Eating breakfast has become so commonplace throughout the health and fitness community that it’s readily accepted as fact, and, to be fair, there’s evidence to back it up; studies show that eating earlier in the day helped participants to lose more weight than those who ate later in the day or skipped a meal. So breakfast equals wellness, case closed…right? While the evidence is there, it’s always important to look at the whole story and ask whether there’s research to support – wait for it – skipping breakfast for optimum efficiency, maximum muscle retention, and body fat loss. Skipping meals isn’t often cited as a good way to enhance your wellbeing, but intermittent fasting turns a lot of conventional wisdom on its head. This is why the topic has become quite controversial, but let’s look at the facts before choosing a side.
What is intermittent fasting? Rather than being a diet per se, intermittent fasting is a dieting pattern. You basically make a conscious decision to skip certain meals, fasting and feasting on purpose. With this eating plan, you don’t cut out calories and deprive yourself, but rather consume your calories during a specific window of the day, and choose not to eat food during the rest. You either do this by regularly eating during a specific time period (so, for example, only eating from noon to eight in the evening) or by skipping two meals on one day, taking a full 24-hours off from eating. This may mean you eat on a normal schedule and finish dinner at eight in the evening, but then don’t until the same time the following day.
How does intermittent fasting work? When you eat something, your body spends a few hours burning what it can into the blood stream so you can use it as energy rather than store it as fat. This is especially true if you just consumed carbohydrates or sugar, as your body prefers to burn sugar as energy before any other source. However, if you’re in a fasting state, your body doesn’t have a recent meal to use for energy, so will turn to your body fat to burn up.
But what about eating six small meals throughout the day? It seems almost health book or article you read will recommend eating six small meals a day for weight loss. This is based on a theory that eating all day long will mean your body is constantly burning extra calories and your metabolism is firing at optimal capacity. However, whether you eat 2000 calories in three big chunks or 2000 calories in six little ones, your body will burn the same number of calories processing the food, and will burn the food you eat, rather than fat. It’s true that eating smaller meals can make you less likely to overeat, but eating six times a day is very prohibitive and requires a lot of effort, making it a difficult dieting strategy to maintain.
Why intermittent fasting? Although all calories are not created equal, caloric restriction plays a central role in weight loss. Whether you’re fasting for 16 hours a day or for 24 hours every few days, you’re making it easier to reduce your caloric intake over the course of the week. This gives you a chance to lose weight as you’re simply just eating less calories than you were consuming before. Plus, intermittent fasting just simplifies your day. You don’t need to prepare, pack eat and time your meals every two to three hours; you simply skip a meal or two and only worry about eating food in your eating window.
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