I sometimes intermittently fast for 24 hour periods, but recently I've switched to skipping breakfast, which effectively works out to be a 17 hour fast for me if I eat dinner at 6pm and have lunch at 12pm. Everyone says it's the most important meal of the day, but I haven't found convincing evidence of this(especially that which isn't sponsored by grain and sugar producers), and not having a huge insulin spike at the beginning of the day seems beneficial.
The results are profound. I'm a lot more focused and emotionally stable. The only distraction is the frequent "gotta find food" feeling, but that usually subsides within minutes. It's usually not even true hunger, but an impulse instilled in me by a culture focused on eating and "never starving".
Pro-breakfast proponents say that eating breakfast results in eating less throughout the day, but I can't say this has been true at all for myself. When I ate breakfast, I also would snack more throughout the day. Without breakfast, I look forward to meals more and those two meals, which are almost always ketogenic, are more satisfying.
The only negative effect I'm having is that my sex drive has plummeted to near-zero. I suppose that's a good thing for focusing on work, but I wouldn't want to keep that up forever.
The saddest part of that is that I heard that phrase not through overt advertising but from school.
I remember a handful of occasions in elementary school where they had someone come in and teach kids about nutrition, and the one lady told us that breakfast is the most important meal because we need to start off our day with "lots of energy". These lessons included the food pyramid, which is bad science to start with.
As kids, we were being fed corporate propaganda through government sanctioned education, and sadly I don't think the students or any of the adults at the time realized it.
My favorite trick in this vein, now I believe defunct, is "doctors recommend starting your morning with a bowl of cereal".
The trick to that, of course, is the ambiguity of recommend'. You can ask a dozen doctors if a bowl of cereal with fresh fruit is healthier than nothing at all, or a bowl of plain oatmeal; if they say yes then they "recommend cereal". The same trick still works great for things like toothpaste, where a brand might be dentist-recommended not relative to the competition but to baking soda or plain water.
Page three is what you want, and it's worth looking at for a masterclass in garbage science.
The big header gives us "A cereal breakfast. Why it’s the best way to start the day." The subhead asserts "Experts worldwide agree: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", which is somewhere between disputable and a lie. Below that is a list of wild claims like "People who regularly eat cereal tend to be less stressed, less anxious and are less likely to be depressed."
Wow! Let's see the evidence! Well, about half the studies listed appear to be directly funded by Kelloggs. Many that weren't are about breakfast in general, so "eat cereal" is a misrepresentation of "compared to skipping breakfast and eating unhealthy snacks". And they're full of hilariously poor controls - there's some fumbling with "difficulty sleeping" and a "negative job score", but ultimately the study can't discern "the benefits of eating breakfast" from "the harms of working the night shift" or "leaving at 5AM in a rush".
It's actually fascinating just how many bold, impressive claims Kelloggs manages to make without lying while relying on laughably thin evidence.
Dr. Kellogg and his brother had a business creating various supposed health products and Corn Flakes was part of that.
In 1917 a magazine called Good Health, edited by Dr. Kellogg, wrote "in many ways breakfast is the most important meal of the day". That seems to be the origin and cereal makers ran with it.
More importantly, Dr. Kellogg and his brother started two rival companies. The brother believed that sugar should be added to the formula Dr. Kellogg has been using to treat his patients.
Dr. Kellogg refused, believing sugar to be awful for the body.
Needless to say, we all know which of the two rival companies became the corporate giant, and which of the two rival companies disappeared into history. There was a big court case between the two rival brothers over the "Kellogg" name. After that, the two brothers never talked with each other for the rest of their lives.
Since the two were brothers, it is somewhat ambiguous to who really invented modern cereal. But Dr. Kellogg was the health-fanatic who would have been studying "healthy breakfasts" and other such stuff.
EDIT: It should be noted that 1890s / early 1900s medical science was downright awful. So definitely take any health claims from that era with suspicion. Be sure to look up "sanatoriums" and how awful their medical practices / beliefs were. There's probably a nugget of truth somewhere in Dr. Kellogg's research, but you've gotta look at his claims through the lens of history to really understand him.
The current insanity also grew out of commercials promoting the idea that you needed to spend big for this holiday. Historically, Christmas gifts were basically for children and poor people and the rest of it could be handled as a social get together based on a big meal and/or attending some kind of spiritual/religious thing. It wasn't some obligation to bleed yourself to participate in some out-of-control spending ritual in order to not be on the outs socially with everyone you know.
> Pro-breakfast proponents say that eating breakfast results in eating less throughout the day, but I can't say this has been true at all for myself.
Another sample size of 1, but I had the same experience. Eating or not eating breakfast has no apparent impact on my hunger at lunchtime. (Not eating dinner the night before, however, does, so I'm hardly immune to hunger. I wish)
> The only negative effect I'm having is that my sex drive has plummeted to near-zero
Yeah, it's funny because I eat plenty of eggs and fat, which have constituents used by the body to produce hormones like testosterone. If anything, I'd expect the opposite effect but I haven't read any literature on the effects it can have on libido, so I'm not sure what's typical.
Are you a skinny person? I've read people under a certain body% fat can have lower sex drive as the body is signaling to them that they do not have enough nutrients to spare/procreate.
Could be made up but sounds like a plausible theory to me.
People describe me as "skinny" or "slender", but I've got a fair amount of muscle and still some fat left over from when I was overweight.(I dropped over 60 lbs from 2013 to 2015 and have stayed at around 160 lbs) But I don't have calipers and haven't measured my body fat percentage, so I guess that'd be a good thing to figure out.
> Why would you wish such a thing? Being hungry and then eating is one of the nicest things in life.
"hunger is the best sauce" - yes, I agree. Several years ago, I even made a similar comment to yours when I discovered a coworker disliked eating. But that was 50 pounds ago and I was overweight then.
Now I find that a lot of pleasures of the world are less pleasurable because I'm fat. Eating less (and appropriately, but still less) is the key component to not being fat, but that's hard because I'm hungry. I wish to continue to eat, and to enjoy eating, but I'll happily give up that extra burst of enjoyment while eating for the benefits I'd get in the rest of my life - both from the better health and the reduced unhappiness of wanting to eat.
Thanks for the response! Still, I wonder what we as society get so wrong. People used to eat whatever they wanted (and was available) whenever they wanted and not be fat. I recently watched the original woodstock 69 footage. There are zero fat people there.
For all I know it may have nothing to do with eating.
There's a big difference between "eating when you want" and having an active lifestyle that restricts eating naturally, versus binging TV on the couch with junk food 10 feed away.
Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men
That's 3000 calories per month, or almost 10 lbs of fat per year.
I agree. Purely anecdotal from me too, but I feel so much more productive when I fast 16/8. I stopped feeling ravenously hungry after the first couple of days, and frequently fast for longer than the 16 hours in a single cycle.
I naturally fell into this routine when I started working. A coffee around 9am then lunch around noon is plenty for me. I also never snack naturally (if it's there I can't stop myself, so I just don't take anything to my desk).
The only problem is lately I work from home and I can schedule some gym time into my day. A hard workout before that first meal is very hit or miss. Some days it's fine - some days I'll be light-headed and feel physically sick. It passes quickly though if I monitor my effort.
If it works for you, sure. Interesting, I often eat a big but healthy breakfast and then eat nothing for the rest of the day, and that works really well for me.
Everyone's a bit different and have their own preferences. I just think that the idea that everyone must eat breakfast(or any meal), and eat it promptly, is bogus.
A better general rule, I think, is that people should only eat when they're actually hungry. That could be in the morning or any time. I have an empty stomach in the morning(waking up around 6pm), but I don't usually feel hunger until between 10:30a and 12pm.
Even better, people should avoid the usual breakfast foods that are high in sugar and low in beneficial fats. I would only discourage people from eating breakfast if they're going to regularly eat foods that spike insulin and not exercise enough to compensate, in which case I believe they're setting themselves up for failure in the long term. A healthy breakfast, on the other hand, isn't harmful by any stretch of the imagination.
You’re right, but the problem is that most people have forgotten what real hunger feels like. They confuse “hormone dependence” from years of eating carb heavy meals with actual hunger.
The easiest way to retrain yourself is to stick to simple rules about when to eat (and what to eat).
From what I've read in some research, this actually might be slightly more optimal, in terms of timing metabolism and circadian rhythms, etc. However, socially, skipping breakfast is easier, because the alternative (in order to get 16+ hours of fasting in) is to skip dinner, which might be weird for family or friends. The tradeoff is probably minor.
> The only negative effect I'm having is that my sex drive has plummeted to near-zero.
Are you eating enough healthy fats? (whole eggs, avocados etc). Also maybe look into ZMA (zinc, magnesium aspartate, and vitamin B6) supplementation or at least get your blood work done to see if you are low on anything. A lot of people have lower testosterone levels and sex drive due to low zinc.
It rather depends upon what one has for Breakfast.
I'll have a quarter pound steak (sirloin or ribeye), with veggies at 7am, and then not eat again until 6-7pm, when I'll have something light (say salad).
No lack of energy during the day, no cravings. However this does tend to mean that one is largely running on burning fat during the day.
you write that you started this regimen "recently". possibly your body is still adapting to it. initially the effect is weakening to some extent. after a while - provided a healthy diet and body - this should change and make you feel stronger and more vital.
My hypothesis is that, when the body is in a survival or self-repair mode, libido is placed on the backburner because it's just not that important to individual survival. If the body isn't seeking food, reproduction takes a higher priority. Someone else here was talking about how it might be related to a low body fat percentage, which would play into this hypothesis, and I am a fairly skinny guy(not scrawny or lanky, though).
The results are profound. I'm a lot more focused and emotionally stable. The only distraction is the frequent "gotta find food" feeling, but that usually subsides within minutes. It's usually not even true hunger, but an impulse instilled in me by a culture focused on eating and "never starving".
Pro-breakfast proponents say that eating breakfast results in eating less throughout the day, but I can't say this has been true at all for myself. When I ate breakfast, I also would snack more throughout the day. Without breakfast, I look forward to meals more and those two meals, which are almost always ketogenic, are more satisfying.
The only negative effect I'm having is that my sex drive has plummeted to near-zero. I suppose that's a good thing for focusing on work, but I wouldn't want to keep that up forever.