This Weird Trick Lowers Insulin By 54%

Does the size of your breakfast change your blood sugar? Even if you don’t change what your diet contains? Even if you eat the same amount of carbs?

This may seem like an odd question with an obvious answer. But there’s more to it that that.

A 2013 study sort out to test this question (1).

What they did was take 60 women with insulin resistance and put them on one of two diets:

• Diet Group 1 (the breakfast group): were instructed to eat more of their calories in the morning than in the evening. Their calorie intake was 980 kcal for breakfast, 640 kcal for lunch and 180 kcal for dinner. So a big breakfast, medium lunch and small dinner.
• Diet Group 2 (the dinner group):  were instructed to eat the same amount of calories but the opposite way around; 180 kcal for breakfast, 640 kcal for lunch and 980 kcal for dinner. So a small breakfast, medium lunch and big dinner.

These two groups were on the diet for 60 days and glucose/insulin levels were measured before and after.

Now you wouldn’t think that such a simple change could lead to any significant effects, because after all they were eating the exact same things, just staggering their calorie intake differently.

Well after the 60 days, the breakfast group recorded an impressive 7% less glucose and 54% less insulin compared to the dinner group!

This simple change was enough to drop these numbers significantly, and they didn’t even really do anything! What’s more, the women’s hormones were significantly more balanced in the breakfast group than the dinner group.

What made this even more impressive was the fact that the women in the breakfast group lost weight, whereas the women in the dinner group actually gained weight. These women were consuming the exact same amount of calories with the only difference being the timing of the calories.

One group lost weight, rebalanced their hormones and improved glucose metabolism significantly, whereas the other group did not experience significant effects with their glucose metabolism hormones and actually gained weight.

So the take away here is to have a larger breakfast, a smaller lunch and a tiny dinner. Try it for 2 weeks and see if it has an effect on your blood sugar.