from Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry
It seems to make sense—if you want to lose weight eat less. But if that means skipping meals, the notion may backfire on you. A study of laboratory animals at Ohio State University suggests skipping meals causes a series of metabolic events that actually results in weight gain. Initially, animals put on a restricted diet lost weight, but animals that ate all of their food as a single meal and fasted the rest of the day developed insulin resistance in the liver. When the liver doesn’t respond to insulin signals telling it to stop producing glucose or sugar, that extra sugar in the blood is stored as fat. That gorging and fasting effect resulted in fatter fat cells especially in the abdominal area. Researchers, writing in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, were able to link the results of the animal studies to the human tendency to skip meals.