Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

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> ... the fast should begin around 5pm ... there is no reason to have big dinners which are ridiculous

Actually there is a very big reason for why your advice is harmful, for me at least, but I suspect that for others as well. At 5pm I'm still at work, which means that whatever meal I'll have will be fast food and not a home cooked meal.

But even more problematic is that dinner is also the perfect opportunity to sit together with your family, as in that moment during the day that can be shared without feeling rushed and if you want to sit together with your wife and kids, anything less than 8pm is not doable, as afternoons are usually unpredictable, as for example that's also the time of day when people go shopping or solve other chores.

The family dinner is a matter of cultural inheritance that we've been forgetting and I'm willing to bet that this trait of modern life is much more harmful than fats, carbohydrates or whatever identified nutritional element is the enemy du-jour.

> At 5pm I'm still at work, which means that whatever meal I'll have will be fast food and not a home cooked meal.

You can also take a "home cooked meal" with you to work - for lunch purposes.

> But even more problematic is that dinner is also the perfect opportunity to sit together with your family

It is an opportunity - why do you think it is the _perfect_ opportunity?

> The family dinner is a matter of cultural inheritance that we've been forgetting and ...

There are many ways to share time together - it's not necessary to eat while doing so.

The American overweight problem is cultural and not an issue with eating high or low glycemic foods like the article states. If losing weight is an issue for someone. They are better off having a larger second meal and a smaller third meal even if that third meal is at 9 or 10pm so they can enjoy it with family or after work. The idea is not to have more blood sugar than then the liver can store as glycogen at bed time.

Everyone is different. If someone is really thin they probably should eat a massive third meal because the body does need stored body fat too.

It really really doesn't matter how you time your calories.

Please elaborate further. Sources et al.

Do you have any specific questions? I don't feel like a source is necessary here because this is generally accepted as fact and has been reproduced countless times. There is no science showing caloric timing being significant (physically) in terms of weight management. Mentally (as your sibling comment points out) sure, but physically absolutely not. You don't get fat from eating late, you get fat from eating an extra meal late.

The specific question I have is regarding what the liver does if very large meals are eaten within a short window (hence the relevancy of caloric/meal timing). Can't the liver only hold a certain amount of glycogen before having to transport the excess matter to the fat cells?

Sure, but since you've packed such a large percentage of your calories into this one meal, what happens to that fat at the later time when you would otherwise be eating again?

Then all things being equal would it not be better to space out short meals to prevent fat generation at all?

It shouldn't really make any difference. The point is fat is an energy store and your body is pretty good at storing excess calories and then using them again when needed.

Things do get a little more interesting, and the science becomes a little weaker, when you start thinking about nutritional timing in the context of body composition instead of overall weight. For instance, muscle protein synthesis remains pretty constant in someone with protein at most meals. But you are able to "spike" it about once every 3 hours (the mechanism seems to have a threshold around 8g of leucine, after which it can't be spiked again for another 3 hours).

So in theory the optimal way to eat the same number of calories, all else being equal, is evenly divided into a meal every three hours you are awake.

But it's a micro-optimization and doesn't make a huge difference, and again the science isn't super well reproduced there. People certainly succeed at elite levels with many different meal timings.

To manage weight, it doesn't matter. But to manage feelings of hunger, it does.

Nor does it matter whether you eat carbs or fats or protein. In the immortal words of Doctor Rudy, 'You haf. To eat. Less.'

> The American overweight problem is cultural and not an issue with eating high or low glycemic foods like the article states.

Why not both?

You are correct. Normal people should eat low glycemic foods also, true. But, not for the same reason that diabetic people have to. A diabetic person can't handle spikes in blood sugar, while a normal person can without consequence.

What is interesting is the mechanism that causes low glycemic food to digest slower. It's the fiber! Processed Uncle Ben's has .6 grams of dietary fiber per serving while brown rice has 3.5 grams per serving. For the same reason brown rice takes much, much longer to cook breaking down the cellulose to make it palatable, brown rice takes much, much longer to have it's energy absorbed into the blood stream, the fiber.

When a person eats low glycemic therefore high fiber foods, they are getting the same amount of satiation per same quantity of food, but that fiber is passing through without being absorbed. So, people eating low glycemic foods are consuming less calories for the same level of satiation. That is the 10,000 ft view but it more complicated than that because different foods have different levels of satiation based on many things that are more than just physiological but also psychological.

The article says that high blood sugar levels lead to weight gain which isn't entirely true in most people. High blood sugar levels while the liver has stored as much energy as it can in the sugar analogue glycogen leads weight gain and eating low or high glycemic foods doesn't matter.

I understand that 'satiation' is related to blood sugar rising. In my experience those healthy foods absolutely do not promote satiation.

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