Skip brekkie to keep waist slim
It goes against the grain for breakfast lovers but an Australian study has found that skipping the morning meal helps people lose weight and get a slimmer waistline.
Monash University gastroenterologist Alex Hodge says the timing of meals could help ward off obesity and fatty liver disease, after finding that fasting between 8pm and midday the next day helps people lose more weight, even if they consume the same amount of daily kilojoules as normal.
Yet many health experts espouse breakfast as the most important meal of the day.
Dr Hodge, who is presenting the results todayWED at an Australian Gastroenterology Week meeting on the Gold Coast, said it was the first study of its kind to look at the benefits of intermittent fasting for the 5.5 million Australians with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
A group of 32 patients with the disease were put on a regime of either intermittent fasting, with no kilojoules between 8pm and midday the next day, or standard diet and exercise advice.
While all patients lost weight over the initial 12 weeks of the study, patients who fasted also reduced their waist circumference, one of the best indicators of liver damage.
The fasting group also had improvements in abdominal fat, insulin resistance and blood pressure.
Dr Hodge said the 16 hours of fasting was relatively easy to tolerate and easier than counting kilojoules. There was no difference in the kilojoule intake, activity levels, quality of life or hunger between the two groups.
“For most people, once they get over the morning hunger bump, it wasn’t that difficult, and it’s not like they didn’t ‘break the fast’ as such — it’s just that they delayed it till later in the day,” he said.
“What it really shows is that eating over a shorter period of time has added benefits, even though people actually ate the same amount of calories in the study as they did before but they just ate them over a shorter period of time.
“I tried it myself and it worked pretty well.”
Dr Hodge said the results were consistent with European studies that showed people who “grazed” or spread their food intake over the whole day had worse health outcomes than those who sat down and ate in more concentrated bursts.
