Intermittent fasting has become immensely popular in recent years.

This is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating.

However, there are still all sorts of myths surrounding this topic.

There is an ongoing myth that there is something “special” about breakfast.

People believe that breakfast skipping leads to excessive hunger, cravings and weight gain.

Although many observational studies have found statistical links between breakfast skipping and overweight/obesity, this may be explained by the fact that the stereotypical breakfast skipper is less health-conscious overall.

Interestingly, this matter was recently settled in a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard of science.

This study was published in 2014 and compared eating breakfast vs skipping breakfast in 283 overweight and obese adults.

After a 16-week study period, there was no difference in weight between groups.

This study shows that it doesn’t make any difference for weight loss whether you eat or don’t eat breakfast, although there may be some individual variability.

However, there are some studies showing that children and teenagers who eat breakfast tend to perform better at school.

There are also studies on people who have succeeded with losing weight in the long term, showing that they tend to eat breakfast.

This is one of those things that varies between individuals. Breakfast is beneficial for some people, but not others. It is not essential and there is nothing “magical” about it.

It is true that the body expends a certain amount of energy digesting and assimilating the nutrients in a meal.

On average, the thermic effect of food is somewhere around 10% of the total calorie intake.

However, what matters here is the total amount of calories consumed, not how many meals you eat.

Eating six 500-calorie meals has the exact same effect as eating three 1000-calorie meals. Given an average thermic effect of 10%, it is 300 calories in both cases.

Although some studies suggest that more frequent meals lead to reduced hunger, other studies find no effects, and yet others show increased hunger levels.

That being said, this may depend on the individual. If snacking helps you experience fewer cravings and makes you less likely to binge, then it is probably a good idea.

However, there is no evidence that snacking or eating more often reduces hunger for everyone. Different strokes for different folks.

They also do not seem to reduce hunger (reduce calories in).

If eating more frequently has no effect on the energy balance equation, then it shouldn’t have any effect on weight loss.

In fact, this is supported by science. Most studies on this do show that meal frequency has no effect on weight loss.

For example, a study in 16 obese men and women did not find any difference in weight, fat loss or appetite when comparing 3 and 6 meals per day.

However, if you find that eating more often makes it easier for you to eat fewer calories and less junk food, then perhaps this is effective for you.

Personally I find it to be ridiculously inconvenient to eat so often, making it even harder to stick to a healthy diet. But it may work for some people.

This is based on the belief that the brain can only use glucose (blood sugar) for fuel.

This may not even be needed in most cases, because your body has stored glycogen (glucose) in the liver that it can use to supply the brain with energy for many hours.

So, during a long fast, the brain can easily sustain itself using ketone bodies and glucose produced from proteins and fats.

It also makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective that we shouldn’t be able to survive without a constant source of carbohydrate. If that were true, then humans would have become extinct a long time ago.

However, some people do report that they feel hypoglycemic when they don’t eat for a while. If this applies to you, then perhaps you should stick to a higher meal frequency, or at least ask your doctor before changing things.

When humans were evolving, we had to endure periods of scarcity from time to time.

There is evidence that short-term fasting induces a cellular repair process called autophagy, where the cells use old and dysfunctional proteins for energy.

Autophagy may help protect against aging and diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, and may even reduce the risk of cancer.

The truth is that fasting from time to time has all sorts of benefits for metabolic health.

There are also some studies suggesting that snacking, and eating very often, can have negative effects on health and raise your risk of disease.

For example, one study found that, coupled with a high calorie intake, a diet with more frequent meals caused a greater increase in liver fat, indicating that snacking may raise the risk of fatty liver disease.

There are also some observational studies showing that people who eat more often have a much higher risk of colorectal cancer.

According to the claims, not eating makes your body think it is starving, so it shuts down its metabolism and prevents you from burning fat.

This is a real effect, and can amount to hundreds of fewer calories burned per day.

However, this happens with weight loss no matter what method you use. There is no evidence that this happens more with intermittent fasting than other weight loss strategies.

In fact, the evidence actually shows that short-term fasts increase metabolic rate.

Studies show that fasting for up to 48 hours can actually boost metabolism by 3.6-14%. However, if you fast much longer than that, the effect can reverse and metabolism can go down compared to baseline.

One study showed that fasting every other day for 22 days did not lead to a decrease in metabolic rate, but the participants lost 4% of their fat mass, which is impressive for a period as short as 3 weeks.

Studies do not show a difference in muscle mass if you eat your protein in more frequent doses.

The most important factor for most people is the total amount of protein consumed, not how many meals it is spread over.

It is true that this happens with dieting in general, but there is no evidence that this happens more with intermittent fasting than other methods.

In fact, some studies even suggest that intermittent fasting is better for maintaining muscle mass.

In one review study, intermittent calorie restriction caused a similar amount of weight loss as continuous calorie restriction, but much less reduction in muscle mass.

There was also a study that had participants eat the same amount of calories as they were used to, except in one huge meal in the evening.

These people lost body fat and actually had a modest increase (almost statistically significant) in their muscle mass, along with a bunch of other beneficial effects on health markers.

Intermittent fasting is also popular among many bodybuilders, who find it to be an effective way to maintain high amounts of muscle with a low body fat percentage.

For example, intermittent fasting changes the expression of genes related to longevity and protection against disease, and has been shown to prolong lifespan in test animals.

This is partly true. After a fast, people automatically tend to eat a little bit more than if they hadn’t been fasting.

In other words, they compensate for the calories “lost” during the fast by eating more during the next few meals.

However, this compensation isn’t complete. One study showed that people who fasted for a whole day only ended up eating about 500 extra calories the next day.

So they expended about 2400 calories during the fasting day, then “overate” by 500 calories the day after. The total reduction in calorie intake was then 1900 calories, which is a very large deficit for only 2 days.

Intermittent fasting reduces overall food intake while boosting metabolism. It also reduces insulin levels, increases norepinephrine and boosts human growth hormone as much as 5-fold.

Because of these factors, intermittent fasting makes you lose fat, not gain it.

In this study, intermittent fasting caused 0.55 pounds of weight loss per week, but alternate-day fasting caused weight loss of 1.65 pounds per week.

The truth is, intermittent fasting is one of the world’s most powerful tools to lose weight.

Saying that it makes you overeat, go into “starvation mode” and end up gaining weight is the exact opposite of the truth.