Most people skip either breakfast or dinner when doing intermittent fasting. Why not skip lunch for once? This is what happens when you don’t eat at lunchtime.
In the morning like an emperor, in the afternoon like a king and in the evening like a pauper? At least since the 16:8 interval fasting has developed into one of the more popular nutritional methods in Germany, hardly anyone keeps to the old adage. But typically fasting people either skip breakfast or skip dinner. Hardly anyone just skips lunch. Right? Or are there also advantages to forgoing the main meal in the middle of the day? We’ll tell you.
Table of Contents
These 3 things happen when you skip lunch
1. The midday low is missing
Who doesn’t know it: You’ve been to the canteen or restaurant with your nice colleagues, you’ve eaten schnitzel with fries or a large portion of spaghetti bolognese and you’re hardly back in the office when your eyes close and you can relax hardly concentrate. The classic midday slump robs many of us of all concentration after a long meal and makes for tough hours in which we are at most minimally productive. One of the reasons for this is the blood sugar level, which spikes after a very high carbohydrate meal and then falls off rapidly when the insulin response comes on. On the other hand, fatty foods in particular have a very long stomach residence time, which is why our stomach is busy digesting them for up to seven hours. If you only have a small salad or a bit of fruit in your lunch break, or even skip lunch completely, you won’t fall into the midday slump.
2. They hardly benefit from autophagy
Autophagy is the name of the health-promoting cleansing process that is activated in our body cells, especially during longer periods of fasting. It’s a kind of cleaning program that eliminates broken or misfolded proteins, keeping your body clean and protecting it from chronic diseases. Autophagy has already been shown in animal experiments to guarantee a longer life. However, the cleaning program only runs at full speed after 12 to 16 hours without food. This is one of the reasons for skipping breakfastor dinner earlier for health reasons. Even if you eat breakfast at 7 a.m. and don’t eat your supper until 7 or 8 p.m., you won’t get the maximum benefit from the fasting phase.
3. Your body weight is reduced
If you consistently skip lunch, you may miss out on a potentially hearty and high-calorie meal. As a result, you will lose weight in the long run unless you compensate for the missing calories with the other two main meals or with snacks and snacks . Therefore, if you hardly ever eat at work anyway and are so busy that you don’t find the feeling of hunger bothering you, skipping lunch could turn out to be a suitable weight loss method for you. However, if you are unable to do your job due to lack of energy, you should refrain from fasting at noon.
