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Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

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Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#101
post #38

I have skipped breakfast since college when I was much more concerned about bulking up. I drink two coffees and that gets me through til lunch. I’ve never really considered alternatives to this routine. If I wanted to experiment with breakfasts what do people recommend eating? The priority would be energy levels, and mental clarity since I tend to work better in the morning.

The "endless eggs" are somewhat of an Americanism but you can try that. If you want to be a little more cosmopolitan, most regions have some tradition or other of a morning porridge -- barley porridge in Nepal, rice as congee in China, a millet porridge called hausa koko in Ghana all come to mind. The American version of this is the morning oatmeal.

Europeans sometimes have patterns of eating yogurt or quark, typically with fruit slices and muesli. On the other hand I have a bunch of Dutch relatives, they mostly eat untoasted bread spread with butter and topped with either a meat or cheese or sprinkles (fruity sugar sprinkles or chocolate sprinkles or bigger chocolate flakes).

The classic American southern farmer's breakfast was biscuits and gravy. The biscuits are fluffy and bready while the gravy is a white sausage gravy, rich, milky, buttery, peppery, with chunks of sausage. Libby's makes a good can of this stuff, but you should add some cayenne or hot pepper flakes or both. "Sticks to your bones" while you go out to the fields, I think there's something to the refined grains of the biscuits giving you short-term energy so that you don't feel bogged down, while the oils and meats set you up to have longer-term energy as the day winds on.

You're asking about food but maybe I'd mention something about patterns... Back when I was a Tibetan Buddhist I got to know some monks. Apparently the ancient history of mendicants in India was that they'd go door-to-door begging for whatever food the people in their neighborhood would offer them. Now, in the present day, where conditions are different -- the monks "beg" from the monastery which is staffed by lay practitioners who manage the money and purchase food and so forth.

But a lot of the monastic rules simulate that earlier lifestyle. For example, the monks I met were not allowed to sleep on any sort of mattress, because the earlier mendicants slept on the ground outside. And where this gets interesting is that they also have to eat all their food by noon, "otherwise we'd have no time for meditation." (We also speculated that maybe Indian mendicants didn't want to be perceived as greedy, so if they could get a solid meal maybe they didn't push their luck.) I think this only applied to solid foods -- Tibetans traditionally drink a butter tea, which is exactly what it sounds like, tea leaves that we'd regard as way-way-way oversteeped, churned together with yak butter and salt, and I think they were allowed to drink this in the afternoon. Similarly I think a bowl of broth would have been okay for dinner as long as it didn't have solids in it?

But yeah, suggests a large population of folks living for a long time without dinner, and I think I even have a vague memory of the Dalai Lama commenting one of his times in the USA about how it's much harder to be obese if you don't have the concept of dinner. (Although I can imagine as he said those words, probably all the fat monks he has ever known flashed before his eyes, haha.) And like I said, I think the usual starting meal is a sort of barley porridge and then for lunch a "dal bhat" - a spiced dish of rice, lentils, and at least one "vegetable" (which is in scare quotes because it could be for example potatoes). But I might just have had weird friends who liked weird things.

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#102
post #7

n=17, so read nothing into this result. Also, what they tested is having no fixed eating schedule. The effects (if any) of skipping breakfast every day consistently are not measured.

If it's clearly not worth HN readers' time, how did it get published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"? Or am I just naive in thinking published in a Journal still means something? Why did it pass peer review?

> If it's clearly not worth HN readers' time, how did it get published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"?

This comment is extremely funny.

I heard a rumour that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition might be aimed at scientists working on clinical nutrition, who could make meaningful use of this result - and not the readers of Hacker News.

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#103
post #57
post #7

n=17, so read nothing into this result. Also, what they tested is having no fixed eating schedule. The effects (if any) of skipping breakfast every day consistently are not measured.

The problem is not N=17. If the effect (difference between skipping breakfast vs dinner) was large enough, it would be obvious and significant even in a small sample. The effect seems to be very small. I agree that what is missing is to measure skipping meals for a longer time period, like a month, at least.

I have an identical twin brother; I began IF (eating only 1/3 of target calories on Mon/Fri) in 2012. We do functional similar levels of cardio, weight-training; we're both programmers, with similar hours.

Right now, I'm 1/2 taller, ~70 lbs lighter, I have ~10 lbs more LBM, blood pressure and blood work is spot on. He's got high blood pressure, and is diabetes adjacent.

I have a good friend who's an identical twin who did CFR (over 30 years, now); similar situation.

Here's the summary: getting fat is bad; losing fat is bad; being fat is deadly.

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#104
post #18
post #3

> Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity I believe them that this is correct but does anyone know why? I thought all the "intermittent fasting" folks were losing weight?

Only by way of anecdotal experience, but if I skip a meal (or worse, two) I tend towards massive overindulgence at a later meal, and I don't have an innate sense for calorie intake estimation. So I will often end up eating far more calories at the later meal than I might have skipped in the earlier one. Not at all scientific, just 2 cents.

I have been doing intermittent fasting (eating only on a window of 6 hours per day), for the past two years

At the beginning I had the same issues as you, and arrive at meal time craving for food.

After the second week though the cravings started to disappear and with it the issue of overeating on that meal. I still eat more on that single meal than in the past, but not that much.

Every person reacts in different ways, but my guess is that when the body is used to continuously process food skipping a meal is a big deal, while in the other case is just part of the routine.

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's clearly not worth HN readers' time, how did it get published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"? Or am I just naive in thinking published in a Journal still means something? Why did it pass peer review?

> If it's clearly not worth HN readers' time, how did it get published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"? This comment is extremely funny. I heard a rumour that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition might be aimed at scientists working on clinical nutrition, who could make meaningful use of this result - and not the readers of Hacker News.

That would be a strange rumour hear.

What I'm saying is, if some rando on HN can see see that the trial size is too small to be statistically significant how did it pass peer review?

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's clearly not worth HN readers' time, how did it get published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"? This comment is extremely funny. I heard a rumour that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition might be aimed at scientists working on clinical nutrition, who could make meaningful use of this result - and not the readers of Hacker News.

That would be a strange rumour hear. What I'm saying is, if some rando on HN can see see that the trial size is too small to be statistically significant how did it pass peer review?

The trial size is not too small to be statistically significant. It may warrant further investigation by scientists in the field of clinical nutrition.

However, it is too small and insignificant for Hacker News readers to make meaningful use of, and it would be incorrect for them to read anything into the results presented. That is the difference.

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#107
post #7

n=17, so read nothing into this result. Also, what they tested is having no fixed eating schedule. The effects (if any) of skipping breakfast every day consistently are not measured.

I agree that we shouldn't read much into this. But I do suspect that, if an n=17 study came to the opposite conclusions, supporters of intermittent fasting would never stop citing it.

I doubt so, since the study is not about intermittent fasting, but intermittent meal skipping at best :-).

I think that skipping a meal every once in a while, and regularly skipping meals according to a specific pattern for one, two or ten years, are completely different activities with very different outcomes

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a strange rumour hear. What I'm saying is, if some rando on HN can see see that the trial size is too small to be statistically significant how did it pass peer review?

The trial size is not too small to be statistically significant. It may warrant further investigation by scientists in the field of clinical nutrition. However, it is too small and insignificant for Hacker News readers to make meaningful use of, and it would be incorrect for them to read anything into the results presented. That is the difference.

So it's a practically baseless conjecture within the field of clinical nutrition, clinical nutritionists now publish such in peer reviewed journals, and the wider scientifically literate public have no business ease dropping on all this. Got it.

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#109
post #3

> Meal skipping has become an increasing trend of the modern lifestyle that may lead to obesity I believe them that this is correct but does anyone know why? I thought all the "intermittent fasting" folks were losing weight?

Intermittent fasting and "meal skipping" can be different, as Intermittent fasting does actually require more than just skipping a meal. It is a process for caloric reduction, if you skip 3 eggs in the morning, but then eat 6 eggs plus a sandwich at lunch you are not going to lose weight. Normally while doing Intermittent fasting, you need to fast for 16 hours or more (not the 8-12 that meal skippers normally get) an…

One can easily get 16 hours by skipping breakfast. I eat dinner at 7pm and skip breakfast and eat lunch at 12 pm. That gives me 17 hours fasting. I guess skipping lunch doesn’t give you same gap.

Re: Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

#110
The best thing I did for my health the last year or two was taking a few weeks to form the habit of cooking a substantial breakfast every day. With no affiliation for the brands:

  * 2-3 eggs
  * an Impossible breakfast sausage (bacon is fine too but the ethics of it are hard for me)
  * a bowl of Nature's Path pumpkin seed granola with whole milk
  * a cup of OJ
  * 1-3 cups of coffee for ADD-like symptoms, depending on how compressed I am with work
  * multi vitamin, "stress" B-complex with ~100% RDA (instead of 5000%), omega-3
  * zinc, low 1000s D3 for immunity a few times per week
  * something with an adaptogen like RESTOR cycled as needed, I hear that mushroom coffee substitutes like MUD\WTR are good too
I also try to have a bowl of corn or rice cereal (wheat can be inflammatory) and Orgain veggie protein before bed.

The main reason for this is that the body can't store protein for more than 4 hours before it starts going catabolic. So most athletic training generally improves with eating every 2.5-3 hours and never skipping meals.

The above menu is admittedly ableist. Conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar are primarily genetic. Unfortunately western medicine has to look at averages and make assumptions like "patients never exercise". So it's good practice to generally disregard well-meaning advice and adapt diets and workout programs to your own physiology.

I don't put any stock in intermittent fasting. It's always better to eat, even if the meal is a plain lettuce salad with little or no dressing other than an acid like vinegar diluted with water, maybe a dash of olive oil.

-- not that anyone cares, but since it's Saturday:

The best workout I have found so far is 2 working sets of 12 reps, starting with the bar and adding 40-50 pounds per warmup set, 1.5 hours every other day on a legs/chest/back/shoulders split each week. Always full range of motion, with light runner's stretch afterwards and corner or door stretches to open the chest. 5 minutes of cardio on the treadmill before workout and after stretching to warm up and flush lactic acid.

Why 12 reps? Because the "giving 110%" is built-in and it stays around a rated perceived exertion (RPE) of around 8-9 for maximum muscle growth without overtraining. I spent years plateaued at 3 sets of 8-12 reps, and 5x5 works great but with a higher risk of injury. 3 reps hacks the nervous system so sets get easier as they get heavier, but injury goes up, so I reserve those for deadlifts under ultimate concentration. A set of 20 reps at 50-60% working weight once per week 2 days before a body part overdrives work capacity and all but guarantees a 12 rep success on the later date. And 1 rep heavy singles as a warmup 40-50 pounds heavier than the working set primes the nervous system for a 12 rep success as well. So an example intermediate bench press program might look like: BARx12/95x12/135x12/185x6(reserve)/225x1/185x12x2, adding about 10 pounds to the working set every other week until another warmup set is added. Warmup rep count above 135 is usually a pyramid down from 75% or less to the heavy single to reserve endurance, for any exercise. All priming the body to expect another 50 pound set, so 1 RM PRs don't feel like they take everything you've got to achieve anymore. They might even happen next week! This might not sound like much, but the above blueprint could have saved me a decade of plateauing, so I'm writing it out for past me.

All you need is this:

https://strengthlevel.com/one-rep-max-calculator

I squat/bench/deadlift, overhead press, row and pull up more weight now at 45 than in my 20s, having never used performance-enhancing drugs. And more importantly, the high reps rebuilt my connective tissue so I'm injury-free after hurting my lower back over 2 dozen times. I feel that it's not possible to change one's weight healthily without exercise. In fact, I would say that the main struggle with weight control is around overcoming the workout avoidance and giving oneself 90 days to experience what it's like to change the body. That's where my love of working out started. Once it clicks, there's just no way to eat enough food anymore. And each day in the gym is a day younger, like aging backwards.

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