Insulin theory - myth busted

On the internet, I see a lot of arguments that go like this;

Carbohydrates are bad for you because they cause your body to release insulin. Insulin is a hormone which stores fat and stops you burning fat. Therefore, if you are storing fat and not burning it, you get fat. Therefore, carbohydrates make you fat. 

 

sounds plausible.... here’s why it’s bullshit.

In order to gain weight, we have to store more energy than we burn; this is a fact we cannot deny. But insulin theorists seem to think that this hormone can bypass the laws of physics and create energy out of nowhere. Let’s look at the logic behind this.

Person A

Person A eats a meal of pure carbohydrate at 800 calories, their insulin raises. Imagine a worst case scenario where ALL OF IT gets quickly stored as fat (this would not happen anyway, as a large majority would be stored as glycogen, or burned off on the spot). Even in a worst case scenario, they can only store 800 calories of energy as fat. THEY CANNOT STORE MORE ENERGY THAN THIS.

Person A

Now, once that meal has digested, the blood sugars have dropped (because it has all been turned into fat), insulin levels drop and fat burning increases again. If the person needs a total of 2000 calories in a day for their metabolic rate, they have to get that energy from somewhere – which will now be fat stores (or glycogen stores too, if any of that carbohydrate was stored away in this form). So, Person A may have stored 800 calories, but then he has to get 2000 calories back out of the fat stores.

Net result – minus 1200 calories

Person B

Person B is our low carb Zealot. They hate insulin, so do everything they can to stay in an insulin free state (not possible, as we all have baseline insulin levels). This person eats 800 calories, but in the form of pure fat. But they think they are not storing any fat because they haven’t got any insulin running around in their body, right?

PersonB

Even if they were right (which they are not, there are other hormones in the body which store fat too), let’s look at what will happen. If the body is not storing the ingested 800 calories of fat, it will have to burn it from the blood. Their metabolism is 2000 calories per day also, so their body gets 800 of this from the ingested fat, and the other 1200 from fat stores. 

But even in this example where NO fat was stored and ONLY fat was used as fuel, the person still ends up only in 1200 calories deficit.

And this was the extreme example

This was giving full benefit of the doubt to the ‘insulin theorists’ also. In real life, most ingested carbohydrate gets burned off on the spot (one of the main actions of insulin is to tell the body to switch to higher blood glucose oxidation) so less can be stored as fat. Most of the excess which is above and beyond oxidation rates get stored as Glycogen, not fat, in the liver and muscle. This means that, with our 800 calories carb meal, almost none of it would get stored as fat.

Even when we increase the calories, the math stays the same.

On top of this, studies have shown that it takes an incredible amount of carbohydrate ingestion to see any amount of de novo lipogenesis (fat creation from glucose). It is much more likely that the glucose will be used for metabolic purposes or stored as glycogen before any fat is created. After all, energy is lost when our body makes fat out of glucose. This is not evolutionary advantageous (it would be better to be as energy efficient as possible).

This is also not evolutionary advantageous 

Insulin Action

To look at insulin and say that it is a fat storing hormone, and fat burning suppressor, is only half the story, and doesn’t make us fat anyway, as the last examples illustrated. Insulin has several roles, many of which are designed to let the body know there is carbohydrate in the blood stream, and to switch to burning this off in whatever way possible (increased oxidation, glycogen creation and fat storage) to lower blood sugars to normal levels. This is why insulin correlates so highly with blood sugar levels/carbohydrate intake.#

Insulin action

Insulin also serves as a break for endogenous glucose production. When our body is in a fasted state, we produce our own blood glucose (barring hypoglycemics) through gluconeogenesis (conversion of proteins to blood sugar) and conversion of glycogen to glucose. This keeps our blod sugars relatively stable postprandially. But this internal sugar production is not necessary when we have ingested carbohydrates. So insulin is a messenger to tell our body to stop creating its own sugar.

Anyway, insulin doesn’t just put a halt on fat burning. People see things so black and white these days. Our bodies are constantly burning and storing fat, building and breaking down muscle etc. It is the balance at the end of all of this which counts. Add to this, fat burning is not an on/off switch. Increases in insulin simply lower the percentage of fat which is utilised for metabolic purposes, but does not switch it off. The whole point is to just shift around what source you are using predominantly for fuel. How much you use/store will determine your balance at the end of the day, which will determine whether your body is building up (building fat/muscle) or catabolising (losing fat/muscle).

What most low carbers also don't realise is that even low carb diets can produce blood sugar through an act called gluconeogenesis. Protein gets broken down into sugars and can be used as fuel. Some extremists, like LCHF dieters, even lower protein intake to get around this. but there is no getting around the laws of thermodynamics - as my examples showed (one was high carb, the other was Low carb high fat).

Ans some non-carb foods can raise as much insulin as standard carbohdyrate rich foods.

But my low carb diet works

Great,  that’s good for you. It can work, I am not denying that. But low carb diets work as a result of controlling calories indirectly. Eating less carbs results in eating more protein and fat – which are very satiating (and is why I recommend keeping fat in your diet, and eating high levels of protein).

But most of the differences in scientific studies comparing diets of different macronutrients (in equicaloric statuses) can be put down to

·         Difference in protein intake (protein is thermogenic and loses more calories in the body)

·         Bigger water losses through lost glycogen (we store an incredible amount of water in our bodies)

·         Lower gut bulk (low carb diets tend to be less fibrous and more energy dense).

And as Dr John Berardi recently pointed out HERE, the cascade of hormonal events happening on a low carb diet can serve to lower performance in athletes, and see a drop in muscle mass as a result of lower glycogen stores, lower insulin (insulin is muscle sparing) and lowered training volume. Also, testosterone to cortisol ratios go out of whack in the long term – not great for muscle building/maintaining. 

I will say, however, this can be offset by low carb diets having larger amounts of protein. But it would be better to have a high protein diet and include enough carbs to reduce the negative effects, without adding too many calories.

And while low carb diets do work well for most (especially in the first couple of weeks, due to the massive drops in water weight), they can be difficult to sustain for the majority of folk. Real success in dieting is having the ability to maintain that diet for life. Ask yourself this – is low carb something you can really do for life?

Summary

Insulin does not cause you to get fat. Insulin has many actions, but it can only make you as fat as the energy you bring in to the system.

Insulin has many actions – making us fat is not one of them.

Low carb diets may not suit all, especially athletes.

As an important note, I am not anti-low carb. There can be several benefits to low carb. Increased satiation, increased fat intake, increased protein intake and better blood glucose control are just some. This post is more an attack on the insulin theory of obesity.

Rebuttal against a 'Calories don't count' argument

This is a rebuttal to the article floating around on the net about how calories don't count. Take a read, you may be convinced.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE FIRST

The Rebuttal

Below are a list of the pictures from the article, along with my reasons for why they do not disprove the calorie in versus out argument for weight gain.

 1. Injecting insulin will change where fat is stored not HOW MUCH. This is also not how insulin works in a human body in a non-injected state, where it would be more generalised. Regardless, insulin doesn't create extra energy storage, just changes its location.

2. Going have to semi-bow out of this one as I know nothing about Cushins. Although so what - if you don't have Cushins disease, then this doesn't apply.

3. The guy is obviously one of those people who has a very reactive metabolism - they do exist. I know a lot of people with these genetics who are the same. If they eat a hell of a lot more calories, their metabolism raises to almost match it.

This doesn't disprove calories in vs out or make it irrelevant. If this guy wanted to gain weight, he would have to eat more - far more, as his metabolism ramps up more than normal. If he wanted to lose weight, he would just have to eat less.

The same principles apply to everyone. You have to find out your own personal numbers. Personally, if I am looking to gain 1lb a week, I eat around 3000 calories, and if it is not working, I eat MORE until I am gaining 1lb a week. IF I want to lose weight, I eat around 1,800 a day to lose around 1lb a week. If that doesn't work, I exercise a little more. But I am patient with it as I know water weight fluctuates.

If you are not fortunate enough to have his genetics, you would have to find out how much YOU need to eat to gain a certain amount of weight/lose it. It's not always going to be a static number, but if you are not losing weight you should find a way of getting less energy in, or getting more energy out.

Also - with this guy, it was only n=1 and also only 3 weeks. In 3 weeks it would be possible to lose 5-6 pounds of water weight from glycogen stores, another couple of pounds of gut bulk and still gain fat. You can, for short periods of time like this, be gaining fat whilst the scale is going down. Let him try that for a full year and see how it works out.

4. Again, a case of genetic/disease related change in WHERE the fat is stored, not HOW MUCH. The amount of energy stored in the system hasn't been influenced, only the site of that storage. So again, doesn't mean calories are valueless (confused look as to why anyone would think it does).

5. see above

6. So what!!! Sure, low carb diets may have some role for SOME PEOPLE in regulating energy intake, as

in anorexics may start eating more energy and obese may start eating less energy. Doesn't mean they are the best diets for everyone and doesn't discredit counting calories, or portion control (or whatever method you wish to choose to use in order to regulate energy intake).

Low carb is not always the best way for everyone, even if I would conclude that it is a relatively good way for most people to go. For me, personally, it would be torturous hell - and science has shown that it doesn't provide a significant amount more of weight loss above and beyond what simple water loss (through glycogen depletion) would provide - along with potential muscle losses from the lower amount of insulin and lower muscle glycogen storage (that's right, insulin preserves muscle).

7. Read http://weightology.net/?p=265

8. The whole body is a calorie receptor. It responds to calories by increasing and decreasing certain hormones which can increase metabolism, change substrate oxidation and decrease amounts of food desired (satiation qualities). Leptin, Ghrelin, Insulin, HGH, IGF1, Cortisol, glucagon, adiponectin, thyroid etc etc etc - all respond to caloric intake.

Does changing what you eat have an effect on energy out and (indirectly) energy in? Sure, it can do. But it is usually not as large an effect as you think, and by NO MEANS discredits the use of calorie control exercises through direct means (calorie counting) or indirect (portion control, eating more satiating foods etc).

Fact is, if you eat the same foods but a higher quantity of them, you will gain more weight, and if you eat the same foods in lower quantities you will lose weight/gain less.

9. Umm, yes, not all macronutrients behave the same way in the body. Some have higher thermic effects and so calories are lost in the process of breaking it down. However, this doesn't violate the idea that calories count. It still applies that calories in vs out will determine how much energy is in the system. Thermic effect simply increases the 'energy out' side of the equation.

Anyway, to conclude that getting rid of carbohydrates is wrong. It is clearly biased towards a low carb diet for no reason at all. The whole reason the diet produces a lower caloric yield if we replace 55% carbs with equal amounts fat and protein is not due to the lower carb, it is due to the increase in PROTEIN, which has the highest thermic effect.

In fact, one could say that replacing fat with equal parts protein and carbs (I do not recommend) would produce a lower caloric yield still, as Fat has the lowest thermic effect of all.

Bottom line

The bottom line is, calories count, whether you count them or not. You could cut your calories in by cutting out an entire food group/macronutrient. But this usually leaves people craving what they have cut, leading to an eventual falling off the wagon. You could also use portion control, or count calories consciously, which could offer you more freedom in what you eat. But the idea that calories don't count is ludicrous, and wrong, as every scientific study EVER has shown.

Everyone responds to foods differently. Some can gain weight easily with a small excess, some can have a massive excess and still burn it off with their very reactive metabolisms. But the overall principle remains the same. If you want to get smaller, eat less of what you do. If you want to get bigger, eat more of what you do now. Use exercise as a way of improving health and energy expenditure.

The one which annoys me most is the insulin theory. The idea that insulin makes you gain weight. Well, guess what. If I pump my blood full of insulin and don't eat a thing, you can be sure I wont be gaining weight. Even if I ate 500 calories with my 'insulin blood', it is only possible to store 500 calories of fat (and that is if there was a 100% efficient conversion, which there is not).

For those who say, "Yeah, but if you had insulin in your blood and no glucose, you would go into a hypoglycaemic coma" - you are right. So the type 2 diabetics with high insulin levels must be using something for fuel. If they are using lower amounts of fat, that must mean they are using higher amounts of blood glucose (which makes sense as the blood glucose for type 2 diabetics is high). If more blood glucose is burned as fuel, less can be stored as fat, and thus the law of calories in vs out returns as the king.

Take home advice

The best pieces of advice I can give are;

1. Increase your PROTEIN intake (but there is a law of diminishing returns).

2. Find out how many calories YOU need to manipulate your weight in the direction you want.

3. keep a healthy balance of fats and carbs in your diet.

4. Eat an overall higher amount of MICRONUTRITION through better food choices, but don't feel you have to cut out what you love.

5. RESISTANCE TRAIN

6. Don't do too much cardio when you are on a restricted calorie diet. In fact, cardio is completely unnecessary when trying to lose fat. But if you like to do it, go ahead.

7. Eat foods that curb your hunger. Usually low calorie density foods like veggies will do this as well as fulfilling number 4. But find out what works for you.

8. Don't CRASH DIET. 1/2 a pound a week is still 26 pounds of weight loss a year. We all know that person who loses 20lb every time they diet, yet ironically weigh more and more each year.

Cardio or weights?

Runner's high??

We all know that exercise is good for us. Doctors, health experts, fitness magazines are all screaming about the advantages of a getting to the gym and hitting the treadmill. As well as getting our heart and lungs into better health, exercise offers an aesthetic advantage of a slender, toned and athletic physique. And if all of this wasn’t enough to get our moods lifted, the endorphine rush from a session in the weight room will leave you on a natural high.

Stay in dat fat burnin' zone bro

look away now! They still have these stupid, worthless charts on

most cardio machines. What will people believe next?

People are always on the treadmills and cross trainers, staring at that little digital calorie counter and racking the numbers up. But a recent study by Fatouros and colleagues have shown that a lot more can happen after you finish your exercise. Typically, our bodies burn a higher percentage of fat when we are exercising at a low intensity. This is why a lot of trainers used to (and some stupidly still do) advocate keeping heart rate below 65% max, too keep you in the fat burning zone. However, exercising at a higher intensity will burn more fuel. Whilst the % of fat/glycogen may drop, the overall amount of fat burned will pretty much be the same I.E.

Person A trains below 65% max heart rate. They burn 400 calories in an hour at 80% of that coming from fat stores. This is 320 calories of fat, and perhaps 80 calories of other substrate (muscle/liver glycogen, blood carbohydrate).

Person B trains much harder, at 80% max heart rate. They burn 600 calories in an hour with 65% of that coming from fat stores. This is 390 calories of fat. And perhaps 210 calories of other substrate (muscle/liver glycogen, blood carbohydrate).

So you can see, even though  person A burned a higher percentage of fat, the overall amount of fat was LESS than person B. On top of this, Person B burned more overall calories. That 210 calories not burned from fat is just as advantageous to us in our fat loss goals. When glycogen gets burned, it creates a 'hole' in our muscles/liver. So the next time we eat, rather than get stored as fat, this extra energy will be stored as glycogen. This is why, ultimately, fat loss is a calorie game.

So which exercises burn more fuel?

An exercise bout can easily burn upwards of 500 calories an hour. That may not seem much, but do it 4 days a week and you have burned 2000 calories in a week. By the end of the year, your body could potentially be a whopping 25 pounds freer of fat. 

Transformations like this don't happen overnight. But little by

little, small changes really add up. 1lb a week may not seem like a lot,

but check that out after a year.

Jogging, walking, cross trainer etc all burn calories as you are doing the exercise, but the exercise is typically so low intensity that it takes hours to burn a significant amount of calories. Also, when you stop the exercise, your body quickly stops burning fat and returns to its normal state. But who wants to plod away on a treadmill for an hour every other day? Not many, for sure. Luckily, research by Greek sports scientists can give us an insight into a better way.

Fatouros et al took a group of 40 year old men and trained them with heavy weights. During the exercise, they burned an average of 266.3 calories, equivalent to working out for 20-30 minutes. Whilst most people are reading this and thinking that 266 calories is not a lot, the real magic happened after the workout had finished. Their resting energy expenditure, or metabolic rate, shot up significantly above normal levels. This elevated energy burning state peaked 12 hours after the exercise and remained higher than baseline for 72 hours. That’s 3 whole days of your body burning more calories, even whilst you are sitting down. But there’s more, the scientists also found that most of the extra burned energy came purely from fat!

Yes, you are burning more calories than normal after weights.

Even this guy is

So next time you are too tired to hit the treadmill for an hour, or you just cannot muster up the motivation to battle with the cross trainer, why not hit the weight room. You can cut your time in the gym significantly and feel your body literally burning fat for days after. Not only that, but your new slender tummy and thighs will be supported by some toned muscle. Who wouldn’t want that?  

Give me more

So which weight exercises should you do? Throw away those 3lb pink dumbells missy.

Generally, working bigger muscles in as large a movement as possible will burn the most energy. So stop doing bicep curls, tricep extensions and wrist flapping. Start doing compound, multi joint BIG MOVEMENT exercises. Things like

• Squats
• Deadlifts
• Pull ups/chin ups
• Bench presses
• Rows

are basically all you need. They use the biggest muscles and put them through the biggest range of motion. The first two being exceptionally good at this. A quick google search will show you how to do these movements.

And no girls, you won't start to look like a man

You don't have the genetics or the hormones to start putting on slabs of muscles. It takes men many many years, sometimes upwards of 20 years for a male bodybuilder, to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You don't just do a squat and wake up looking like Ronnie Coleman. Those guys are

• Men
• Genetically gifted
• The elite of the genetically gifted
• almost living in the gym 24/7
• taking a lot of drugs and other supplements
• eating a massive amount of food

If you are not doing all of the above, then there is no worry. Besides, if you find yourself getting 'too muscly', you can always just stop and the muscle will go away. 

Even the 'hair blowing in the wind' bit is true

Weight training actually stimulates genetic changes (increases MTOR and downregulates AMPK) which makes you create more lean body mass, and stops you becoming a fat storing machine. If running hours and hours on a treadmill were the answer, why are sprinters (who NEVER do cardio) usually around 7-10% bodyfat. And why to marathon runners usually look gaunt, aged and are more like 13-16% bodyfat (sure that is still good). 

Long distance running tells our body to drop muscle (as it is heavy and cumbersome for running far) and partition any extra energy towards fat stores (as we are using it during our running). A sprinter, on the other hand, creates more/maintains lean body mass (as it is important for providing the power to run as fast as possible) and drops fat (as it is unnecessary, a sprinter mainly burns glycogen). Make sense now? This is an evolutionary advantage and an absolutely amazing ability of the human body to adapt and become more efficient at what it is regularly doing.

It's not that you shouldn't do Cardio. It's just that, for most people's goals, cardio is probably the least efficient exercise to get there. On top of detriments to metabolic rate, lots and lots of long distance running and low calorie dieting can really mess up your hormone levels. If you enjoy it, go and do it. But don't slave away running because you want a better body/more health. It can be part of a training regime, but there are more efficient ways to reach your goals.

By the way, here are some pictures of women who squat, to show you there is very little to be scared of. I apologise if you feel this objectifies women. Actually, I'm not. You can still have a personality and squat, damn it. Plus it's good for your health, mentally and physically, to be in shape.

Flexibility within dieting

I am an advocate of eating what you like (within context) and believe that no food needs to be eliminated from your diet. I think too much emphasis is put onto eliminating things, or saying that you can’t eat ‘this’ or ‘that’. In my opinion, this restrictive nature of typical diets is the reason why, even if they are successful in the short term, they ultimately fail in the long term.

Is one of these a day going to help you fill your weekly dietary needs? Probably not.

But one or 2 a week can certainly be 'managed' with no detriment to your goals

Adding the good stuff 

For me, it is more important that the diet as a whole is nutritious and fills certain requirements. I approach dieting from a standpoint of ADDING as much goodness and nutrition as you can, whilst still staying within a certain caloric allotment and fulfilling macronutrient, phytonutrient and psychological needs. I find that if these requirements are met, the rest of the diet sorts itself out; but with the mentality of ADDING goodness rather than taking away and depriving yourself of things, it gives people flexibility (this is the flexi-diet) to make their own choices, and approaches dieting from a positive viewpoint.

Fill your diet with more of these things to achieve the below goals.

Some of the requirements I would typically set are;

·         Does your diet meet your caloric needs for your goals? (click here)

·         Does your diet reach/exceed your vitamin and mineral needs?

·         Does your diet have enough protein for your goals? (click here)

·         Does your diet contain at least 5 portions of fruit and veg/day (as an average)?

·         Does your diet satiate you enough?
      Is your diet anti-inflammatory overall? (click here)

Think in daily/weekly terms, not individual foods

I look at this more from a weekly perspective than a daily one, and more a daily perspective than a single meal. If one day I don’t feel as hungry, I may choose to SKIP A MEAL, maybe adding those missed calories to a different day (calorie cycling) or using them to satisfy a craving later in the week. If I don’t feel like eating as much veg one day, I might take a day off, but make sure I make up for it throughout the week. Even with protein, while I used to be massively concerned that any hard earned muscle would wither away if I didn’t get exactly 160 grams of protein, it doesn’t bother me, and shouldn't concern you either, if you have to have a low protein day one day (perhaps due to social factors). As long as you don’t do it consistently, there will be no problem. And in the long run, this kind of flexibility will only do you more good than harm. When diets become too strict and we adhere to them ‘to the t’, we run the risk of burnout. We increase the chances of going off the rails and never coming back.

deprivation HAS TO catch up with you some time

Flexible guidelines versus Rigid guidelines

This is not to say that we shouldn't monitor our diet. Losing weight requires a certain level of awareness. But having rigid guidelines is a very different thing than guidelines which are flexible in nature, yet still work towards the same goal.

You should factor in some element of ‘cheating’ in a way. I have a cheat day once a week where I don’t worry about anything apart from total caloric intake. I may have a break completely from veg and fruit for one day, not hit my micronutrient targets and not get enough protein. Yet, you can be assured that I will make up for it during the week.

"Planned diet breaks are much more beneficial and productive than unplanned ones"

Even during the week, when I am filling my daily dietary needs, I may have a daily small treat, such as a cup of hot cocoa, if it fits into my overall diet and stays within the guidelines.

for a small cheat, hot chocolate is actually very nutritious

check out the mineral profile of 28 grams of cocoa here (adjust the drop down menu to say 28g)

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/sweets/7435/2

Also high in fibre, and the saturated fat is actually the type that is good for your health

This approach has led me to find highly nutritious food choices with smaller caloric densities, which enables me to gain all of my nutrition within a smaller caloric amount. This leaves a few more calories for me to spare to treat myself with what I am craving, or to fill it with more caloric dense foods in other areas (such as having a home cooked steak with all the fat, instead of a lean chicken breast.

In summary

So, the condensed idea here is, be flexible in your approach to dieting. Have guidelines, but don’t be afraid to shift those around in ways that you feel fit to meet your needs in the moment. Approach dieting from a positive standpoint, with the view of ADDING nutrition within your guidelines, rather than taking away foods you enjoy. You will likely find you eat less of the foods you wished to ‘ban’ anyway, but you will still have the option available to you.

If you enjoyed this and feel someone can benefit from it, please feel free to share on twitter/facebook etc, and don't forget to check back here for more articles. Next time, I will talk about some low calorie nutritious foods which will help you fill your dietary needs easier, leaving you more calories for other things. 

The Late night eating / Breakfast myths

You know this person; the health nut that eats a healthy, hearty breakfast every morning to boost their day, then freaks out when that clock hits 8pm. Once that digital clock throws up 20:00 they shut their mouth and refuse to swallow any morsel of food for fear of it going straight to the hips. Fear not, my friends, for this myth is about to get well and truly blown away.

The hypothesis goes that, as your metabolism is quicker and you are more active during the day, your body will just burn all of the breakfast off and you won’t gain any fat. Then, metabolism slows down during the night and you become less active, any food you eat is not going to be used up as readily. So this surplus of energy is going to be shuttled away to your fat stores rather than burned. Is there any truth to this? To a certain extent, yes. Does this make you fat? No, and I will explain why. But first, let’s look at how the myth started in the first place.

Ghost and ghoulies may come out at night,

but eating after 8pm doesn't have to be a horror story

Building a lie

The myth started after a study done on breakfast eaters. There was a correlation between whether someone eats breakfast and their weight, with the breakfast eaters being lower bodyweights in general. On top of this, rat studies showed that if they skipped meals and made up for it later, they would end up fatter than if they had not skipped breakfast. To add even more weight (pun intended) to their argument, a human study showed that, when dieting, those who ate most of their food at breakfast lost the most weight, the late night eaters ended up losing less weight.

All of this ‘evidence’, to the untrained eye, adds up to the idea that breakfast is a must, and eating a single grain of rice after 8pm will send you into obesity quicker than the nutty professor when his potion wears off. But it is all a big fat lie. It is perpetuated by the health industry through magazines and articles, mainly because they have nothing interesting to write about, as good nutrition is actually relatively simple in nature and doesn’t have to be complicated. But complication sells, and so do breakfast cereals when they jump on the bandwagon and push their sales through advertising and brainwashing us into the ‘benefits of breakfast’. The rise in sales of breakfast bars/granola bars is testament to the fear people have of missing breakfast. And when I tell people that I am a nutritionist yet I don’t eat breakfast, I wish I had a camera to record some of the shocked faces I see. I might as well have slaughtered a baby bunny rabbit in front of them with a chainsaw.   

Time to destroy this myth once and for all.

The rat study

Rats who skip breakfast and make up for it later on at night end up fatter than the ones which spread that same food over the course of the day. True enough. We, on the other hands, are not rats (shocking, I know).

Human and rat metabolisms are, surprisingly, different.

The metabolism of a rat is much much quicker and more sensitive to food patterns; this tends to be common with smaller animals. Rats have a shorter lifespan. So, relatively, a day in the life of a rat can be equivalent to a week or month for humans. So, when a rat skips a meal, it is the equivalent of us going without food for a week. As a survival mechanism, the metabolism will slow down in order to preserve energy stores. When the rat eats again, energy in does not match energy out (due to the lower metabolic rate) and so the rat gains more fat with the same energy.

But wait, a human has a different metabolism. Sure, in absence of energy, our metabolisms slow down too. But how long do we have to go without food before this happens? One hour? Three? Ten?

I have seen studies (Zauner et al, 2000 and Mansell et al, 1990) which show humans can go 48 hours without any food before we see a decline in metabolic rate. In fact, some studies show a small increase in energy expenditure initially, whilst the body releases hormones such as norepenephrine and noraderenaline, the ones which basically make you want to go out and hunt something to eat. So skipping breakfast is NOT going to send your metabolism to a grinding halt.

Breakfast study

But what about the correlation between skipping breakfast and higher body weights?

Correlation does not equal causation

This above sentence is, in my opinion, one of the most important concepts in the world to understand. It allows you to see ‘evidence’ from a different light, and apply more logical conclusions – and also allows you to be more cautious in jumping to conclusions from new studies. Read it, and make sure you understand it.

There could be a number of reasons why breakfast eaters tended to weigh less. People who are into health have generally been brainwashed into the idea of ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’. As a result, people who tend to exercise, be more aware of calories, eat healthier foods and have more of a vested interest in how they look will also eat breakfast. It is more likely that it is these other things which make them weigh less, and it has nothing to do with the fact they eat breakfast.

If we were to tell people that drinking your own urine makes you weigh less and be healthier (bare with me here) then there would, once word gets out, be a very clear correlation between body weight and urine drinking. Why? Because only the most die-hard health nuts who are obsessed with their body weights would do it. As a result, in a survey of people who drink/do not drink their own urine, there would be a higher number of people with lower bodyweights who do partake in this bizarre act. Yet, it is quite obvious that it is not the urine drinking which has caused the lower bodyweights.

On the flip side, there could be a number of reasons for why heavier people tended to ‘not’ eat breakfast. I put the word ‘not’ in inverted commas because it is likely that a lot of obese people, in an attempt to cover up the amount of food they eat, would report that they don’t eat breakfast. They may even forget that coffee with ten sugars and 500 calories of creamer (and the donut to accompany it) that they grab from the gas station on the way to work. On top of that, these breakfast skippers may make up for it in the night by eating more calories than they should. It is the fact they are eating more calories as a total which makes them gain weight, not when they eat the calories. Also, breakfast skippers tend to not care so much about their health (if they did, they probably would have bought into the myth that eating breakfast is healthy), so they will probably fill their day with poor food choices. It is not that these poor food choices are the cause of the obesity, but more that they are easy to eat more of (and THIS is what makes them gain weight).

On top of this, this was data which relies on the self reporting of people’s food intakes. People are notoriously poor at remembering how much and how often and when they ate. Most people can easily misjudge the amount of calories in food by under/overestimating by 100%. I have regularly seen people who claim to only eat 2000 calories a day – and then watch them scoff down 3,000 before dinner. So self reported intakes are poor at best.

And the dieters?

This one is my favourite. This study showed that when two groups of dieters with the same calorie allowance were split into two groups (those who ate the majority of their food at night, and those who ate the majority of food at breakfast), the breakfast eaters lost more weight. However, when you actually look past the abstract of the study and delve into the article, you see that there is something very interesting.

The reason why the late night eaters lost less weight is because they lost less lean body mass. As we know, muscle tissue weighs more than fat tissue (for the amount of energy in that tissue). So we actually see a phenomenon where the late night eaters lost MORE BODY FAT, yet weighed more at the end of the study because they had retained more muscle. This may be important because lean body mass preservation is vital if you want a toned look, and may also help with maintenance of metabolism in the long run. So we can see that, contrary to the myth that late night eating is detrimental to body composition, it may actually serve a BENEFIT.

Put that in your breakfast eating pipes and smoke it.

This could be down to improved nutrient partitioning through heightened anabolic processes occurring at night, although that is pure speculation on my behalf. There is now a small subset of fitness enthusiasts who are aware of this above fact and practice something called ‘carb-backloading’ where they eat the majority of their carbohydrates in the evening, in an attempt to lose as much body fat and retain as much lean body mass as possible. Whilst I personally believe there may be something to it, the benefits can easily get blown out of proportion, and I will tend to be more conservative in my conclusions about this until more evidence comes through.

Logic

So not only have we blown the evidence for eating breakfast and not eating late at night away, but we have actually flipped it on its head and claimed that eating later at night may be more beneficial. But let’s just look at this from a logical perspective for a moment. Imagine two people at opposite ends of the spectrum, both eating just one massive meal a day. One person eats their meal first thing in the morning, the other person eats their meal just before they go to bed. For arguments sake, let’s just say they both have a 2000 calorie/day metabolism.

• The morning eater eats their 2000 calorie meal for breakfast
• As they are more active during this time, more of it is burned off as it enters the bloodstream. Let’s give this group the benefit of the doubt and say that 1,500 calories goes towards fuelling their metabolism and the remaining 500 calories are stored away as fat.
• After all that food is digested (probably much later that day), their body needs more fuel for metabolic processes. To be exact, it needs another 500 calories (as we have already provided 1500 calories from our food towards their 2000 calorie metabolism.
• They get this from the fat stores and so end up in equilibrium (500 calories of fat stored, 500 calories burned).

Our late night eater eats nothing throughout the day, but their metabolism is still running. So their body has to rely mainly on fat stores to fuel metabolic processes at this time. So, throughout the day, they burn 1500 calories of fat.

• Late at night, they have their feast. 2000 calories of food comes in.
• As their metabolism is slower at this time, they only burn 500 calories of it as it enters the blood.
• The remaining 1500 calories get shuttled away to fat stores.
• This person also ends up in fat equilibrium because although they stored more fat during the night (1500 calories), they also burned more fat during the day (1500 calories) when they weren’t eating.

So we can see from this that the main thing we should be concerned about is the total amount of calories in a day rather than when we eat those calories. Now, if skipping breakfast had the effect of lowering metabolism throughout the day, this may not be true. But we have seen from the studies by Zauner et al etc that this is not true.

If late night eating makes you consume more total calories

in the day, then it can make you gain weight. But if you just

eat the same amount of calories per day, no problem

Tested in the field

We are now seeing a backlash against these myths. A lot of hardcore fitness fanatics (myself included) are practicing something called intermittent fasting, a method brought to popularity by Martin Berkhan of Leangains fame ( www.leangains.com ), Brad Pilon (author of Eat stop Eat) and extensively tested by the well renowned John Berardi PhD ( www.precisionnutrition.com ). The general premise is meal skipping, either by skipping a day of eating entirely (as in Eat Stop Eat) or skipping breakfast (as in Leangains). People are achieving great successes in changing their body composition for the better by going against the grain of conventional wisdom.

Whether this method is actually better than conventional wisdom is debatable. There is potential for better nutrient partitioning (more nutrients get directed towards muscle tissue post training) alongside even more exiting health benefits, such as lowered inflammation levels and, dare I say it, potential life extension. But the overall message I am trying to convey in this article is to be more relaxed about things.

Recommendations

Hopefully, this article will have opened your eyes a little and helped free you to make better choices. If you don’t feel like eating breakfast one day, or ever, then don’t. Listen to your body, get out of the typical ‘breakfast, lunch, dinner’ societal brainwashing and just eat when you feel like it. You don’t have to eat breakfast like a king and dinner like a pauper, and you don’t have to seal your mouth when darkness comes. I eat nothing for breakfast and occasional have huge amounts of carbohydrates and calories very late at night, and I have not had a problem getting down to 6% body fat in the past using these strategies, as are many others.

Hopefully, you will now have lost the fear associated with late night eating,

and are now free to enjoy meals out with friends, without fear of ballooning.

But, if you’re an athlete looking to maximize performance, maybe eating breakfast is a good thing for you (maybe not, you could test it yourself). If you struggle to sleep at night whilst digesting food, then maybe eating more through the day and less at night would suit you. If you feel like you can’t go without breakfast or you will die, go ahead and eat some breakfast. However, I used to think the same. Your body will get used to breakfast skipping in time, and you will no longer feel the light headedness and blood sugar crash when you give your body time to retrain itself – if that is what you wish.

Do what you feel is right for you. This article, being the flexible diet, is written to open you up to flexibility of when you eat. Have more freedom now with this newfound knowledge. Just make sure you keep track of daily/weekly calories, and don’t make up for skipping breakfast by eating more than your daily allowance of calories in the night.