Breakfast... Worst Meal of The Day. Intro to Intermittent Fasting and Meal Frequency

"Doesn't breakfast set your body metabolism for the day?"

Your metabolism gets a 10% boost from food intake, that means if you eat a 800kcal meal, about 80kcal of that goes digesting the food (more or less, protein and fiber cost more). It's called the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF), or thermogenesis.

What you have left is 720kcal.  Compare eating breakfast with skipping breakfast (0 kcal intake), you will get a net gain of 720 kcal with breakfast eating in this scenario.

Food metabolism is different from body-fat metabolism. 1

Carbs in the morning (or anytime) affects your blood sugar.  Our body has many metabolic pathways to regulate sugar/glucose (without food) just fine, Even during exercise. (LIPASE/GLUCOGON). 

In fact, Fatty acid metabolism is highly up-regulated, but muscle catabolism doesn’t occur in short-term fasting for up to 24 hours.

This means if you enjoy burning body fat, skip breakfast and lunch, your metabolism actually INCREASES!

One of the main hormones that stops fat metabolism (and increase fat storage) is insulin (there are plenty more but I won't go there).

When you have insulin in your system, nutrients flows into your fat cells, not out (that's its job).  So in the context of losing body fat, you would want to encourage low insulin level "most time" of the day.

You'll find that all carbs elicit insulin secretion. high GI or not.  Some proteins (particularly, from dairy), too but not as much.  Fasting and dietary fat are neutral to insulin elicitation.

After breakfast, the body switch to glucose oxidation due to dietary intake from fat oxidation. 1, 2, 3.

Insulin secreted from your pancreas usually uptake more glucose than it's supposed to (unless you're blessed with slow metabolic-type genes that allows slower release of glucose). 

This mechanism helped human survived months of winter starvation for thousands of years.  Insulin helped us store body fat during longer/warmer months of the year where more carbohydrates/plant-based foods were around.  Before 4,000 years ago (and this is a very short period of time in respect to the entire human evolution), the majority of carbs we got were from fruits and veggies, not grain.  The sweets helped us store body fat (with insulin) and prepared us to face the famine/winter months.

The chronic exposure to hyperinsulinemia cause your beta-receptor cells less sensitive to them.  "Chronic" as in, the Standard American Diet- SAD (industrialized/agricultural societies), not paleo/hunter-gatherer with their seasonal taro, potatos and carrots.  I'm talking soda, bread, pasta, rice.  When these receptors get overworked, the msg your hormone insulin is trying to communicate with your fat cells stop getting through. This results in greater insulin release (pre-diabetes) and also overwork your pancreas.

 

So the  ideal 'human diet' (which would improve our insulin sensitivity/diabetes/obesity conditions) should be high on healthy essential fat, mod. protein, and low/zero carbs, esp. the starchy type).

Specifically, for someone who's overweight, the proportion of the macronutrient would be (arguably) about the same (with protein at near constant depending on training, body composition, and goal) but the overall calorie reduced.  One of the best way is skipping meals/intermittent fasting/semi-starvation, whatever you wanna call it.  

Once you stop putting things in your mouth, your body will become more efficient at using body fat as a fuel.  The more fat you have, the less you have to worry about experiencing nutrient/fuel deficiency.  Once this (ketosis) mechanism is well established, you will experience less hunger going w/o food periodically.

Just because you eat 10 meals in one day doesn't mean you burn more calories (higher metabolism) than someone who eat 1 meal a day of the same total calories. 

However, who's more likely to eat over their daily need in the real world?  Eating 10x or once?

Metabolic rate does not slow down during short-term fasting. It actually increases slightly. Here.

Your metabolism doesn’t scavenge amino acids from your muscles after an overnight fast.  Learn more about it here.  Protein is not that important in the morning either, you'll be surprise how little you need to preserve lean body mass, especially if you're fat.

When looking at studies on starvation, we switch to using ketone bodies as fuel when we fast or massively reduce dietary carbohydrates.  If you have plenty of body fat, breakfast is the least of your priority.  Don't worry about eating 5x a day or scare of fasting 24 - 48 hours at a time. Your muscle won't melt away and your metabolism won't 'crash'. http://www.bloodph.com/articles/InsulinandDiabetes.asp

Hunger/fasting may make you smarter and more creative.
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/breakfast_is_overrated/

"when your body experiences the early stages of hunger, you become more creative, and more energetic. (Obviously at the later stages of hunger you become sleepy, cranky, distracted, and probably less creative. Let's call that starvation and not hunger.)

This makes sense from an evolutionary view. As soon as you feel hunger coming on, your body is designed to put you into your most creative and energetic mode for the purpose of hunting and gathering.  If you can't outrun your prey, you have to out think it. And if there are no bananas in your usual tree, you'd better have a creative idea where to look next. It makes sense that the onset of hunger would stimulate your brain to its highest operating level."

The advantage that having a late dinner is better than having breakfast (considering the kcal/macro composition/deliciousness of the meal the same) is that after dinner, insulin kicks in, absorb all the nutrient to supply the fat tissues you been burning your fuels from all day, plus, lowers your serum glucose, boost serotonin release, which helps you get a better sleep.

If you take the breakfast route, same mechanism kicks in, you get lethargic, you want to nap, a plummeting glucose level make you hungry and since you probably need more (immediate) energy during the day compare to being asleep, you're likely to follow up with lunch (another insulin surge here), then a afternoon snack, dinner, and late dinner. 

Now, if you're NOT on a caloric restrictive diet and you ate dinner but ran out of stuff in your belly to burn as fuel in your sleep, you're less likely to wake up to eat, right?  because you don't need much (immediate) energy for sleeping.  Your fat cells will take care of it (especially if you're fat) and your sugar level will remain pretty constant. 

So compare the two conditions where you allocat most of your calories early in the day versus later in the day, wouldn't the "asleep" condition give you a better chance to reducing total caloric intake overall (mainly from reduce in meal frequency and feeding window)?

Eating breakfast (which encourage subsequent meals) make you more likely to take in more total calories for the day than eating later in a day. 

So in the context of boosting metabolism and fat loss...

Breakfast is the worst meal of the day and meal frequency is a personal preference but does help with lowering caloric intake if you're trying to lose weight..

Read all about it here

Read my published articles on Examiner.com on weight loss and sports nutrition.
Learn more about my Programs
Check out my Champions
Find out how HIT Center Austin Can help you reach your fitness goals today!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
update:
3-14-2011
came across a great article about why you should skip breakfast that works along with intermittent fasting for fat loss and muscle gain.
http://www.wannabebig.com/diet-and-nutrition/why-you-should-be-skipping-breakfast-the-secrets-of-intermittent-fasting/