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The Art of Snacking and Meal Frequency Problem



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An average American eats an average 3.12 meals a day. Is it enough?
How does meal timing affect one's body weight and general health?
How does it influence one's appetite and muscle mass?

Meal planning while on a low carb diet

By Tanya Zilberter, PhD

We all wake up in deep ketosis independently of our diet: low fat, low carb, or no diet at all. Even before breakfast, just by the mere fact of being awake and getting ready for our morning routine, our bodies start producing glucose using carb depots (if they are still there and not used up by a prolonged low carb diet.)

As glucose level in the blood increases, ketone bodies' level decreases because these two are deadly antagonists. You see, even the anticipation of breakfast works against ketosis, the real breakfast much more so, and a breakfast including sweeteners is almost as bad as breakfast with real bread and sugar.

As ketone level decreases, so does their appetite-fighting effect. As a result, you'll eat more during your next meal. However, if you indulge in tasty foods and sweetened desserts during your last meal, you don't have much time for overeating. This is why the Carbohydrate Addict Diet limit the last meal duration by 1 hour.

If however you find yourself hungry late in the evening, it's a signal that you've overindulged in tasty foods and you might want to reconsider your priorities. Ask yourself: what's more important - enjoing a tasty meal or suffering the consequences.
Today, let's discuss a conventional diet "no-no" which is considered one of the worst diet heresies: Skipping Breakfasts. In our experience, it does the trick after a cheating day or when you temporarily stall. Some of our dieters do this regularly, often twice a week, and some do this even every day.
Why is breakfast called the most important part of the day to start with? This is the most typical among *reasonable* explanations:

"By the time you awaken, 12 hours or more have passed since your last meal. As a result, your supply of blood sugar has dropped to a near-low point. So you need food to produce a steady stream of glucose to fuel every cell in your body. "

But wait a minute! This is exactly what we are trying to avoid on any low carb diet! Low carbers are not relying on glucose for fuel, we use ketone bodies instead, and this fuel is most abundant exactly in the morning.

Look at this picture: (if you can't see the picture, view it at:
http://dietandbody.com/pics/ketones.jpg)

ketone bodies

Any breakfasts, not only the ones rich in carbohydrates, quickly reverse the picture: glucose rises and ketones fall. For the lucky ones among us that is more or less OK, but for many of us it is not good -- because of the insulin resistance or exaggerated response to the taste of any food, or for some other reasons. The fact is, skipping breakfast works wonders in many tough cases of stalled weight loss.

There are at least two  famous health systems known to me that employed this principle: one of them is Paul Bragg's (check it out at bragg.com) and another is the Dr. Shatalova's Very Low Calorie Diet (it's free: click here).

One more success story is that of Rachael Heller, the author of "The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet: The Lifelong Solution to Yo-Yo Dieting." Skipping breakfast just once, by
accident, she discovered a way to fight her carbohydrate addiction.

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