Getting a flat abdomen is a lot easier for those who do not skip meals, according to a study that shows the relationship between weight gain and the frequency of meals rather than what one eats.
People who desire a flat stomach generally associate it with skipping meals, hoping that eating less or skipping breakfast, lunch or dinner may give them the flat tummy they wish for. A new research however show it may not be what someone eats that leads to weight gain, but how often they eat.
According to a new study from The Ohio State University, skipping meals could result in abdominal weight gain as skipping meals sets off a string of metabolic miscues. It's no secret, nobody wants a flabby tummy and scientists claim the first step to take for a flat abdomen is not skipping meals, according to records on iAfrica.
A study on mice at Ohio State University showed that animals that ate one large meal and fasted the rest of the day developed insulin resistance. Basically, their livers stopped responding to insulin and continued to produce glucose, which led to extra sugar in the blood. The extra sugar is stored as energy-storing white fat, which not only creates a squidgy stomach but is also linked with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
That being said, this does not imply one should eat all day. Ohio State's human nutrition professor Martha Belury gave the high sign that her finding do not advocate the theory that eating multiple small meals a day can help lose weight.
"But you definitely don't want to skip meals to save calories because it sets your body up for larger fluctuations in insulin and glucose and could be setting you up for more fat gain instead of fat loss," Belury said.
The study simply stated that in order to avoid changes in glucose and insulin, meals should not be skipped as doing so might lead to more fat gain rather than fat loss, Nature World Report noted.
Despite the fact that mice were used, Belury said the behavior matched that of human dieters. The mice, just like a hungry dieter developed gorging behavior due to calorie deprivation, which turned their metabolism upside down. The team believes that it also caused insulin production to fasten and subsequently collapse.
"Under conditions when the liver is not stimulated by insulin, increased glucose output from the liver means the liver isn't responding to signals telling it to shut down glucose production," Belury explained.
Although the mice didn't have type 2 diabetes, they were not responding to insulin anymore and that state of insulin resistance is known as pre-diabetes, Belury added.
