Abdominal Weight Gain May Be More Common In Those Who Skip Meals

New findings published in The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry show that skipping meals can increase the risk of abdominal weight gain in some individuals.

For the study, researchers at Ohio State University found that mice that ate all of their food as a single meal and fasted the rest of the day developed insulin resistance in their livers, which can increase the risk of diabetes.

These mice were initially put on a restricted diet, causing them to lose more weight when compared to controls that had limited access. However, as food options were re-added to the restricted mices' diet, they gradually regained weight over time.

Furthermore, they seemed to gain more fat around their middles, or the equivalent of human belly fat. And at the end of it all, the restricted-diet mice had gained more weight with higher insulin resistance, increasing the risk of various health risks. 

"Even though the gorging and fasting mice had about the same body weights as control mice, their adipose depots were heavier. If you're pumping out more sugar into the blood, adipose is happy to pick up glucose and store it. That makes for a happy fat cell -- but it's not the one you want to have. We want to shrink these cells to reduce fat tissue," concluded senior study author Martha Belury, in a news release.