54 replies to this topic

[motif]

I disagree with those who believe that one needs to eat before exercising. I never did, and have always been very sporty. Eating takes away energy (unless you eat like a birdie). The fuller is my stomach, the duller I feel, in all respects, from mental to physical. My fasting days is when I accomplish the most in a best mood and highest levels of energy.

I agree with this 100%, you cannot do heavy exercises with full stomach, besides it's stupid you could hurt yourself. Have seen a knight or samurai going to battle after meal? it's easy to blow off your guts when they're full. NEVER go to war with full stomach.

[xEva]

... in order to assimilate food, your body needs to divert some of its resources from your current physical performance. There is no going around it. If you absolutely must eat just before you exercise, I dare say that your metabolism is not trained in utilizing energies available to you. And indeed, why should it be trained in such things, if you've never done it...

I think this last point is arrogant presumption.

Some people just have different basal metabolic rates, dependent on various things, including ones size or build. Some people need to eat before work outs, some do not. Let's not make some wildly assertive absolute statements about this just because X=Y for us. None of us know every minute detail of human physiology nor the variances between differing biological environments. So let's cut out the arrogant talk please.

Ha! I think it's pretty arrogant of you to assume that anyone could really perform unless they have an absolutely empty stomach. Whatever one can do while digesting ain't performing. Trust me.

[TheFountain]

I disagree with those who believe that one needs to eat before exercising. I never did, and have always been very sporty. Eating takes away energy (unless you eat like a birdie). The fuller is my stomach, the duller I feel, in all respects, from mental to physical. My fasting days is when I accomplish the most in a best mood and highest levels of energy.

I agree with this 100%, you cannot do heavy exercises with full stomach, besides it's stupid you could hurt yourself. Have seen a knight or samurai going to battle after meal? it's easy to blow off your guts when they're full. NEVER go to war with full stomach.

This is a dumb analogy.

Plus nobody is saying to jump into an exercise as soon as you have a meal. I a fairly certain most health advocates suggest eating, then waiting about an hour after your stomach settles to work out.

[TheFountain]

... in order to assimilate food, your body needs to divert some of its resources from your current physical performance. There is no going around it. If you absolutely must eat just before you exercise, I dare say that your metabolism is not trained in utilizing energies available to you. And indeed, why should it be trained in such things, if you've never done it...

I think this last point is arrogant presumption.

Some people just have different basal metabolic rates, dependent on various things, including ones size or build. Some people need to eat before work outs, some do not. Let's not make some wildly assertive absolute statements about this just because X=Y for us. None of us know every minute detail of human physiology nor the variances between differing biological environments. So let's cut out the arrogant talk please.

Ha! I think it's pretty arrogant of you to assume that anyone could really perform unless they have an absolutely empty stomach. Whatever one can do while digesting ain't performing. Trust me.

It's like me saying to you 'i got my six pack shoveling snow last winter, so no way you can get one unless you shovel snow all winter!'. I mean give me a break with this kind of arrogant non-sense.

Energy metabolism varies from person to person. What you will accomplish and the ways you accomplish it are not identical to someone elses ways. Some people require nutrition prior to working out. Some do not. Why is that so hard to deal with?

[motif]

I disagree with those who believe that one needs to eat before exercising. I never did, and have always been very sporty. Eating takes away energy (unless you eat like a birdie). The fuller is my stomach, the duller I feel, in all respects, from mental to physical. My fasting days is when I accomplish the most in a best mood and highest levels of energy.

I agree with this 100%, you cannot do heavy exercises with full stomach, besides it's stupid you could hurt yourself. Have seen a knight or samurai going to battle after meal? it's easy to blow off your guts when they're full. NEVER go to war with full stomach.

This is a dumb analogy.

Plus nobody is saying to jump into an exercise as soon as you have a meal. I a fairly certain most health advocates suggest eating, then waiting about an hour after your stomach settles to work out.

really??? have you ever seen what happen when you have sword stuck in your guts even after hour after meal?

[AgeVivo]

I also wonder how a sound question "why not skip breakfast?" leads to so many non constructive comments. Perhaps because of a lack of scientific nutritionists onboard... I am not one, so while I'll try a constructive comments, it's a bit weak:

[EATING] (from a 5 minutes google+pubmed):

• Answer found everywhere: those who skip breakfast are at greater risk of obesity and chronic diseases
  http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/21123469 : Observational studies of breakfast frequency in children and adults suggest an inverse (protective) association between the frequency of eating breakfast and the risk for obesity and chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes
• However that is a correlation, not a causation, so it doesn't prove anything
  Indeed, those who are well educated and try to have a good heath will tend to follow the culturally recommended "don't skip breakfast" rule. Conversely, among people skipping breakfast, there are probably more people who are less educated or who pay less attention to their health than the average. Well, it is clearly the case:
  http://www.medicalne...ticles/4004.php : "the Finnish researchers say those who miss breakfast tend to smoke more, drink more alcohol and take less exercise than those who make time for the meal." Starting to skip breakfast is not going to make you start smoking ;-)
• Synthesis: to conclude we need to go one step further, which the lastest link (http://www.medicalne...ticles/4004.php) does:
  - concentration in the morning: "Studies of schoolchildren have shown eating breakfast improves their concentration levels in the morning"u.
  - snack: "People who skip breakfast tend to go on to have a snack mid-morning, usually something unhealthy like a chocolate bar."

So I'd say you can skip breakfast if it doesn't make you eat chocolate bars or overeat at lunch, nor isn't an issue for your daily activity.
[DRINKING]
Not eating for some time (from diner to lunch) is certainly OK. But not drinking... I don't know. As a comparison, CR animals have permanent access to water, and I guess we would know if it was better not to give them water too often. So I'm not sure it is good to skip water or tea or coffee

Edited by AgeVivo, 13 December 2010 - 01:52 PM.

[motif]

I also wonder how a sound question "why not skip breakfast?" leads to so many non constructive comments. Perhaps because of a lack of scientific nutritionists onboard... I am not one, so while I'll try a constructive comments, it's a bit weak:

[EATING] (from a 5 minutes google+pubmed):

• Answer found everywhere: those who skip breakfast are at greater risk of obesity and chronic diseases
  http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/21123469 : Observational studies of breakfast frequency in children and adults suggest an inverse (protective) association between the frequency of eating breakfast and the risk for obesity and chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes
• However that is a correlation, not a causation, so it doesn't prove anything
  Indeed, those who are well educated and try to have a good heath will tend to follow the culturally recommended "don't skip breakfast" rule. Conversely, among people skipping breakfast, there are probably more people who are less educated or who pay less attention to their health than the average. Well, it is clearly the case:
  http://www.medicalne...ticles/4004.php : "the Finnish researchers say those who miss breakfast tend to smoke more, drink more alcohol and take less exercise than those who make time for the meal." Starting to skip breakfast is not going to make you start smoking ;-)
• Synthesis: to conclude we need to go one step further, which the lastest link (http://www.medicalne...ticles/4004.php) does:
  - concentration in the morning: "Studies of schoolchildren have shown eating breakfast improves their concentration levels in the morning"u.
  - snack: "People who skip breakfast tend to go on to have a snack mid-morning, usually something unhealthy like a chocolate bar."

So I'd say you can skip breakfast if it doesn't make you eat chocolate bars or overeat at lunch, nor isn't an issue for your daily activity.
[DRINKING]
Not eating for some time (from diner to lunch) is certainly OK. But not drinking... I don't know. As a comparison, CR animals have permanent access to water, and I guess we would know if it was better not to give them water too often. So I'm not sure it is good to skip water or tea or coffee

you're right, we should not skip completely breakfast but have a light one. People are not hungry in the morning because they stuffed themselves in the evening. New day is like a road trip for a car, it need fuel.

[Invariant]

Here's a recently published epidemiological study on skipping breakfast:

http://www.ajcn.org/...6/1316.abstract

It seems like it has a small effect, which could be due to residual confounding. Who knows, I'll just keep on eating my breakfast.

[Thorsten3]

I usually feel more energetic if I skip breakfast, I also tend to have less thoughts about eating later the day if I do, as if eating opens up for more.

I skipped once all three meals for 3 weeks and still felt great
drinking only carrot juice and water and sunning. I can say eating is overrated...

How did this impact your trips to the bathroom?

[e Volution]

Phys Ed: The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast

Study: Training in the fasted state improves glucose tolerance during fat-rich diet.

Abstract
A fat-rich energy-dense diet is an important cause of insulin resistance. Stimulation of fat turnover in muscle cells during dietary fat challenge may contribute to maintenance of insulin sensitivity. Exercise in the fasted state markedly stimulates energy provision via fat oxidation. Therefore, we investigated whether exercise training in the fasted state is more potent than exercise in the fed state to rescue whole-body glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity during a period of hyper-caloric fat-rich diet. Healthy male volunteers (18-25 y) received a hyper-caloric (∼+30% kcal day(-1)) fat-rich (50% of kcal) diet for 6 weeks. Some of the subjects performed endurance exercise training (4 days per week) in the fasted state (F; n = 10), whilst the others ingested carbohydrates before and during the training sessions (CHO; n = 10). The control group did not train (CON; n = 7). Body weight increased in CON (+3.0 ± 0.8 kg) and CHO (+1.4 ± 0.4 kg) (P < 0.01), but not in F (+0.7 ± 0.4 kg, P = 0.13). Compared with CON, F but not CHO enhanced whole-body glucose tolerance and the Matsuda insulin sensitivity index (P < 0.05). Muscle GLUT4 protein content was increased in F (+28%) compared with both CHO (P = 0.05) and CON (P < 0.05). Furthermore, only training in F elevated AMP-activated protein kinase α phosphorylation (+25%) as well as up-regulated fatty acid translocase/CD36 and carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 mRNA levels compared with CON (∼+30%). High-fat diet increased intramyocellular lipid but not diacylglycerol and ceramide contents, either in the absence or presence of training. This study for the first time shows that fasted training is more potent than fed training to facilitate adaptations in muscle and to improve whole-body glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity during hyper-caloric fat-rich diet.

[Shepard]

In school I was a champion sprinter and high-jumper. Nowadays, when I exercise, I run some and pump iron some, always finishing with yoga and sauna. I can't imagine eating beforehand, nor for couple of hours after. The mere idea is nauseating to me... sorry...

What distance did you compete in? Anything under 400, I could see doing it fasted. 400 is always the gray area, and I would think anyone going through an 800 would want to at least get blood glucose up a bit prior to the event.

[e Volution]

In school I was a champion sprinter and high-jumper. Nowadays, when I exercise, I run some and pump iron some, always finishing with yoga and sauna. I can't imagine eating beforehand, nor for couple of hours after. The mere idea is nauseating to me... sorry...

What distance did you compete in? Anything under 400, I could see doing it fasted. 400 is always the gray area, and I would think anyone going through an 800 would want to at least get blood glucose up a bit prior to the event.

I think this highlights how we got so off track in our nutritional thinking: performance vs health. Yeh maybe your performance over 800m is better with higher blood glucose due to pre workout carbohydrates. Doesn't mean it's better for health, in fact I think we are starting to see nearly all this performance based thinking negatively effects health. Just like how public perception is elite level atheletes are the epitome of health, when in fact most are severely impacting their long-term cardiovascular/joint/mobility/whatever health.

[xEva]

What distance did you compete in?

100 m

[Shepard]

Just like how public perception is elite level atheletes are the epitome of health, when in fact most are severely impacting their long-term cardiovascular/joint/mobility/whatever health.

Sure, performance and health are quite different. I don't know any athlete that would argue that a competitive sport is necessarily "healthy", either psychologically or physiologically.

100 m

A pure power athlete, I like it.

Edited by Shepard, 20 January 2011 - 10:12 PM.

[xEva]

Ha! Jack LaLanne ate breakfast after his 2-hour workout: here.

I am in good company

[caruga]

I've felt a lot better ever since I adopted the practice of not eating when I awake and not until my hunger builds enough that it compells me to go and eat. Generally food doesn't sit with me as well in the first few hours after waking and I feel more lethargic when processing it. Yet I blindly kept adhering to the conventional wisdom thinking that it was helping me. I'm glad to have reeaxmined it.

[caliban]

  The hour of the day--when you eat and how frequently you eat--is more important than what you eat and how many calories you eat,.... Our body metabolism changes throughout the day. A slice of bread consumed at breakfast leads to a lower glucose response and is less fattening than an identical slice of bread consumed in the evening.

→ source (external link)

[ryukenden]

Skipping breakfast was significantly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular-related death, especially stroke-related death, in the study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on Monday.

https://sacramento.c...rt-disease/amp/

Edited by ryukenden, 23 April 2019 - 09:44 PM.

[spike]

 

The new study “was fairly well done,” said Krista Varady, associate professor of nutrition at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who was not involved in the research.

“However, the major issue is that the subjects who regularly skipped breakfast also had the most unhealthy lifestyle habits,” she said. “Specifically, these people were former smokers, heavy drinkers, physically inactive, and also had poor diet quality and low family income.”

All of those factors put people at a much higher risk for cardiovascular disease. “I realize that the study attempted to control for these confounders, but I think it’s hard to tease apart breakfast skipping from their unhealthy lifestyle in general,” Varady said.

...

To connect the study’s findings to intermittent fasting, Longo warns “be careful.”

 

These were might first thoughts when I saw the title, it would be nice to separate those who don't have time/money for breakfast from those who do that for health purposes and don't smoke in the morning or better at all.

It's like doing a research on vegans, even though you can eat french fries three times a day and call yourself a vegan, not very useful.

[ryukenden]

These were might first thoughts when I saw the title, it would be nice to separate those who don't have time/money for breakfast from those who do that for health purposes and don't smoke in the morning or better at all.
It's like doing a research on vegans, even though you can eat french fries three times a day and call yourself a vegan, not very useful.

Yes agreed. However it causes some doubts in my mind to skip breakfast.

[Oinen]

Yes agreed. However it causes some doubts in my mind to skip breakfast.

Don't put too much stock into one study until it can be reproduced.

"The study involved data from 1988 to 1994 on 6,550 US adults, aged 40 to 75, who reported how often they ate breakfast in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The survey data generally let respondents define what meal would be considered breakfast.Separate data was analyzed to determine the adults’ health status through 2011. All told, 2,318 deaths occurred during an average follow-up period of 18.8 years, including 619 from cardiovascular disease."

This study seems very suspect already, especially when other variables are seemingly ignored as well. This is very badly done.

Edited by Oinen, 27 April 2019 - 07:45 PM.

[Mr Serendipity]

You're all going to die one day, live on the edge, eat breakfast. 

[Rorororo]

I am an athlete and I think breakfast is the main meal of the day. I use Trader Joes whey protein at breakfast because I believe proteins are essential for any tough athlete to provide the building blocks of muscle, I found my protein at minimumviablefitness.com . This protein was the first protein powder I have ever bought and used and tastes great. In this product, whey protein combines 24 to 25 grams of gluten-free protein per serving, as well as 120 to 130 calories, and it depends on the basic flavors of the whey protein, which mixes and tastes incredible, so if you want great Gluten-free protein after exercise or even as a snack will be the best option for you.

Edited by Rorororo, 25 July 2020 - 02:13 PM.

[Matt]

There's a difference between skipping breakfast in the morning because you're not hungry and don't have a good appetite compared to skipping breakfast intentionally as part of a strategy to improve health on a healthy diet.

 

Maybe a good appetite is a signal of good health. And people who have a good appetite, tend to eat breakfast more in the morning.

 

[Amira L.]

I agree. Most of the stuff I have seen about the importance of breakfast never cited any serious research, and I was left feeling it was simply "traditional wisdom," which could be entirely cultural. A lot of the beliefs we have held and cherished and sworn by over time have proved to serve more cultural than physical purposes. A good example is the rain dance, which for many traditional villages was allegedly supposed to make it rain, but which from the outside looking in served the purpose of bringing people together during a tough time. I suspect the notion of breakfast being the most important meal of the day has more to do with the cultural need to share a meal and plan the day than with improving metabolism.

Plus, everyone's body is different. Until someone comes up with hard evidence for the importance of breakfast, I say eat when you feel hungry.

 

 

I would agree with this. "Because I say so" more than scientific backup!