to breakfast or not to breakfast....

There has been an active twitterfest of civil disagreement about the virtues of breakfasting EARLY.  Bill Lagakos has been adamant that the old chestnut "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a peasant" is the way to go.  Wooo (among many others) holds the opinion that eating when you're not hungry is not only a bad habit, but it is probably biologically-strategic for some reason we don't know yet to not want to eat soon after arising.

Driving our individual opinions is most likely our individual EXPERIENCES.  If we LIKE to eat an early breakfast we'll probably side with Bill, and if we don't we'll probably find his arguments weak or inapplicable.

"He said" we're more insulin-sensitive in the AM so that's when we should eat more, or eat any carbs we intend to take in.  That people who eat earlier are leaner, cuz circadian science.  That people who aren't hungry early can increase their appetites by under-eating the night before.

"She said" the studies he cites involve people eating crap at midnight, not real-foodists getting nutrition at a reasonable dinner-hour.  That Nature dictates behavior for a reason, even if we don't know what it is.  That the sedating nature of carbohydrate foods implies that eating them when you want to get sleepy makes more sense.  That "breakfast" has been studied and hyped-up for the purpose of promoting "breakfast foods."

Needless to say, I adhere to the late-breakfast hypothesis.  Since childhood, I've been disinterested in taking in food for hours after waking.  There are only a few situations where this is not the case:  when for some reason I have been fasting (illness, usually) and am in significant need of nutrition, or when i've slipped into a glucose-burning pattern.  I have to conclude that it's either under-nutrition, or excess-carb-eating which drives early-breakfasting behavior ... at least in me.

The two sides of this discussion differ on how long (and effective) the fasting period will be.  I believe it will be clear how effective the fast has been and how long it needs to continue, by observing the waking state of blood-glucose and/or ketosis.  And THAT will be a function of how well your liver handles gluconeogenesis, and how well FFA/keto-adapted your brain is.

People who are dining or snacking at midnight are seriously shorting themselves on sleep, if they're holding down a 9-5 job.  WE ALREADY KNOW that sleep-deprived people not only eat more, they've got messed-up hormonal responses to "normal" intake.  Should we be focusing on "do eat breakfast" or more to the point IMHO, "do NOT eat at midnight"?

In the Atkins message "don't go hungry -- eat something approved," I fear we have diluted the more important point, "DO NOT SNACK."  Snacking is an artificial relic of advertising as well as the "need" to eat often because one is not eating nutritiously.  The CICO-based religion of controlling one's meal-size is functionally faulty -- we need to eat hearty-enough MEALS so that we have no desire to snack ... particularly between supper and when our bodies tell us to break our fasts ... at least 12 hours later!