The Controversial Diet Everyone's Talking About
Supporters of eating breakfast argue that since insulin sensitivity is higher in the morning, eating a carbohydrate-rich breakfast is going to have the greatest balance of taking in a large amount of energy without the danger of weight gain.
This brings us back to IF. You see, insulin sensitivity isn't higher in the morning; it's higher after the 8-to-10 hour fasting period that you experience when you sleep. More specifically, insulin sensitivity is higher when glycogen levels are depleted, and liver glycogen is somewhat depleted during your sleeping fast.
Intermittent fasting takes that a step further: It seems that extending the fasting period beyond that 8 to 10 hours by skipping breakfast (and, therefore, further depleting glycogen) will increase insulin even further.
Insulin sensitivity is also increased post exercise (due to further glycogen depletion in addition to other mechanisms), thus, in many cases IF proponents suggest compounding benefits by training in a fasted state and then having a carbohydrate-rich meal immediately following your workout.
Ultimately, this all means that there's nothing special about breakfast and that there's no need to eat first thing in the morning — the first meal you eat to break your fast will be exposed to the benefits of increased insulin sensitivity.
A discussion that mentions skipping breakfast, or any meal, really, will invariably lead into a discussion of meal frequency, which leads us to our next point.
The Myth of Six MealsIt seems that over the past 15 to 20 years, hundreds of diet books have been printed and no two are identical. In fact, many of them have been in direct opposition.
Calorie-restrictive plans like Weight Watchers certainly don't agree with plans like the Atkins diet, the first iteration of which allowed dieters to eat all they wanted as long as they kept carbs low.
Similarly, carb-conscious plans generally call for products like yogurt or cottage cheese to be used as portable sources of protein, but many plans to reject dairy products altogether.
Despite the incredibly disparate nature of so many of these diets, the one thing that has been consistently suggested in most books published over the past 20 years is the frequency of meals. If you've ever read a diet book, seen a nutritionist or hired a personal trainer you've probably been told that in order to lose weight, you need to eat five to six small meals per day (this suggestion is sometimes phrased as three meals and two snacks).
This style of eating, commonly referred to as the frequent feeding model, is popular with everyone from dietitians to bodybuilders and has been repeated so often for so long that it's generally taken as fact.
Which it isn't.
In fact, the reputed benefits of eating small meals more often have never been scientifically validated.
More on this, next...