g. Eat Stop Eat, where IIRC you eat normally every other day, and then you eat only 500kcal or so on the alternate days. So that might be done by skipping a meal every other day. Other people do a daily fasting/feeding window, e.g. 16/8 up to 23/1. The latter basically means you eat only 1 meal a day (unless you somehow manage to eat 2 "meals" within one hour) whereas 16/8 typically means skipping breakfast or dinner. Yet other schemes are 3 days eating/1 day fasting. Still an "intermittent fast." I think IF basically just means "any deviation from the standard 3 squares a day eating pattern."

Maursault 4y ago

There is little point in measuring the impact of skipping lunch. Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

keepquestioning 4y ago
True. There really should be two meals a day Breakfast and Dinner
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Terretta 4y ago
  You forgot Second Breakfast and Elevenses.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  any meal for which you break your fast is breakfast It is impossible for anyone to skip breakfast ;)

johnday 4y ago

n=17, so read nothing into this result. Also, what they tested is having no fixed eating schedule. The effects (if any) of skipping breakfast every day consistently are not measured.

jasonhansel 4y ago
I agree that we shouldn't read much into this. But I do suspect that, if an n=17 study came to the opposite conclusions, supporters of intermittent fasting would never stop citing it.
- mrighele 4y ago
  I doubt so, since the study is not about intermittent fasting, but intermittent meal skipping at best :-). I think that skipping a meal every once in a while, and regularly skipping meals according to a specific pattern for one, two or ten years, are completely different activities with very different outcomes
paulpauper 4y ago
i don't get why some studies have so few partipants. How hard is it to recruit people for something like this? We're not talking rare diseases.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- subharmonicon 4y ago
  From what I have read in the past this is just how the funding tends to work. You write a grant proposal for a study with 20 people, get funding, get results, use that to get funding for another study with 200, then 2000, etc. Frequently they don’t manage to make it past the first couple levels because the results aren’t interesting.
  - 3pt14159 4y ago

xutopia 4y ago

This is such a small sample size it doesn't merit our time.

mariambarouma 4y ago

Great study! Amazing that so much of the fasting world aren't aware of the difference between breakfast Vs dinner skipping.

Invictus0 4y ago

Unpaywalled: https://sci-hub.se/10.3945/ajcn.116.151332 https://sci-hub.se/10.3945/ajcn.116.151332

simple10 4y ago

This is only n=17 and 7 days long. Not particularly useful. AFAIK it's pretty well accepted in the keto fasting world that prolonged skipping of meals can lead to insulin inflexibility. Meaning it's good to have a cheat day to prevent your body from becoming overly adapted to fasting.

citilife 4y ago

Should say (2017)

calr 4y ago

I have skipped breakfast since college when I was much more concerned about bulking up. I drink two coffees and that gets me through til lunch. I’ve never really considered alternatives to this routine. If I wanted to experiment with breakfasts what do people recommend eating? The priority would be energy levels, and mental clarity since I tend to work better in the morning.

vasco 4y ago
Boiled egg(s) and a banana are my go-tos when not skipping. Most days I skip.
xoac 4y ago
Eggs and some veggies.
will5421 4y ago
Banana on toast, or just a banana to begin with
- calr 4y ago
  Will try this for sure. Love that bananas are portable by design.
krona 4y ago
I'm the same as you but I'll usually have half a banana or an apple.
sonofhans 4y ago
A good breakfast, in my experience and readings, is mostly fiber, with some fat, and a little naturally-occurring sugar. Peanut butter toast and a banana does that perfectly. Yogurt with honey and a banana. Bread, cheese, and an apple. A boiled egg and butter toast. Cold leftover pizza :) The fiber is most important, to provide some grist for your digestive system. The fat quenches some hunger and allows you to put off your next meal/snack with less discomfort. A little sugar provides some early energy.
4y ago

redgrange 4y ago

Any analysis on skipping lunch? People do that too. Lots I imagine

m3kw9 4y ago

Maybe meal skipper double up and is more undisciplined on their meals because they think skipping one gives them a free pass

TaupeRanger 4y ago

Disappointing design. The "skipped meal" days included just as much food as the 3-meal days, they just stuffed it into fewer meals. Of course this will lead to increased glucose...the people are gorging on extra food. The normal recommendation is to eat a snack, not a full meal, between lunch and dinner when skipping breakfast. You take in fewer calories, fewer carbohydrates, and gain the (not unfounded) benefits of fasting purported in dozens of other studies.

glofish 4y ago

Recruited 17 (most likely non-random) people each of whom skipped a SINGLE breakfast, then had 3 regular days, then skipped a SINGLE dinner ... Basic common sense indicates that it would be highly unlikely that anything of value could possibly be learned. The variability between people, meals, state of their lives, backgrounds, habits, behaviors, schedules, etc must be staggering. Scientists will never admit to this but about 95% of published research, just like the one above, are more like practice runs where they are honing the skills of doing the research. Right down to writing papers. There should be nothing wrong with practicing, alas since you can't get funded for practicing and training - everyone has to always be bullshitting each other how they are producing new insights.

themitigating 4y ago
Science is about testing over and over. This small study is just one step. Where did you get 95% from anyway? This limited study has more evidence for its conclusion than you do for making the statement "Scientists will never admit to this but about 95% of published research..."
- ygmelnikova 4y ago
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amalgamated_inc 4y ago
+100 Big Science in nutrition, diet, and exercise is a grift. If the researcher is not also a practitioner (e.g. body builder or losing lots of weight) you can usually ignore the results. Also ignore any studies involving mice, food questionnaires or other self-reporting, meta-analyses..
- themitigating 4y ago
  "Big Science in nutrition, diet, and exercise is a grift" What's "Big Science"? You are also claiming it's all a scam? Every scientific study related to diet, nutrition, and exercise? "If the researcher is not also a practitioner (e.g. body builder or losing lots of weight) you can usually ignore the results." Why do they have to practice some fitness or nutritional art to study it? Wouldn't that make them more bias if they did? "Also ignore any studies involving mice, food questionnaires or other self-reporting, meta-analyses.." Why? Many times in the past people have stated that mice and other rodents aren't ideal subjects in studies that relate to humans but that doesn't appear to be the case https://www.livescience.com/32860-why-do-medical-researchers-use-mice.html https://www.livescience.com/32860-why-do-medical-researchers... And another article states 'Nobel-winning scientific achievements such as the discovery of vitamin K, the development of the polio vaccine, the invention of monoclonal antibody technology now used for cancer treatment, and the unravelling of how neurons talk with each other in the brain all would not have occurred without mice." https://www.blood.ca/en/research/our-research-stories/research-education-discovery/why-do-scientists-use-mice-medical https://www.blood.ca/en/research/our-research-stories/resear...

fwungy 4y ago

I pretty much just believe the opposite of what the government says at this point. Lol. The only people I know who have beaten obesity long term have done it with some combination of IF/keto/paleo. Everybody else backslides.

amalgamated_inc 4y ago
Even there, the success rate is only maybe 25%. But at least they have some successes to show :)

pcdoodle 4y ago

I like AvE’s take on skipping breakfast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u3c1362zoGg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u3c1362zoGg

zackmorris 4y ago

The best thing I did for my health the last year or two was taking a few weeks to form the habit of cooking a substantial breakfast every day. With no affiliation for the brands: * 2-3 eggs * an Impossible breakfast sausage (bacon is fine too but the ethics of it are hard for me) * a bowl of Nature's Path pumpkin seed granola with whole milk * a cup of OJ * 1-3 cups of coffee for ADD-like symptoms, depending on how compressed I am with work * multi vitamin, "stress" B-complex with ~100% RDA (instead of 5000%), omega-3 * zinc, low 1000s D3 for immunity a few times per week * something with an adaptogen like RESTOR cycled as needed, I hear that mushroom coffee substitutes like MUD\WTR are good too I also try to have a bowl of corn or rice cereal (wheat can be inflammatory) and Orgain veggie protein before bed. The main reason for this is that the body can't store protein for more than 4 hours before it starts going catabolic. So most athletic training generally improves with eating every 2.5-3 hours and never skipping meals. The above menu is admittedly ableist. Conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar are primarily genetic. Unfortunately western medicine has to look at averages and make assumptions like "patients never exercise". So it's good practice to generally disregard well-meaning advice and adapt diets and workout programs to your own physiology. I don't put any stock in intermittent fasting. It's always better to eat, even if the meal is a plain lettuce salad with little or no dressing other than an acid like vinegar diluted with water, maybe a dash of olive oil. -- not that anyone cares, but since it's Saturday: The best workout I have found so far is 2 working sets of 12 reps, starting with the bar and adding 40-50 pounds per warmup set, 1.5 hours every other day on a legs/chest/back/shoulders split each week. Always full range of motion, with light runner's stretch afterwards and corner or door stretches to open the chest. 5 minutes of cardio on the treadmill before workout and after stretching to warm up and flush lactic acid. Why 12 reps? Because the "giving 110%" is built-in and it stays around a rated perceived exertion (RPE) of around 8-9 for maximum muscle growth without overtraining. I spent years plateaued at 3 sets of 8-12 reps, and 5x5 works great but with a higher risk of injury. 3 reps hacks the nervous system so sets get easier as they get heavier, but injury goes up, so I reserve those for deadlifts under ultimate concentration. A set of 20 reps at 50-60% working weight once per week 2 days before a body part overdrives work capacity and all but guarantees a 12 rep success on the later date. And 1 rep heavy singles as a warmup 40-50 pounds heavier than the working set primes the nervous system for a 12 rep success as well. So an example intermediate bench press program might look like: BARx12/95x12/135x12/185x6(reserve)/225x1/185x12x2, adding about 10 pounds to the working set every other week until another warmup set is added. Warmup rep count above 135 is usually a pyramid down from 75% or less to the heavy single to reserve endurance, for any exercise. All priming the body to expect another 50 pound set, so 1 RM PRs don't feel like they take everything you've got to achieve anymore. They might even happen next week! This might not sound like much, but the above blueprint could have saved me a decade of plateauing, so I'm writing it out for past me. All you need is this: https://strengthlevel.com/one-rep-max-calculator https://strengthlevel.com/one-rep-max-calculator I squat/bench/deadlift, overhead press, row and pull up more weight now at 45 than in my 20s, having never used performance-enhancing drugs. And more importantly, the high reps rebuilt my connective tissue so I'm injury-free after hurting my lower back over 2 dozen times. I feel that it's not possible to change one's weight healthily without exercise. In fact, I would say that the main struggle with weight control is around overcoming the workout avoidance and giving oneself 90 days to experience what it's like to change the body. That's where my love of working out started. Once it clicks, there's just no way to eat enough food anymore. And each day in the gym is a day younger, like aging backwards.

perrygeo 4y ago

> Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity Citation needed. Virtually the entire planet has constant access to food, available 24/7/365, something that has never happened at any point in human history until very recently. Is there an actual statistically-significant trend of conscious meal skipping? In what population? Or are they just parroting something they heard on the internet? I can't access the article but I'd be very curious how they back this claim up. Humans evolved under conditions of highly variable food stocks. I guarantee our distant ancestors ate when food was plentiful, fasted when it was not (no choice), and were certainly not eating 3 square meals on a regular schedule. Not saying that our hunter-gatherer diet was ideal, but if we evolved under those conditions, our default assumption should be that our bodies can handle it. Even the language ("skipping a meal") assumes that 3 meals is the natural baseline. Seems like the burden of proof runs the other way. That, combined with the low sample size and the questionable research methodology, leads me to believe this is garbage science. Not worth reading.