How to Build a Breakfast That Supports Insulin Sensitivity
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In this clip from the FoundMyFitness interview with Dr. Ben Bikman, he recommends changing breakfast after the overnight fast. His practical options are to delay the first meal or choose protein, healthy fats, fiber-rich plants, and minimally processed carbohydrates instead of refined starch and sugar. Small controlled trials of early time-restricted eating, which included breakfast and moved dinner earlier rather than testing breakfast skipping, found improved insulin sensitivity in eight men with prediabetes and lower 24-hour glucose in 11 adults with overweight. [1] [2]
Dr. Rhonda Patrick asks how the glucose response after breakfast may affect later hunger. In a study of 1,070 adults using standardized meals and continuous glucose monitoring, larger glucose dips two to three hours after eating predicted greater hunger, a shorter time until the next meal, and higher subsequent energy intake. The findings add useful support for meals that promote a steadier post-meal response. [3]
Dr. Bikman also describes an earlier dinner as another way to extend the overnight fasting interval. Taken together, these studies support testing an earlier eating pattern and a steadier first meal in the specific populations studied, but they do not show that one schedule universally improves insulin sensitivity, appetite control, or metabolic flexibility. The approach can be adapted to a person's schedule, food preferences, activity, and metabolic needs.
- ^ 10.1016/j.cmet.2018.04.010
- ^ 10.3390/nu11061234
- ^ Wyatt, Patrick; Berry, Sarah E; Finlayson, Graham; O'Driscoll, Ruairi; Hadjigeorgiou, George; Drew, David A., et al. (2021). Postprandial Glycaemic Dips Predict Appetite And Energy Intake In Healthy Individuals Nature Metabolism 3, 4.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think if you could leave people with just one practical takeaway about insulin, about their metabolic health, uh how they can improve their life, their health span in the long run, what would it be?
Dr. Ben Bikman: Yeah. Yeah. So to I would say the simplest strategy would just be change breakfast tomorrow. Overnight fasting is incredibly therapeutic. um insulin will come down during a fasted state and that sort of resensitizes the body to insulin. So in the morning you've finally been fasting overnight, insulin has come down. The last thing you want to do is spike your insulin with a starchy sugary breakfast. And of course, tragically, breakfast is almost just a dessert nowadays all over the world where it is just like pure dessert. It's pure sugar and starch. I would say change breakfast tomorrow either fast through breakfast um like a drink I like to drink a cup of yerba mate uh fast drink some coffee or tea uh and which is not not going to break your fasted state even if you put a little butter I don't consider that as breaking a fasted state because I define fast as the endocrinology the the nutrients rather than the calories uh but that's a topic for another time but uh or or Don't consume anything, but if you do, then if you do want to eat, then let it be the low glycemic load vegetables um and berries and then more protein and fat. So, whatever you can do to keep your insulin in check for as long as possible until say lunch. The longer the insulin is low, the more you're improving your insulin sensitivity and the more you are allowing that metabolic flexibility where the human hybrid burning glucose or sugar burning or fat burning, it's insulin that dictates that fuel. And most people are stuck in sugar burning mode because they never bring their insulin down long enough to shift over to fat burning. So, you get to get into this fat burning state, enhancing metabolic flexibility, and you're improving your insulin sensitivity. So my one piece of advice, change breakfast and change it tomorrow.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So you want to extend that—
Dr. Ben Bikman: Yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: —that state where you're you're basically improving insulin sensitivity.
Dr. Ben Bikman: Yes, that's right.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Okay. So the meal frequency it sounds like you know the more you're each time you're elevating each time you're having an insulin response that insulin is then you're you're getting into the fat storage.
Dr. Ben Bikman: Yeah. And you will get hungry. Yeah. So so as much as we highlighted that 2021 study, what I ought to have done is highlight the work of Dr. David Ludwig. um Cara Ebbeling and others and Shai et al. in New England Journal of Medicine in 2012 where there are there's so many decades worth of evidence showing that as much as we had that one study suggesting well the insulin higher insulin group didn't have less hunger yeah there's a lot of evidence showing the opposite. So where you you you end up creating this roller coaster of glycemia and hunger where the person eats a starchy sugary breakfast which let's face it most breakfasts are these days they have this big spike and then when you go high you inevitably go low and then when you go low hunger comes again even though you may still literally have food in your stomach and yet your brain is starting to sense well I'm hungry because the overall amount of energy in the blood has gone down even though there's plenty of stuff still in the stomach but it stimulates hunger. That's David Ludwig's main contributions. So anyway, it puts the person on this roller coaster of glycemia and every time it comes down, hunger wants to push it back up again. And so, yeah, I cut you off, though. But that puts them in a position to eat six or seven times a day. And if they're not eating, they're drinking something sugary, either a soda or a sugary fruit juice,
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: right? And and the difference between, you know, this sugary type of like breakfast you're talking about and perhaps like some something that's more of a complex carbohydrate would be the fiber is slowing that glucose response and and causing some satiety as well. Um so that would be something that you would contrast.
Dr. Ben Bikman: Not to mention in that study in 2021, they probably were doing more complex carbohydrates and not
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: they were yeah and it was it was plant-based.
Dr. Ben Bikman: And that that's again another reason why I thought we need to be careful. Not I don't mean to sound overly critical of the study. I appreciate it, but at the same time, I think we need to um elaborate on the limitations, which is most people aren't starting with a breakfast of a big leafy green salad. Um, but there is an a group that found that when you have a breakfast and they looked at breakfast and the name of the article was something like more rapid return of hunger, they it was something like return to hunger was in the title. And if the breakfast isocaloric breakfast, so same number of calories, protein was clamped and it just differed in the ratio of fats to carbs. The high carb group was hungrier much sooner and then ate more for their next meal than the low carb group. And and so I would say as much as we want to be sort of fair with whole plants, if that breakfast is a mix of whole plants with good proteins and fats, that's going to be a winning combination of satiety. and then have a nice lunch and then my view for me personally I don't eat breakfast as much as I said I wouldn't elab elaborate on my own uh approach I eat a big lunch um that's my main meal of the day because I want and then I find if I have a big filling lunch it's easy for me to taper through dinner and then easy to not snack in the evening but as much as I know one of the great ironies of being a metabolic scientist and yet a fallible human um with bad habits sometimes is that evening time is still my weakest time of the day. And my kids think that I'm the best dad in the world and I want them to be healthy and I don't really bring a lot of cereal into the home. I make breakfast for the kids every morning for the most part and it's a mix of various meals that I make and they think, "Wow, my dad just loves me so much." Yes, I do. I love you all my little darling babies, but I do it because I don't want cereal in the home because if there's cereal in the home, daddy is a meth addict when it comes to cereal. And if it's there as much as I know I will like go through this like I can almost script it out where I'll put help get the kids to bed. I'll clean the house, straighten things up, and then everything's quiet and then I think I I need six bowls of cereal right now. And so then I will eat myself sick. And like a true addict, I will tell myself, I'll just have one bowl. What's the problem with one bowl? And then yet there's this little shoulder angel telling me, "Oh, but you know, you're not going to stop at one bowl." But then there's the addiction inside of me saying, "Yeah, I am. I want this. I'm just gonna have one bowl." I never My wife can, though. My wife has this uncanny alien-like ability to eat something like this, something sweet like an ice cream or a cereal, and just have a little bit of it and be done. I can't do that. She is a moderator and I am an addict when it comes to these kinds of things. Which is one of the reasons why I don't love a lot of the modern the most popular modern mantra when it comes to nutrition is moderation and all things. What if you can't moderate? Then it would be better not to even start.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: What if you're what if you eat dinner early? Is it as awesome way to do it too?
Dr. Ben Bikman: Yeah. Yep. That would be another way to do it. It's just I I don't focus on dinner so much because it's just so complicated. You know, you and I, we have families and so sometimes there are for me for me personally as a busy dad and husband my even though I I'm home for breakfast, the fact that I'm not eating breakfast in the midst of the chaos, no, it doesn't disrupt the family dynamic at all. The kids are eating, we're talking, and I'm sipping on my cup of yerba mate while we're helping get lunch ready and everything else. It's not at all disruptive. and and then lunch. I'm at work. I have whatever lunch I'm going to have and that'll be my biggest meal of the day. But as much as I am absolutely a fan of of being careful with dinner because the evidence is so supportive of it, I also recognize that it's the trickiest meal because of social dynamics, family dynamics. But in so far as you can eat earlier, then just stop eating. The very best you can do, whether it's drinking some apple cider vinegar or having something bitter in your mouth to um reduce the sweet cravings because bitter tastants can reduce sweet cravings, I would say do it. Whatever tool, whatever leveraging you need in the evening to not crave or snack on junk, do it.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Great. Yeah. I mean, I I probably should have mentioned this earlier when we were talking about the late late night snacking, but the the fact that melatonin shuts down
Dr. Ben Bikman: Yep.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: insulin production in the the pancreatic beta cells is
Dr. Ben Bikman: hyperglycemia disrupts melatonin too. So even back to the glucose mechanism um another reason to not go to bed hyperglycemic is it disrupts the melatonin rhythm uh at the same time.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Oh interesting. So it's like a two-way thing here. It's an ugly little battle.
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