Intermittent fasting has become immensely popular in recent years.
This is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating.
However, there are still all sorts of myths surrounding this topic.
This article debunks the 7 most common myths about fasting, snacking and meal frequency.
1. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
There is an ongoing myth that there is something “special” about breakfast. People believe that breakfast skipping leads to excessive hunger, cravings and weight gain.
Although many observational studies have found statistical links between breakfast skipping and overweight/obesity, this may be explained by the fact that the stereotypical breakfast skipper is less health-conscious overall.
A study shows that it doesn’t make any difference for weight loss whether you eat or don’t eat breakfast, although there may be some individual variability.
However, there are some studies showing that children and teenagers who eat breakfast tend to perform better at school.
There are also studies on people who have succeeded with losing weight in the long term, showing that they tend to eat breakfast.
This is one of those things that varies between individuals. Breakfast is beneficial for some people, but not others. It is not essential and there is nothing “magical” about it.
2. Eating Frequently Boosts Your Metabolism
“Eat many, small meals to stoke the metabolic flame.”
Many people believe that eating more meals leads to increased metabolic rate, so that your body burns more calories overall.
It is true that the body expends a certain amount of energy digesting and assimilating the nutrients in a meal.
This is termed the thermic effect of food (TEF), and amounts to about 20-30% of calories for protein, 5-10% for carbs and 0-3% for fat calories. On average, the thermic effect of food is somewhere around 10% of the total calorie intake.
However, what matters here is the total amount of calories consumed, not how many meals you eat.
Eating six 500-calorie meals has the exact same effect as eating three 1000-calorie meals. Given an average thermic effect of 10%, it is 300 calories in both cases.
This is supported by numerous feeding studies in humans, showing that increasing or decreasing meal frequency has no effect on total calories burned.
3. Eating Frequently Helps Reduce Hunger
Some people believe that snacking helps prevent cravings and excessive hunger.
Interestingly, several studies have looked at this, and the evidence is mixed.
Although some studies suggest that more frequent meals lead to reduced hunger, other studies find no effects, and yet others show increased hunger levels.
One study that compared 3 high-protein meals to 6 high-protein meals found that 3 meals were actually better for reducing hunger.
That being said, this may depend on the individual. If snacking helps you experience fewer cravings and makes you less likely to binge, then it is probably a good idea.
However, there is no evidence that snacking or eating more often reduces hunger for everyone. Different strokes for different folks.
4. Many, Smaller Meals Can Help You Lose Weight
Frequent meals do not boost metabolism (increase calories out).
They also do not seem to reduce hunger (reduce calories in).
If eating more frequently has no effect on the energy balance equation, then it shouldn’t have any effect on weight loss. In fact, this is supported by science. Most studies on this do show that meal frequency has no effect on weight loss.
However, if you find that eating more often makes it easier for you to eat fewer calories and less junk food, then perhaps this is effective for you.
Personally I find it to be ridiculously inconvenient to eat so often, making it even harder to stick to a healthy diet. But it may work for some people.
5. The Brain Needs a Constant Supply of Glucose
Some people believe that if we don’t eat carbs every few hours, that our brains will stop functioning.
This is based on the belief that the brain can only use glucose (blood sugar) for fuel.
However, what is often left out of the discussion is that the body can easily produce the glucose it needs via a process called gluconeogenesis.
This may not even be needed in most cases, because our body has stored glycogen (glucose) in the liver that it can use to supply the brain with energy for many hours.
Even during long-term fasting, starvation or a very low-carbohydrate diet, the body can produce ketone bodies from dietary fats.
Ketone bodies can provide energy for part of the brain, reducing its glucose requirement significantly.
So, during a long fast, the brain can easily sustain itself using ketone bodies and glucose produced from proteins and fats.
It also makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective that we shouldn’t be able to survive without a constant source of carbohydrate. If that were true, then humans would have become extinct a long time ago.
However, some people do report that they feel hypoglycemic when they don’t eat for a while. If this applies to you, then perhaps you should stick to a higher meal frequency, or at least ask your doctor before changing things.
6. Eating Often and Snacking is Good For Health
It is simply not “natural” for the body to be constantly in the fed state.
When humans were evolving, we had to endure periods of scarcity from time to time.
There is evidence that short-term fasting induces a cellular repair process called autophagy, where the cells use old and dysfunctional proteins for energy. Autophagy may help protect against aging and diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, and may even reduce the risk of cancer.
The truth is that fasting from time to time has all sorts of benefits for metabolic health.
There are also some studies suggesting that snacking, and eating very often, can have negative effects on health and raise your risk of disease.
For example, one study found that, coupled with a high calorie intake, a diet with more frequent meals caused a greater increase in liver fat, indicating that snacking may raise the risk of fatty liver disease. There are also some observational studies showing that people who eat more often have a much higher risk of colorectal cancer.
7. Fasting Puts Your Body in “Starvation Mode”
According to the claims, not eating makes your body think it is starving, so it shuts down its metabolism and prevents you from burning fat.
It is actually true that long-term weight loss can reduce the amount of calories you burn. This is the true “starvation mode”.
This is a real effect, and can amount to hundreds of fewer calories burned per day.
However, this happens with weight loss no matter what method you use. There is no evidence that this happens more with intermittent fasting than other weight loss strategies.
In fact, the evidence actually shows that short-term fasts increase metabolic rate.
This is due to a drastic increase in blood levels of norepinephrine (noradrenaline), which tells the fat cells to break down body fat and stimulates metabolism.
Studies show that fasting for up to 48 hours can actually boost metabolism by 3.6-14%. However, if you fast much longer than that, the effect can reverse and metabolism can go down compared to baseline.
One study showed that fasting every other day for 22 days did not lead to a decrease in metabolic rate, but the participants lost 4% of their fat mass, which is impressive for a period as short as 3 weeks.
Stay Healthy the easy way.
