Dual Dove
Scientists and nutritionists try to keep up with all the new revelations people that sell weight-loss sell to their naive followers. That is if the scientists and nutritionists aren’t the ones who are changing the rules for the same purpose. One of the punished habits in the last decade was breakfast.
Modern diets ‘dethroned’ breakfast
Since forever considered the most important meal of the day, for both health and losing weight considerations, breakfast was replaced with the famous fasting. Borrowed from the treatment of refractory epilepsy in children, the ketogenic diet became a star among the losing weight diet.
The ketogenic diet and its shadows
The popular diet relies on induced ketosis, a metabolic state characterized by elevated levels of ketone bodies in the blood or urine. The ketosis, in the ketogenic losing weight diet, is induced by a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet and fasting up to 16 hours. To better endure the fasting part, ketogenic diet followers were recommended to start fasting at 8 in the evening and skip the next morning breakfast.
So, breakfast had to be proven an unnecessary meal, if not a bad guy for weight and health. All the myths surrounding the first meal of the day were shattered, breakfast was exiled, and fasting became the new king. Of course, it had to pay its debts to another ex-villain: dinner. Suddenly, dinner could be a gargantuan meal, loathing with high-fat. And, surprisingly, people started losing weight.
New studies on the significance of breakfast
The truth has a way of rising when you least expect. Studies made on the repercussions of ketosis and fasting aren’t at all shiny: obesity and diabetes. The two new studies about skipping breakfast aren’t shiny either. The analysis published this week in Clinical Nutrition concluded that not eating breakfast regularly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and death.
One of the studies concentrated on the impact a large dinner has on the body, compared to the effect a large breakfast has. The study’s conclusions are definite: eating a big breakfast and a smaller dinner, you have a much better chance of shedding pounds — and you might reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, too.
What the preachers of ketosis forget to talk about are our bodies’ circadian rhythms, and how fasting affects them. A circadian rhythm is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. They allow organisms to anticipate and prepare for precise and regular environmental changes.
They enable organisms to better capitalize on environmental resources such as light and food. Circadian rhythms put organisms at a selective advantage in evolutionary terms. Rhythmicity appears to be as important in regulating and coordinating internal metabolic processes, as in coordinating with the environment.
Middle ground
Still, each body has its ways, and they should be followed. If you are a healthy adult, and your body has adapted to skipping breakfast, then you can go on with the habit. Also, if you must keep with the fasting, then find the middle-ground: start it at 8 PM, stop at 8 AM, and have your breakfast. Twelve hours is enough time for ketosis to be installed.
