COMMUNITY: The fat and skinny of AM vs. PM eating

Editor's note: Adam Rees is founder of GRIT GYM, a gym based on results, creating a culture and lifestyle of performance, strength, health and freedom to live life on your own terms. Rees attended Wartburg, worked under nationally recognized strength coach Matt McGettigan at ISU and is generally a glutton for information and improvement in all forms.

By Adam Rees, community contributor

Basically, skipping breakfast isn't an issue until we only eat two huge meals each day - lunch at noon and supper at 6 p.m.

The “7 p.m. rule,” along with breakfast as the most important meal of the day, came about when it was thought being healthy was being plump and not of low body fat.

So, the question becomes why are we still following these rules?

Cortisol (stress hormone that puts fat around the mid section) levels are highest first thing in the morning and lowest at night. Among other things this makes a strong rationale for the benefits of late night eating (high amounts of vegetables and/or protein, not pop tarts, pasta or pizza) as well as delaying breakfast by at least two or three hours.

This is hard. considering I have been a die-hard breakfast advocate my entire life. I lost faith in the “7 p.m. rule” long ago, but breakfast and I have always had a great relationship.

I know, I know. This goes against everything you've ever heard regarding nutrition. It's going to take awhile to accept. You'll thank me in 10 or 15 years when everyone is talking about this “new” thing that you've known about since today.

Less than 10 years ago people were fighting about high vs. low carbohydrate diets and the majority thought bread and pasta should be the basis of all things nutrition. Bummer.

In all actuality, the diabetes epidemic has produced some incredible research, and a huge surge to get into how our bodies react to when and what we are ingesting.

John Kiefer, an exercise scientist and author, wrote a great article on:

www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/post/carb-back-loading-step-1-breakfast

Basically, when this “delaying breakfast and eating later” practice are applied, subjects saw a gain in muscle and a decrease in fat, among other things like improvement in insulin sensitivity, which you very much want to improve.

By the way, the night before I wrote this, at 9:30 p.m., I slammed four fairly large grass-fed burgers (no bun), two avocados plus juice of lime, one bottle of mango Kombucha (delicious) and a couple servings of broccoli that I dipped in hummus.

I do something to this affect about every night.

• For more of Rees' advice go to www.GRITGYM.com/resources and adamrees.blogspot.com. Email Rees at adam@gritgym.com