Intermittent fasting and skipping breakfast

e_v_v
e_v_v Posts: 131 Member
edited November 16 in Health and Weight Loss
I starting doing a 16:8 IMF protocol about 3 weeks ago. I fast from 8pm to noon, and then eat from noon to 8pm. This is literally the only time frame that works with my schedule. It has been working well for me so far. However, I can't help but feel torn about not eating breakfast in the morning. Isn't it the most important meal of the day to fuel your body and get your metabolism going?

I guess I'm wondering if anyone could give me some insight and information on the benefits of IMF and whether it's worth skipping breakfast for or not. Also curious... since your body is fasting, doesn't it take in whatever food it finally receives and stores it as fat since your body might be thinking it's in starvation mode?

So many IMF myths! Help!
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Replies

  • Shawshankcan
    Shawshankcan Posts: 900 Member
    "Most important meal of the day" is either an old wives tale or a tag line created by the bacon and egg industry.
  • heiliskrimsli
    heiliskrimsli Posts: 735 Member
    Alatariel75 wrote: »
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    Shawshankcan wrote: »
    "Most important meal of the day" is either an old wives tale or a tag line created by the bacon and egg industry.

    It actually seems to have been the cereal industry, as @janejellyroll said. One of several articles about it: https://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/

    Immediate stand out from that article "...product invented by men like John Harvey Kellogg, a deeply religious doctor who believed that cereal would both improve Americans’ health and keep them from masturbating and desiring sex. "

    I've never felt better about skipping breakfast.

    He was definitely a kook, and pushed a lot of things for that reason. Including one of the most common neonatal medical procedures done to infant boys in the United States to this day.
  • afatpersonwholikesfood
    afatpersonwholikesfood Posts: 577 Member
    Skipping breakfast worked for me for quite awhile. I eat it now because I've become accustomed to it, and I'm trying to follow a 3 meals-a-day routine at the moment.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Alatariel75 wrote: »
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    Shawshankcan wrote: »
    "Most important meal of the day" is either an old wives tale or a tag line created by the bacon and egg industry.

    It actually seems to have been the cereal industry, as @janejellyroll said. One of several articles about it: https://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/

    Immediate stand out from that article "...product invented by men like John Harvey Kellogg, a deeply religious doctor who believed that cereal would both improve Americans’ health and keep them from masturbating and desiring sex. "

    I've never felt better about skipping breakfast.

    If you haven't, you should read Road to Wellville (there's a movie too, but I have not seen it). The old NYT review is still assessible: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/08/home/boyle-wellville.html
    It is 1907 and the reader is invited to contemplate the inventor of cornflakes, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Mich., a paragon of clean living who prescribes for the patients in his sanitarium not one but five enemas every single day, as well as a diet featuring nut butter, grapes, milk, a mysterious substance called Protose and a drink called kumyss (which, according to one reluctant diner, "smelled like a wet dog"). The patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium (known to devotees simply as the San) include the usual gaggle of the wealthy and influential: "On the horizon were visits by Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Thomas Edison, Admiral Richard E. Byrd and the voluminous William Howard Taft." It does not escape the doctor that his fortune and power owe much to their faith in him. But Dr. Kellogg is a man of convictions, too, and part of Mr. Boyle's purpose is to explore the workings of such deeply held beliefs.

    EVERY religion needs a skeptic, and for the religion of "biologic living," the author provides Will Lightbody, a wealthy young man from Peterskill, N.Y., who follows his wife, Eleanor, to Battle Creek, partly to protect his marriage and partly to seek relief from his own affliction, a gut that sings with pain every time he takes a bite. Will is a victim of earlier misguided home medication: in an attempt to wean him from drink, Eleanor has been surreptitiously dosing him with Sears' White Star Liquor Cure, which turns out to be tincture of opium. To break himself of his narcotic habit, he goes back to Old Crow. By the time he arrives at the San, Will is "just one more sick man in a wheelchair," watching his wife flirt with her doctor. Kellogg diagnoses Will's problem as "autointoxication" and prescribes a regimen of fasting, exercise, enemas and "sinusoidal" baths (wherein an electric current is passed through the patient's body while his hands and feet are immersed in water)....
  • staticsplit
    staticsplit Posts: 538 Member
    I hardly ever eat breakfast unless I actually wake up really hungry. Usually don't feel the need to eat until 11 or 12, even if I get up at 8. Eat when you like.
  • lauracups
    lauracups Posts: 533 Member
    I just feel better all around if I don't eat before exercise, so by time I get to that first meal it's after 11 at the earliest. I found it helps decrease my appetite for the remainder of the day postponing that first meal. All for I.F.
  • diezel67
    diezel67 Posts: 97 Member
    Works for you go with it.
  • PinkamenaD8
    PinkamenaD8 Posts: 99 Member
    Yep breakfast importance is a myth, like the eating timing. I don't know the benefits of IF but for weight loss the only considerable variable is the CICO.

    Starvation response only activates over long periods of low calorie restriction like a survival situation so you shouldn't worry about it. You can eat 1 meal a day like Ironandwine69 and still have a healty metabolism.

    There are many studies about the food timming and weight lost. I posted this recently http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2014/06/04/ajcn.114.089573.abstract
  • lynnbaum
    lynnbaum Posts: 310 Member
    I am feeling a lot better about skipping breakfast after reading these post. I do break the fast with coffee. I just like to kick back and enjoy quiet time with dear husband with a cup of coffee. Coffee on the deck in the morning or around the campfire with friends. I have to think the last time I had cereal in the morning. I do like frosted mini wheats when driving or if you want a snack. Replacement for high sugar item because it is a high sugar item. No milk I like them dry. I too don't really eat till 10 or 11 and then I could have a pc. of fruit.
  • canadianlbs
    canadianlbs Posts: 5,199 Member
    Alatariel75 wrote: »
    who believed that cereal would both improve Americans’ health and keep them from masturbating and desiring sex. "

    well, it's hard to do with a spoon in one hand.

    i've been both ways. i used to be able to get up and go until past lunchtime on coffee (with lots of milk), but lifting killed that. now it's more like 'food must be eaten, or else.' otoh, these days i take a huge pile of food in to work and just eat all day long to get through it all, so i only make dinner a few times a week.

    not a policy i.f.-er, but it seems to be happening indirectly just as a side-effect of my current life.

  • annaskiski
    annaskiski Posts: 1,212 Member
    GiddyupTim wrote: »
    Actually, I have heard that nutritionists now tend to view breakfast as almost a kind of misconception, actually.
    Your caveman ancestors had no refrigerator. So they had nothing to open when they rose in the morning.
    So, if they woke up and wanted to eat, they would spend some time gathering or hunting first.
    The idea now is that that is the most natural way for the first meal -- after some kind of activity, not before.
    In addition, though some here have said that "your metabolism works 24 hours a day," your blood glucose levels do rise during the night, anticipating that you are not eating for a while. Nutritionists say that, therefore, first thing in the AM might be the worst time to eat: when your relevant hormone levels are low, your blood glucose is high, and you have been inactive.
    Unfortunately, I do not have a good reference for this. But I have seen it discussed a few different places.
    PS This is not a reference. But it is an article that discusses breakfast and intermittent fasting, and the authors conclude there may be benefits. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4042085/

    That was very interesting, thank you!
  • warrrn69
    warrrn69 Posts: 42 Member
    Like previous posters have said, it all comes down to the individual as to if it is effective for you or not. Don't buy into the breakfast is the most Important / starving mode *kitten*. To put it simply IF has proven to work and not work depending on the individual, so I recommend sticking with it to see if it works for you. for me personally it fits my lifestyle great and yields results.
  • Suzanne_the_foot_lady
    Suzanne_the_foot_lady Posts: 222 Member
    tomteboda wrote: »
    I think breakfast is important for people with low blood sugar problems and children. Everyone else can skip it if they wish.

    Unless you have reactive hypoglyceamia, then eating breakfast and skipping lunch is a nightmare.
    I just start eating when I get hungry. Sometimes I have breakfast and sometimes Not, often my breakfast will actually be a banana at 11am.
    Find your own routine that works for You, and stick to it.
  • EatingAndKnitting
    EatingAndKnitting Posts: 531 Member
    GiddyupTim wrote: »
    Actually, I have heard that nutritionists now tend to view breakfast as almost a kind of misconception, actually.
    Your caveman ancestors had no refrigerator. So they had nothing to open when they rose in the morning.
    So, if they woke up and wanted to eat, they would spend some time gathering or hunting first.
    The idea now is that that is the most natural way for the first meal -- after some kind of activity, not before.
    In addition, though some here have said that "your metabolism works 24 hours a day," your blood glucose levels do rise during the night, anticipating that you are not eating for a while. Nutritionists say that, therefore, first thing in the AM might be the worst time to eat: when your relevant hormone levels are low, your blood glucose is high, and you have been inactive.
    Unfortunately, I do not have a good reference for this. But I have seen it discussed a few different places.
    PS This is not a reference. But it is an article that discusses breakfast and intermittent fasting, and the authors conclude there may be benefits. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4042085/

    It is true that your blood sugar levels ruse before dawn. This is known as the "dawn phenomenon" to diabetics, where their sugar is high in the morning despite no food, sometimes higher than when you go to bed.

    Your blood sugar drops at night and then a couple hours before dawn your liver dumps glucose into your blood stream to prepare you for the energy intensive act of waking up and starting your day. Healthy people this is fine, but it can be a problem for a diabetic.

    I can provide links on the subject of anyone wants more info. I don't have any handy, but I can find them again. A nurse told me this when I was a hospital one and my sugar was high one morning for no reason, and Google searches seemed to confirm that it's a thing.
  • evilpoptart63
    evilpoptart63 Posts: 397 Member
    I personally have been fasting from 7pm-11am and love it!! Im not naturally hungry in the morning so its not a problem and I enjoy eating all of my food in a shorter window because Im hardly ever hungry. Ive lost weight with and without IMF but I find this to be a more comfortable eating pattern and my losses didnt slow down when I stopped forcing myself to eat breakfast :)
  • Tweaking_Time
    Tweaking_Time Posts: 733 Member
    I never really consider what I do as fasting, but I try not to snack after supper...so I am essentially fasting from 6:30 PM until about 6:00 AM. Snacking after supper puts on the pounds for me.

    P.S. Drinking wine or bourbon during this time does not count against fasting ;-)
  • lindalester
    lindalester Posts: 16 Member
    I am keto carb and intermittent fasting. I have lost 60 lbs so far and need to lose at least that much more. My hubby has been able to drop all blood pressure pills and all diabetes (8) pills as a result. I am committed as there is less inflammation for me and less pills for hubby.
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