Why is it better to have a hearty breakfast and a small dinner?

The biggest meal of the day matters, especially if you want to lose weight.

“Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.” By doing this, you are supposed to burn more calories and improve your metabolism (keeping your blood sugar and cholesterol levels in a healthy range).

This certainly makes sense because eating like this aligns better with our body’s natural circadian rhythms, which are largely determined by our internal biological clocks. In other words, you need food first thing to energize you in the morning, and you don’t want to fill your belly at night when your body is getting ready for bed.

But a recent study published in the journal Cell Metabolism found that when you eat doesn’t seem to make much difference to how many calories you burn or how well your body processes the sugar and fat in the food you just ate.

Researchers from the University of Aberdeen recruited 30 healthy overweight men and women and asked them to follow a diet where they ate most of their calories in the morning or evening for four weeks and then switched to another.

The meals the scientists provided were high in protein and relatively low in carbs (30 percent of their calories came from protein, 35 percent from carbohydrates, and 35 percent from fat).

Because they were on a tightly controlled high-protein diet, the volunteers lost a decent amount of weight (about 3.3 kg) – at least in part because eating more protein promotes satiety by lowering levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin. But they lost just as much, just as fast, whether they ate a big breakfast or a big dinner. There was also no difference when it came to the effect on their blood sugar, which improved no matter what diet they followed.

The only real difference was that when they ate a hearty breakfast, they felt less hungry during the day than when they ate a hearty dinner.

One 2013 study by Tel Aviv University in Israel of 93 overweight women with high blood sugar found that those who ate a heavy breakfast lost nearly 2.5 times as much weight (mean 8 .7 kg) than those who had a heavy dinner (average 3.6 kg).

The women were asked to follow a low-calorie diet in which they either ate most of their food in the morning or in the evening.

Those who ate a large breakfast had significantly lower ghrelin levels, were less hungry, and reported less desire to snack later in the day than those who ate a large dinner. And this explains the difference between the results of this study and a more recent study conducted by the University of Aberdeen. The Israeli study was conducted in the “real world,” in other words, it was less carefully monitored, so people snacked when they felt hungry, which did not happen in the Aberdeen study.

Another big difference was that in an Israeli study, the group that ate a large breakfast had much greater reductions in blood sugar and fat levels than those who ate a large dinner, suggesting a greater reduction in the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. .

Women who ate more at night actually experienced an increase in average blood fat levels during the day despite weight loss, which is clearly a bad thing.

A few years ago, Dr. Mike Mosley did a self-experiment for a TV documentary to compare the effects of eating the same food in the morning versus the evening, and his findings were similar to those of Israeli scientists.

“I started by eating a classic British breakfast (bacon, egg and sausages) at 10am and then after a 12-hour fast I ate the same again at 10pm. I had blood tests taken before and then every 20 minutes after taking these meals. After the morning meal, my blood sugar and fat levels spiked and then dropped quickly, which is to be expected. But after they ate the same meal in the evening, those levels spiked and then stayed the same for several hours. This is partly due to the fact that after I ate all those fatty and sugary foods in the morning, I went for a brisk walk, which helped burn some of those calories, which didn’t happen in the evening. But it also happens that when we eat late at night, our body does not produce the hormone insulin as well, and insulin’s job is to help your cells absorb glucose. Thus, eating late at night increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. From all this, I have concluded that the adage “breakfast like a king, dine like a prince, and dine like a beggar” is still valid and that attention to when you eat, as well as what you eat, can play an important role in improving your health.”

But don’t expect miracles and keep in mind that there is no one diet that will work for everyone.

“Personally, I think the best way to lose weight is to have a protein-rich breakfast (my favorites are scrambled eggs with smoked salmon or smoked fish) and avoid evening snacks, especially those that are done mindlessly, late at night, in front of the TV,” the doctor added. Mosley.

Christina DENISYUK.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Photo by Shutterstock/ Stolyevych Yuliya