I'm a person who doesn't like to be a sheep. I like to think things through. I never used to eat breakfast because I'm not usually very hungry in the morning, but my husband convinced me that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, yada, yada, yada. Well, what if you just aren't hungry in the morning? Now back in my carb feasting days, I would usually eat some toast with a bit of butter or peanut butter on it along with a bit of jam. First, I can't eat that any more and second, what was I getting from that anyway? A bit of fat and mostly simple carbs - even whole grain bread is pretty simple. They were, for the most part, empty calories to say that I ate breakfast.
Well now I have a thyroid medicine to take and doctors say not to eat anything for 30 minutes to an hour after taking it with a big glass of water. So, if I take that at 7:30 in the morning and wait an hour, that takes me to 8:30 am which is when I'm rushing to get my son off to school. I'll get back at 9:15 am-ish and then I usually drink a protein shake and perhaps an apple with cinnamon and peanut butter - denpending on how hungry I am. Many times I'm not very hungry, so I'll leave it at the protein shake. That sets off a morning of nibbling. A shake, an apple, a protein bar, lunch and then an afternoon snack and then finally dinner.
Yesterday however, my son had a sleepless night and we decided to let him sleep until he woke up. That was until 10:30. Since it was an unusual morning, I forgot to eat breakfast and I wasn't hungry. I got the little one breakfast, made his lunch, got him to school and got home by 11:10 am. I was totally not hungry. So, I decided to do an experiment. Let's see when I get hungry.
Around noon I thought I felt hungry, but I drank a glass of water and that pang went away. I was thirsty. At 1 pm I decided to work out and see how it went on an empty stomach. It was one of the best workouts I had. The time seemed to fly and I felt great. I finished up about 2:15 pm. Still not feeling hungry, but quite thirsty, I decided I should break the fast with a protein shake. I followed that with an apple with peanut butter and I was stuffed. That's my usual breakfast but I ate it at 2:30 pm instead of 9:30 am. Hmmm... interesting!
I made dinner and we ate at 6 pm. It was an Indian food feast - spicy coconut green beans, spicy eggplant, mild yellow lentils, and spicy pineapple slices and a bit of the leftover butter chicken. The boys had brown basmati rice with it. My dinner was around 750 calories and I was so full. For the day then I ended with exactly 1200 calories which is the lowest I've ever eaten (though I've come close a few times). and then, of course, that got me really curious. Was this all because I didn't eat breakfast?
I ate enough for the day. I ate when I was hungry, so how is this a bad way of eating? I had high energy all day. I felt great. I didn't have any low blood sugar signs and I ended the day feeling full, yet eating a lower number of calories.
I suppose it could be a fluke, but now I am really curious if eating breakfast does me more harm than good. If I'm not ready to eat and I'm not feeling hungry, then why am I eating? Yes, I know there are tons and tons of studies that say eating breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It jump starts the metabolism. And that smaller meals keep things burning all day, etc. There's also studies that say that if you skip breakfast, you'll get fat. But I also know most studies are crap. I think we don't know a lot of about a lot of things. Until very recently all low card diets were seen as harmful.. Now research is finding that maybe they were right. The American Diabetic Association is under fire for the continued recommendations of a high carb diet. Even though my nutritionist when I was pregnant with gestational diabetes told me to stay away from any carbs that spiked my sugar levels and my current doctor told me to eat low carb to try to get my blood sugars back in line. I no longer crave carbs (that's a sign of sugar problems), I no longer get hypoglycemic (another sign of sugar problems) and I feel great. I'm very curious what they'll find in a month with my blood sugars. I bet they'll be fine.
Then there's this whole notion for people with blood sugar issues to keep the sugars normalized that you need to eat all the time. This is probably true if you are taking something to help with blood sugars, but research is beginning to refute the need for anyone else to do that - including those controlling blood sugars by diet alone. Eating continually (3 meals a day and 2-3 snacks a day) means you are continually raising your blood sugars. How is that good? Wouldn't it be better to eat fewer meals, keep them low carb and have fewer hours where the sugars are elevated? I am so wanting to get and will get a blood glucose monitor and strips, because I bet I'm right. If you are eating low carb meals, you shouldn't get spikes in blood sugar ever. And because they are low carb, they take hours to metabolize, feeding your blood stream a constant, slow supply of sugars the body needs. What's different is if I were eating lots of carbs - then I would get sugar spikes. That's where the 5-6 meals a day thing came into play. If I eat a high carb (even complex carb) meal, keep it smaller to control the sugars better, so better to have 6 mini carb bursts than 3 big carb bursts. How does that work with low carb diets? It doesn't.
That of course leads me to looking stuff up on the internet and I found stuff about intermittent fasting. I don't believe all the hoopla about anything - because all studies are grains of truth, but it's an interesting idea too, especially paired with low carb diets. That's basically what I did yesterday, though not knowingly. I fasted for 20 hours (no eating from 6 pm one day until 2:30 pm the next day) and then I had a 4 hour eating window. I felt great, still made very good food choices, still low carb and in the end, needed less calories for the day. Heck, it's now 9:30 am and I haven't eaten since 6:30 pm, so that's already a 15 hour fast and I'm not hungry.
But because there is so little research out there for Intermittent Fasting, I'm afraid to do something that will slow down my metabolism. That I don't want to mess with and for now more research supports breakfast is important and skipping meals is bad, but I'll be keeping an eye on this research because I bet there's more to fasting than we realize because when we look back at all of human kind through the ages - did they graze all day like a cow? or did they eat in bursts more like a dog? I bet we ate more like a dog. (and I'm not talking about dogs in their pampered home environments - but like wolves who have to hunt for their food and scavenge - feast or famine).
Anyway, some interesting thoughts going on in my head!
Stats for 3/16/11:
Beginning weight: 255.6 Now 233.4 (22.2 pounds lost)
Exercise total hours: 68 hours 10 minutes
Walking miles in 2011: 222/1000
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