Is your appetite thwarting your ability to lose weight? Studies have found that the desire to eat constantly may be due to an imbalance of the satiety center in the brain. The more high-calorie the food intake is, the worse the condition becomes.
To rebalance appetite and the feeling of hunger, some doctors suggest skipping one dinner a week to reset the body’s hunger signals as fasting intermittently can bring healthy changes to the body.
Traditional Chinese medicine practitioner Dr. Hu Naiwen introduced a weight loss method with which one can lose at least one pound per month by simply decreasing one weekly meal.
Hu tried skipping dinner every Thursday evening and eating regularly at other times. With the reduction of only one meal per week, Hu found he overcame temporary hunger. The minimal fasting helped Wu rejuvenate the sensitivity of the satiety center in the hypothalamus, which is responsible for signaling fullness and the ability to stop eating.
The Chinese medicine practitioner said, “If you eat whenever you want, whatever you want all the time, the satiety center will become idle and no longer signals.” Hu recommends skipping occasional meals to anyone with a large appetite to reset their satiety center.
The functioning of the human satiety center in the hypothalamus is related to a hormone called leptin.
When a body experiences hunger, the level of leptin will be lower but increase post-mealtime. Once the hypothalamus receives leptin, it signals fullness.
However, it does not mean the more leptin you have, the easier it will be to feel full. Since adipose tissue can produce leptin, people with obesity secrete more of it—thus, the hypothalamus becomes desensitized causing difficulty in signaling fullness.
Recently, many studies have focused on the impact of diet restriction on the sensation of fullness. Some studies have discovered that limiting calorie intake can reduce leptin levels in the body, preventing the imbalance of the hypothalamus from receiving leptin.
However, consuming more high-calorie foods such as fat, carbohydrates, fructose, and sucrose will decrease the hypothalamus’s sensitivity to fullness after a meal.
Another study revealed that it is difficult for obese patients to feel full due to their inflamed hypothalamus and the blocked neurocyte pathways to produce fullness and that fasting can improve hypothalamus inflammation.
The timing of fasting is crucial. A clinical trial found that limiting meals to before 3 p.m. and fasting the rest of the day can improve the body’s sensitivity to insulin and reduce appetite at night. The human body’s ability to burn fat will also strengthen.
Researchers believe that skipping dinner is healthy because metabolism slows down at night. The metabolic activity of the human body is the most active in the morning. If you fast in the morning and eat a lot at night, the chances of metabolic imbalance will increase.
Dr. Yang Jingduan, a Chinese and Western medicine doctor and director of Yang’s Integrated Medical Center in the United States, shared his personal body transformation after fasting in the evening. Yang’s results echo the conclusion of scientific research.
To lose weight, Yang tried what is called 16:8 fasting—eating within an eight hour time-frame daily, and drinking only water or zero-calorie beverages such as black coffee and tea for the remaining 16 hours.
Initially, Yang chose not to have breakfast. Instead, he would have a cup of coffee with oat milk in the morning.
However, there are 250 calories in oat milk. Yang also found that skipping breakfast affected his work performance, especially when he was busy and couldn’t take lunch on time. He would feel exhausted and irritated and find it difficult to concentrate.
Yang changed to fasting at night since skipping breakfast did not provide him with enough energy to get through his day effectively.
He expressed that it was tough not to eat at night initially. After a busy day, he wanted to relax and was used to sitting in the kitchen, watching TV while eating and that skipping dinner seemed to make his life duller. Sometimes the doctor would get hungry and want to eat before bedtime. Although it broke his fasting routines, he would jump back on track the rest of the time.
However, Yang discovered a series of positive changes in his body after skipping dinner.
- His weight reduced from 196 pounds to 180 pounds. His belly also significantly shrunk, and his waist went from 38 inches to 34 inches.
- Yang felt more energized in the afternoons and evenings. His headaches were gone and he no longer felt weary and tired. Yang said his body no longer relied on dinner to provide energy. His body also more effectively burned its sugar and fat stores.
- An unexpected benefit was in lifestyle—not having to take the time to prepare, eat, and clean up after dinner means he had more spare time at night to exercise, read, and meditate. He also found he could sleep one to two hours earlier.
- The fourth change was improved sleep quality. Yang could maintain seven hours of sleep and wake up easily in the morning.
Yang stated, “If you want your intermittent fasting to be successful, you should progress gradually. If you are used to eating three meals plus snacks daily, it may be difficult to fast for 16 hours suddenly.”
He said patients could begin with a 10-hour intermittent fasting routine and slowly increase to 12, 14, and then 16 hours. Alternatively, Yang suggests increasing fasting from one day per week to two, three, and four days. Gradually increasing fasting duration builds a sense of accomplishment and gives the body the time it needs to adapt.
Yang reminded us not to feel defeated or weak if we sometimes break the fasting schedules. He said intermittent fasting will always have dips and flows in the process. If we stick to the routine and make it a habit, results will appear.
Although fasting focuses on the time of eating rather than calories, Yang warns us a sense of compensation might occur during meals when fasting for 16 hours. The body may want to eat more than it needs to make up for the lost meals.
However, overeating can break the efficacy of a fasting cycle. Conversely, if the calorie intake is less than 1,200 calories per day, it will drastically reduce the metabolic rate and cause muscle loss.
In addition, anyone who is fasting should also eat more plant-based food and organic ingredients during their fasts to avoid consuming more sugar and fat. Increasing water consumption with proper exercise during a fast will also bring better results.
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