Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28490511/

62 118 4 years ago

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

bckr• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

It's just a clumsy sentence. They are trying to say that modern lifestyle leads to obesity, not fasting.

Brybry• 4 years 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.

Terretta2• 4 years ago

Are people meal skipping and calling it intermittent fasting?

Yes, including when they snack all the time.

amalgamated_inc15• 4 years 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."

arkadiyt• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

jasonhansel2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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/

makeitdouble• 4 years 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/

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

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

Most of the study were interesting, but no brazing praise of IF really.

jat850• 4 years 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.

paulpauper3• 4 years ago

Same here. I find it too easy to overeat at night, during dinner and after.

jonahbenton• 4 years 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.

pengaru• 4 years ago

In my anecdotal experience, that's much more of a factor if my prevailing diet involves carbs - especially simple carbs/sweets. It feels more like a drug addiction I've briefly experienced withdrawal from before regaining abundant access.

On a more keto/low-carb style diet it's a much different experience, for me.

mrighele2• 4 years ago

I have been doing intermittent fasting (eating only on a window of 6 hours per day), for the past two years

At the beginning I had the same issues as you, and arrive at meal time craving for food.

After the second week though the cravings started to disappear and with it the issue of overeating on that meal. I still eat more on that single meal than in the past, but not that much.

Every person reacts in different ways, but my guess is that when the body is used to continuously process food skipping a meal is a big deal, while in the other case is just part of the routine.

pitched• 4 years 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_inc15• 4 years 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• 4 years 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".

paulpauper3• 4 years 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).

sethammons2• 4 years 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.

MrZander• 4 years 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.

phpisthebest3• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

smcl2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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

doc_gunthrop4• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

kryz• 4 years ago

Yes. Lots of other good research out there that suggests Dinner skipping > Breakfast skipping

MonkeyMalarky• 4 years ago

Is it because you have more awake time after to burn the same calories?

jakeinspace• 4 years 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_inc15• 4 years ago

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?

cofuente• 4 years ago

That's what I understood.

insane_dreamer• 4 years ago

Yes, but bear in mind this was a _tiny_ study.

Maursault• 4 years ago

There is little point in measuring the impact of skipping lunch.

    Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

keepquestioning• 4 years ago

True. There really should be two meals a day

Breakfast and Dinner

Terretta2• 4 years ago

You forgot Second Breakfast and Elevenses.

phpisthebest3• 4 years ago

any meal for which you break your fast is breakfast

It is impossible for anyone to skip breakfast ;)

johnday6• 4 years 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.

paulpauper3• 4 years 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.

subharmonicon2• 4 years 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.

belltaco• 4 years ago

All that screening and testing costs a lot of money.

daviddavis• 4 years ago

Nutritional studies are notoriously difficult to conduct. You either have to isolate subjects and monitor everything they eat and when. Or you have to rely on self reported data and people do an atrocious job of tracking food, estimating portion size, etc.

This study did the former:

The duration of the study is 7 days including 3 days with controlled diet and 4 days (including 5 nights) in a metabolic chamber at the Institute of Nutritional Medicine at the University of Hohenheim.

I imagine it was prohibitively expensive to have more participants.

bee_rider• 4 years ago

Try plinking around on a sample size calculator a bit, the results might be surprising. For example:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/

If you are ok with a 25% margin of error and a 95% confidence level, 16 people is good enough. You have to make sure there isn’t some skew in your population, but if your method of sampling the population produces a skew, adding people won’t really help there.

jasonhansel2• 4 years 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.

mrighele2• 4 years 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

weakfortress• 4 years ago

These comments are always so hilarious. It demonstrates a significant lack of understand of how statistics actually works. You see this on reddit all the time, you'd think it'd be better here.

Power and sample size are determined by numerous factors depending on the question under study. You could have N=10 be statistically powerful and N=1,000,000 be statistically meaningless. It depends ENTIRELY on the subject under study. More is not always better and in many cases completely unnecessary.

https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/BS/BS704_Power/B...

Here is a decent guide. You may wish to read it so you can learn when you can dismiss a study based on N. You never mentioned, did you back out the study numbers and determine the N=17 number was outside the range of statistical power? If so, would you mind posting your calculations?

johnday6• 4 years ago

This is clinical nutrition. There are so many confounding factors that it is not reasonable to draw any conclusions about how the body works (especially as a layman reader on HN) from a study that tested 17 people. Indeed, their own introduction claims that previous larger studies have found no correlation between meal plans and effects on the body, at least wrt caloric expenditure.

These comments are always so hilarious. It demonstrates a significant lack of understand of how statistics actually works.

I do have a PhD, but thank you for your input anyway.

hahajk• 4 years ago

Would this be an intuitive way of putting it? If I pull a random 17 phones off an assembly line, and 16 of them are defective, I can pretty confidently say there is something wrong with the whole product line even though n=17?

theteapot4• 4 years ago

If it's clearly not worth HN readers' time, how did it get published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"? Or am I just naive in thinking published in a Journal still means something? Why did it pass peer review?

WalterSear• 4 years ago

It's a scientific journal - a place for the researchers to discuss and discover science.

This is a lay forum - a place more suited to the discussion of decided science.

johnday6• 4 years ago

If it's clearly not worth HN readers' time, how did it get published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"?

This comment is extremely funny.

I heard a rumour that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition might be aimed at scientists working on clinical nutrition, who could make meaningful use of this result - and not the readers of Hacker News.

amatic• 4 years ago

The problem is not N=17. If the effect (difference between skipping breakfast vs dinner) was large enough, it would be obvious and significant even in a small sample. The effect seems to be very small.

I agree that what is missing is to measure skipping meals for a longer time period, like a month, at least.

thechao2• 4 years ago

I have an identical twin brother; I began IF (eating only 1/3 of target calories on Mon/Fri) in 2012. We do functional similar levels of cardio, weight-training; we're both programmers, with similar hours.

Right now, I'm 1/2 taller, ~70 lbs lighter, I have ~10 lbs more LBM, blood pressure and blood work is spot on. He's got high blood pressure, and is diabetes adjacent.

I have a good friend who's an identical twin who did CFR (over 30 years, now); similar situation.

Here's the summary: getting fat is bad; losing fat is bad; being fat is deadly.

carabiner• 4 years ago

But the entire field of medicine is based on small studies with high power to achieve statistical significance, that lead to sequentially larger studies and eventually regulator approval or rejection. Are you saying the entire field is a sham? I urge you to write to the FDA immediately them to inform them that their methodology is gravely flawed.

johnday6• 4 years ago

I am saying that lay readers on Hacker News should not draw conclusions from this study on 17 people. Do you disagree?

amalgamated_inc15• 4 years ago

Yes. The entire field is a sham.

jcoq• 4 years ago

If we give substance X to 17 people and 100% of them die, I would recommend against taking substance X.

Of course, it's not as black and white here, but sample size and effect size should be considered in relation to each other. Previous research and theoretical expectations should also play a leading role.

johnday6• 4 years ago

In this case, previous research and theoretical expectations would indicate only a small effect, if any. This is covered in the introduction to the paper, which I'm sure you have read.

xutopia• 4 years ago

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

mariambarouma• 4 years ago

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

Invictus0• 4 years ago

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

simple10• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Should say (2017)

redgrange• 4 years ago

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

calr2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Boiled egg(s) and a banana are my go-tos when not skipping. Most days I skip.

xoac• 4 years ago

Eggs and some veggies.

will5421• 4 years ago

Banana on toast, or just a banana to begin with

calr2• 4 years ago

Will try this for sure. Love that bananas are portable by design.

krona• 4 years ago

I'm the same as you but I'll usually have half a banana or an apple.

sonofhans• 4 years 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.

Kukumber2• 4 years ago

morning:

    - infusion: ginger + mint + lemon + green tea (or yerba mate) 

    - fruit: banana or dried fig

    - seeds: slice of whole grain bread or almonds or any else you like, vary

middle of the day:

    - eggs with spices and herbs

    - vegies with lot of fiber or veggies pasta

    - minutes later: infusion: ginger + mint + lemon + green tea (or yerba mate)

evening (only if hungry):

    - toast with eggs and lot of different spices and herbs, put anything you got

night:

    - infusion: what ever you want without caffeine, example: ayurvedic infusion

Occasionally: beer, wine or anything fermented with some alcohol

no sickness, no covid, no tired, fully awake, perfect for hunting propaganda online, every day, all day long, just read my post history, it enhances the mind and your senses

No meat, no added sugar, no added salt, no transformed food, no fridge, just spices and herbs

sh4rks• 4 years ago

You eat a 1000 calories a day?

amalgamated_inc15• 4 years ago

"Give me all the eggs & bacon you have."

crdrost• 4 years ago

The "endless eggs" are somewhat of an Americanism but you can try that. If you want to be a little more cosmopolitan, most regions have some tradition or other of a morning porridge -- barley porridge in Nepal, rice as congee in China, a millet porridge called hausa koko in Ghana all come to mind. The American version of this is the morning oatmeal.

Europeans sometimes have patterns of eating yogurt or quark, typically with fruit slices and muesli. On the other hand I have a bunch of Dutch relatives, they mostly eat untoasted bread spread with butter and topped with either a meat or cheese or sprinkles (fruity sugar sprinkles or chocolate sprinkles or bigger chocolate flakes).

The classic American southern farmer's breakfast was biscuits and gravy. The biscuits are fluffy and bready while the gravy is a white sausage gravy, rich, milky, buttery, peppery, with chunks of sausage. Libby's makes a good can of this stuff, but you should add some cayenne or hot pepper flakes or both. "Sticks to your bones" while you go out to the fields, I think there's something to the refined grains of the biscuits giving you short-term energy so that you don't feel bogged down, while the oils and meats set you up to have longer-term energy as the day winds on.

You're asking about food but maybe I'd mention something about patterns... Back when I was a Tibetan Buddhist I got to know some monks. Apparently the ancient history of mendicants in India was that they'd go door-to-door begging for whatever food the people in their neighborhood would offer them. Now, in the present day, where conditions are different -- the monks "beg" from the monastery which is staffed by lay practitioners who manage the money and purchase food and so forth.

But a lot of the monastic rules simulate that earlier lifestyle. For example, the monks I met were not allowed to sleep on any sort of mattress, because the earlier mendicants slept on the ground outside. And where this gets interesting is that they also have to eat all their food by noon, "otherwise we'd have no time for meditation." (We also speculated that maybe Indian mendicants didn't want to be perceived as greedy, so if they could get a solid meal maybe they didn't push their luck.) I think this only applied to solid foods -- Tibetans traditionally drink a butter tea, which is exactly what it sounds like, tea leaves that we'd regard as way-way-way oversteeped, churned together with yak butter and salt, and I think they were allowed to drink this in the afternoon. Similarly I think a bowl of broth would have been okay for dinner as long as it didn't have solids in it?

But yeah, suggests a large population of folks living for a long time without dinner, and I think I even have a vague memory of the Dalai Lama commenting one of his times in the USA about how it's much harder to be obese if you don't have the concept of dinner. (Although I can imagine as he said those words, probably all the fat monks he has ever known flashed before his eyes, haha.) And like I said, I think the usual starting meal is a sort of barley porridge and then for lunch a "dal bhat" - a spiced dish of rice, lentils, and at least one "vegetable" (which is in scare quotes because it could be for example potatoes). But I might just have had weird friends who liked weird things.

StanislavPetrov• 4 years ago

Steel cut oats.

0x64• 4 years ago

I do overnight oats; in the morning, all you have to do is pop the lid.

* Wholegrain oats (1.5 to 2 dl)

* Greek yogurt (1.5 to 2 dl)

* Milk, skimmed/whole (3 dl)

Then, throw in whatever. A sliced banana or berries, honey, a pinch of vanilla extract. Prep it in the evening, chuck it into the fridge, and it's done in the morning.

m3kw9• 4 years ago

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

TaupeRanger• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

themitigating4• 4 years 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..."

amalgamated_inc15• 4 years 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..

themitigating4• 4 years 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...

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/resear...

fwungy• 4 years 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_inc15• 4 years ago

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

pcdoodle• 4 years ago

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

zackmorris2• 4 years 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

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.

zackmorris2• 4 years ago

Wow I seem to have triggered myself after writing "catabolic", going off on a tangent about training routines when I meant to talk about nutrition. The above program is just a starting point, but I want to emphasize that it's worked for me throughout the years, especially when cycled with heavier programs like 5x5.

What I was going to say is that the body does protein synthesis for 24 hours after a workout, then healing quickly drops by a factor of 3. So it's important to shoot for around 200 grams of protein and not miss a meal the day after. But the day of the workout, it's ok to eat a little less, just make sure to eat 1-2 hours before exercise to have energy. That gives us an opportunity to either gain or lose weight without losing muscle, by scheduling our food intake in phase with protein synthesis.

That point about periodicity is what I was trying to get to, and why I believe that it's more important than variety. We can use 6-8 week training cycles to target muscle gain or weight loss. We can also tailor the program for work stress and seasons, maybe walking more to clear out cortisol during crunch time before a deadline, or eating more in the fall.

All of the above is the "why" behind which meal plans work. I don't think that eating advice makes any sense on its own outside the context of exercise.

perrygeo• 4 years 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.

Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

Related Stories