Many women assume that skipping meals is a good strategy for controlling body weight. After all the logic goes, if you cut out a meal, you will cut out calories. Two new studies from scientists at the University of Nottingham in England shed light on this issue.

In this research lean women and overweight women were asked to follow either a regular meal schedule for 14-days or an irregular meal pattern for 14-days (including skipping breakfast). After the first two-week period, the women were then asked to follow other meal pattern. This is called a crossover design in research and is a strong scientific design. The results showed that when women (both overweight and lean) ate regular meals their total calorie intake per day was less than during the period when they were eating irregular meals. The results go even further. The scientists also saw that total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and glucose control were better when the women were eating regular meals.

These results contribute to the mounting evidence that skipping breakfast and not having regular meals may contribute to weight gain and poor cardiovascular risk profile in women.

No matter how busy your life is, you owe yourself the time to have regular, healthy meals.

(References: Hamid Farshchi and colleagues. Beneficial metabolic effects of regular meal frequency on dietary thermogenesis, insulin sensitivity, and fasting lipid profiles in health obese women. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 81(1), 16-24, January 2005. And: Regular meal frequency creates more appropriate insulin sensitivity and lipid profiles compared with irregular meal frequency in healthy lean women. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 58(7), 1071-1077, July 2004.)


Courtesy of Dr. Miriam E. Nelson, PhD
http://www.strongwomen.com