Contrary to popular belief, missing meals is good for your immune system, weight management and gut heath. By ‘intermittent fasting’ I mean increasing the periods between your meals, and/or restricting your calories for two days a week or more over a month.  We all do it at night when we sleep so we know the body can cope!

Obesity and other diseases are now finally linked in scientific research to your gut health. The Global Burden of Disease (GDB) study in 2015 found that 600 million adults and 100 million children of the world’s population suffer from obesity which has doubled globally in 70 countries since 1980.  In addition, a 2017 study found strong evidence for the relationship between a high BMI (body mass index) and diseases such as cancer, hypertension and diabetes.

Try cutting your calories on the fasting days by 500 for females and 600 for males.  I find a Monday and Thursday are good days because the weekend eating is behind you and normal eating ahead.  I am not a breakfast person and don’t tend to get hungry until lunchtime, but I will have a tablespoon of coconut oil, the green no fruit smoothie or half an avocado to avoid dizzy spells.

Like many people, I grew up in a culture of having three meals a day, but instinctively disagreed with this philosophy and firmly believe one should listen to your body when it comes to nutrition.  Everybody has a unique gut microbiome composition or ‘fingerprint’, so the combination of trillions of good bacteria in your body will be different to others.  This is important when it comes to weight management.

Definitely only eat when you feel hungry.  If you are feeling hungry all of the time, your body is out of balance and you will need to assess the variety of food intake.  However, it is good for your body to be hungry from time to time.  When you do eat try and aim for 80% fullness because this gives the body more digestive and assimilation time and capacity.

The Research on gut microbiota is very hot right now and several findings demonstrate that many obesity, inflammation, weight gain, stress and metabolism problems are influenced by your bacterial diversity.  Although many studies are still small, a bacterium called Akkermansia is known to live on your gut lining and clean up your gut when you are not eating – a very good reason to fast regularly for short periods. It is worth looking after this bacterium, it makes up 1-5 % of your total bacterial garden.

Remember that the idea of three meals a day is a modern concept that emerged amongst the wealthy during the Victorian period.  The early Greeks, Romans and Jews ate one evening meal and today more than 30% of Italians, French and Spanish skip breakfast and do not have any different health or weight problems.

Compulsory meals such as breakfast should be avoided and so should the marketing messages from sugar filled breakfast cereal companies telling us that we must eat it!