Time between first and last meal?

Contrary to the above posters, there is evidence that since the body releases certain hormones (ie. insulin) when digesting a meal there are indeed benefits from increasing time between meals. All 6 fat burning hormones are completely blocked by this hormone insulin. This is why Intermittent Fasting has become a popular topic as of late. And since a lot of folks are insulin sensitive, this kind of break from eating is welcome.
In my own personal case i normally have a 16 hour fast window. This is simply how my lifestyle dynamics worked. Eating my last meal around 6:30 and i enjoy exercising fasted in the morning therefore not having my first meal until 10:30 or so. But i have hit a plateau and thus decided to increase that fasting time period to 20 hours and eating window to only 4 hours a day. It worked. It broke my plateau and i now have opened my eating window to 5 hours a day and fasting 19. I do not plan to stay here too long just until i get to a certain weight. My goal is to return to my previous 16/8 regimen. I should note however that i believe to be pre-diabetic and have insulin resistance but i am only self diagnosing.

TribalmamaEmily wrote: »

Contrary to the above posters, there is evidence that since the body releases certain hormones (ie. insulin) when digesting a meal there are indeed benefits from increasing time between meals. All 6 fat burning hormones are completely blocked by this hormone insulin. This is why Intermittent Fasting has become a popular topic as of late. And since a lot of folks are insulin sensitive, this kind of break from eating is welcome.
In my own personal case i normally have a 16 hour fast window. This is simply how my lifestyle dynamics worked. Eating my last meal around 6:30 and i enjoy exercising fasted in the morning therefore not having my first meal until 10:30 or so. But i have hit a plateau and thus decided to increase that fasting time period to 20 hours and eating window to only 4 hours a day. It worked. It broke my plateau and i now have opened my eating window to 5 hours a day and fasting 19. I do not plan to stay here too long just until i get to a certain weight. My goal is to return to my previous 16/8 regimen. I should note however that i believe to be pre-diabetic and have insulin resistance but i am only self diagnosing.

What are those benefits you speak of?

Also why would someone who is insulin SENSITIVE need to worry about management of insulin spikes?

TribalmamaEmily wrote: »

WOW, i didn't mean to offend anyone! Sheesh.

Agree with JanetYellen, sleep is just as important! Lots of stuff going on there with the hormones as well.

The pancreas makes insulin and insulin responds to sugar or anything that turns into sugar (ie. glucose/starch). Insulin is there to go into your cells and remove the sugar. Insulin's purpose it to LOWER the sugar. It utilizes it and all the other nutrients. The goal is 100 if reading your blood sugar levels. Anything higher or anything lower is not good. When it is reading 100, you are at your mental best. When it is high you have diabetes. When that number is low it is called hypoglycaemia (pre- diabetes state, feeling irritable when not eating.). When your body is in either of the 2 above states for too long then the body will "turn off" its' receptors, hence the term "insulin resistance". Because the cells are saying ok we have enough sugar! When this happens it forces insulin to go higher. So being IR is actually your body making too much insulin. It is your body in a time loop which eventually wears the pancreas out. And you are really in a starvation mode but some may be obese.

So the benefits i speak of are letting the body get some rest. Increasing time between meals does this. Insulin isn't being pumped out if there is nothing (food) going in. ...It will balance itself out. It is created to heal. But if you are eating round the clock and have any of the above ailments then you are never getting rid of belly fat or achieving your optimal metal and physical best.

You really need to stop self-diagnosing and by the way you seem dreadfully confused about insulin resistance and sensitivity. Best to do a little research for your own well being.

OP - eat when it suits you. What and how much you eat in terms of your overall diet matters. Timing of meals is virtually irrelevant.

@sijomial, no need for personal attacks.

I have done much research in the area of hormones and for many years. What in the above is not correct? If you are going to attack please at least have the decency to back up your words.

Timing of meals may or may not be for the OP. But in my case and the case of many others (do your own due diligence) it has worked.

TribalmamaEmily wrote: »

But i have hit a plateau and thus decided to increase that fasting time period to 20 hours and eating window to only 4 hours a day. It worked. It broke my plateau and i now have opened my eating window to 5 hours a day and fasting 19.

Is it the time you spend fasting that has helped you lose weight though, or is it because you've got less hours in the days to eat so are consequently eating less?

TribalmamaEmily wrote: »

WOW, i didn't mean to offend anyone! Sheesh.

Agree with JanetYellen, sleep is just as important! Lots of stuff going on there with the hormones as well.

The pancreas makes insulin and insulin responds to sugar or anything that turns into sugar (ie. glucose/starch). Insulin is there to go into your cells and remove the sugar. Insulin's purpose it to LOWER the sugar. It utilizes it and all the other nutrients. The goal is 100 if reading your blood sugar levels. Anything higher or anything lower is not good. When it is reading 100, you are at your mental best. When it is high you have diabetes. When that number is low it is called hypoglycaemia (pre- diabetes state, feeling irritable when not eating.). When your body is in either of the 2 above states for too long then the body will "turn off" its' receptors, hence the term "insulin resistance". Because the cells are saying ok we have enough sugar! When this happens it forces insulin to go higher. So being IR is actually your body making too much insulin. It is your body in a time loop which eventually wears the pancreas out. And you are really in a starvation mode but some may be obese.

So the benefits i speak of are letting the body get some rest. Increasing time between meals does this. Insulin isn't being pumped out if there is nothing (food) going in. ...It will balance itself out. It is created to heal. But if you are eating round the clock and have any of the above ailments then you are never getting rid of belly fat or achieving your optimal metal and physical best.

I apologize in advance if I am mean. In response to your later post, my pancreas isn't "asleep." Instead, my immune system mistakingly marked the beta cells within my pancreas as a threat (the exact mechanism is unknown -it is possibly molecular mimicry with some sort of bacterial/environmental/viral trigger combined with a genetic predisposition to a hyperactive immune system), which resulted in my beta cells being destroyed. I do not produce ANY insulin, so I therefore require insulin injections for survival. Being without insulin for as short as 4-6 hours is enough to send me into ketoacidosis, and being without it for 24 hours is long enough to potentially kill me. The beta cells only compose about 2% of the pancreas though, and other than those cells being dead my pancreas functions like a completely normal person (I still produce glucagon, somatosin, and digestive enzymes).

The beta cells within the pancreas make proinsulin (a molecule that contains insulin and c-peptide. It is eventually split to form individual insulin molecules) and amylin (a hormone responsible for satiety). Insulin has multiple functions within the body. Imagine it like a traffic guard telling cars -glucose- where to go within the body. It will first tell the glucose (from the carbohydrates/proteins we eat) to go to the cells and fill their needs; it will then bind to receptors on the cell surface which will "unlock" the transport proteins in the cell membrane in order to allow glucose to enter the cells. If there's excess glucose after this occurs, the insulin will tell the glucose to go to the liver and muscle cells to be converted and stored as glycogen (glycogen is a very long chain of glucose molecules that can be broken down to provide the body with adequate glucose whenever we're fasting). After this occurs, any insulin that's left over then goes to the adipose (fat) cells of the body to be stored as fat (a long-term energy source). These processes result in blood glucose levels being lowered.

Most nondiabetic's BG levels vary from 60-140 (when you factor in that everyone will experience a small rise in BG when eating). A person is considered prediabetic if their fasting BG is above 100mg/dL (diabetes = >126mg/dL), their oral glucose tolerance test is above 140mg/dL (diabetes = >200mg/dL), or their A1C is above 5.7% (diabetes = >6.5%). What BG level a person functions "best" at is quite interesting. I feel best at around 90-115 (my last A1C was around a 5.2%), while shortly after I was diagnosed (A1C around 11.6%, diagnosis BG 570ish) I felt completely fine if my BG was in the 300s. Someone with hypoglycemia unawareness (often if they experience hypoglycemia frequently) may not feel low if their BG is 50-70 (at these levels, many of the symptoms arise from stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, such as shakiness, hunger, cold sweats, and irritability) but instead will only feel symptoms when their BGs are in the 40s or lower (when many of the symptoms at this level come from the brain not receiving adequate glucose, such as confusion, seizures, disorientation, coma).

Someone can experience hypoglycemia without being pre-diabetic. I have also found no research that suggests chronic hypoglycemia can lead to insulin resistance.

With hypoglycemia, if blood glucose levels dip below a certain set point then the brain will tell the pancreas to release glucagon. Glucagon is a counterregulatory hormone to insulin -it will tell the liver to break down glycogen into glucose in order to raise blood glucose levels (in diabetics, a high fasting BG may be the result of the somogyi effect, which occurs when BG levels unknowingly dip low overnight, and the liver then releases a ton of glucose into the blood). Of course, it's not perfect (one of the things I need to be afraid of as a type 1 diabetic is that glucagon injections will not work if my liver is metabolizing any alcohol I consume, but alcohol also makes it so that insulin "sticks around" in my system longer and can cause me to go dangerously low).

When BG levels are chronically elevated (which can occur for many reasons, such as chronic stress, obesity, use of corticosteroids), then insulin resistance may occur. Initially, insulin levels will increase due to the insulin resistance (remember c-peptide? C peptide is often used to differentiate between type 1 diabetes and early-stage type 2. Type 1s will have very little to no c peptide, while type 2s will have normal to elevated c peptides initially). Over time, the pancreas almost becomes "burned out", which then causes the amount of insulin produced to decrease.

How is the body is "starvation mode", particularly with type 2 diabetes? When BG levels rise above renal threshold (>180mg/dL), some glucose is excreted through the urine. It's important to remember that type 2 diabetics often produce SOME insulin (versus little to NONE in type 1), so some of the metabolic mechanisms that occur in undiagnosed type 1 diabetes may be different than in type 2. In type 1 diabetes, because there's an abosolute insulin deficiency no glucose can enter the cells, so therefore the body needs to rely on catabolizing proteins/muscle and fat into fuel. The fat process is ketosis. Ketones are slighly acidic and will build up in the blood. When excess ketones build up in the blood combined with dehydration due to glucose being osmotically dense and lots of water being lost through urination, ketoacidosis can occur. In type 2 diabetes, because some glucose can still enter the cells the "keto switch" is turned off, so often type 2 diabetics don't face the immediate risk of ketoacidosis like a type 1 does. The only way I can think of "starvation mode" happening is in the instance of type 1 diabetics who lose a ton of muscle due to the undiagnosed diabetes and therefore would have a lower BMR due to the lower muscle percentage.

There are ways one can reduce their insulin resistance: weight loss and physical activity (My TDD in the weeks after diagnosis was around 40 units, while I was able to cut it by more than half -while eating more carbs- by losing 40lbs and being active). Saying that one needs to fast to improve insulin resistance is debated though -there are some type 2 diabetics I know who are able to maintain optimal BG levels while grazing (especially if they are physically active).

TribalmamaEmily wrote: »

@sijomial, no need for personal attacks.

I have done much research in the area of hormones and for many years. What in the above is not correct? If you are going to attack please at least have the decency to back up your words.

Timing of meals may or may not be for the OP. But in my case and the case of many others (do your own due diligence) it has worked.

@tribalmamaemily
No personal attack contained in my post at all.
Your words about self-diagnosis remember.

Anyway not going to derail the thread any more than it has been already.

i eat when i am hungry.. it changes day to day.