A mathematical model illustrates the impact of breakfast nutrition on health and energy levels in men and women.
It’s not a bad thing if you pick a toasted bagel for breakfast, while your partner chooses eggs. In fact, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo, that difference could help you lose some weight.
The study, which employed a mathematical model of men’s and women’s metabolisms, showed that men’s metabolisms respond better on average to a meal laden with high carbohydrates like oats and grains after fasting for several hours, while women are better served by a meal with a higher percentage of fat, such as omelettes and avocados.
“Lifestyle is a big factor in our overall health,” said Stéphanie Abo, an Applied Mathematics PhD candidate and the lead author of the study. “We live busy lives, so it’s important to understand how seemingly inconsequential decisions, such as what to have for breakfast, can affect our health and energy levels. Whether attempting to lose weight, maintain weight, or just keep up your energy, understanding your diet’s impact on your metabolism is important.”
Addressing the Research Gap on Sex Differences
The study builds on an existing gap in research on sex differences in how men and women process fat. “We often have less research data on women’s bodies than on men’s bodies,” said Anita Layton, a professor of Applied Mathematics and Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematical Biology and Medicine.
“By building mathematical models based on the data we do have, we can test lots of hypotheses quickly and tweak experiments in ways that would be impractical with human subjects.”
“Since women have more body fat on average than men, you would think that they would burn less fat for energy, but they don’t,” said Layton. “The results of the model suggest that women store more fat immediately after a meal but also burn more fat during a fast.”
Going forward, the researchers hope to build more complex versions of their metabolism models and extend beyond the consideration of biological sex by incorporating an individual’s weight, age, or stage in the menstrual cycle.
Reference: “Modeling sex-specific whole-body metabolic responses to feeding and fasting” by Stéphanie M.C. Abo and Anita T. Layton, 22 August 2024, Computers in Biology and Medicine.
DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2024.109024
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25 Comments
Hello, please tell me how can I reduce my weight, which has reached 80 kilos, by taking herbal medicines. It is a step of 180. In 1960, my weight was 60 kilos, and I was 17 years old when my doctor found out that I had this disease in 1965. I was injured in the Qasr Shirin war zone, but the corrupt regime of the Islamic Republic still did not issue me a veteran card, and I filed a case a few months ago, and I am supposed to go to the medical commission for the percentage of veterans. I am now 60 years old
The writer of this article is a journalist not a doctor. I’m not sure they can give you advice on this
Thank you so much, Nat, for explaining that it is very difficult for me to reduce my stomach because I was unemployed for ten years and my stomach has grown several sizes. I should probably eat fibrous foods and vegetables because I have become quite lazy and my body is under a lot of pressure to exercise. To lose weight, one of the causes of obesity is lack of movement and unemployment, of course, those who give up their addiction and smoking become fat after a few years
I wonder how well this science will be received in the age of men having babies and 72+ genders…
Gender and biological sex are two different things. And obviously they didn’t study any intersex persons. It would be hard to get enough of a group of one type. Even though the prevalence is 1 to 3% of the population, most don’t even know their intersex.
They didn’t have any groups in this “study”. It was a computer program that ran some numbers and made a prediction. A real study needs to be done to validate the calculations. This could be a breakthrough, or it could simply be a model based on bad assumptions.
There is no intersex. There is a MAN and there is a WOMAN. Genes are genes chromosomes are chromosomes.
WHY IS THE BEGINNING OF THE ARTICLE ASSUMING THAT A MAN IS READING IT?! Please eliminate the gendered bias from your science news.
Where it is directed toward men?
Here is why reasonable people don’t care, Rachael. Because you’d be perfectly fine (and we all know it) if they assumed a woman was reading it.
if you say so. science is science, and even if you don’t believe in intersex because it doesn’t align with your views, hermaphrodites do exist as well as chimera individuals who can sometimes be born with two different types or sets of sex characteristics and/or genes. sorry if science offends you.
Science doesn’t spare your ego. Intersex people to exist.
If they aren’t studying women, who make up a significant portion of the world, why would they study intersex as much anyway? The point is, they need real studies, or we need to study our own bodies and do it ourselves.
Death by carbon dioxide poisoning
Sheri, how are you sure about these assumptions? Scientists are learning new things always, and you cannot place a be all end all judgement regarding genes and chromosomes. There are babies born as true hermaphrodites, so that puts your judgement into the “wrong” list.
i’d prefer those looking to enlighten the population in moral culture to at at least use they’re and their correctly first 🤷
I’m skinny and every other area other than my belly and chest? What kind of diet or exercise should I be doing?
Hmmmm, so what should those who do not identify as men or women eat? Rocks? I’m not a Dr, so obviously I cannot comment on that.
Although you don’t identify as a man or women i would think your physical makeup would determine what you should eat based on the logic of this article.
I find eating protein/fat for breakfast helps me not sugar crash by 10 am. I wonder if it is connected. (Then again hypoglycemia runs in my family so I probably just have it mildly).
When I ate cereal (low sugar high fiber so high carbs) for breakfast I gained weight, since switching to eggs with veggies, ham/bacon, cheese and toast/english muffin I’ve lost about 10 lbs in the last 8 months. So that’s the opposite of what that study came up with.
Not as much data about women as data about men because women have been put on the back burner on low. How about the medical science world do some catch up?
Impossible. The same society of scientists are telling us there is no difference between a man and a woman. You can’t “trust the science” when your world and those in it when you’re saying there is no difference between a man and a woman, and then saying women and men burn fat differently.
You’re confusing real, repeatable, verifiable; science, with the concept of gender-identity. Gender identity is a social construct. How you feel about who or what you are is not as much something scientific, as it is pseudoscience-masquerading-as-science.
There IS a biological, hormonal, even cortical differences between men and women. This is a fact that is not up for debate.
Nature is always trying out new permutations of the genetic code. The unfit, perish. A bird that has a beak too thick to reach into dead logs to pull out tasty grubs would probably learn to source food elsewhere. And if it wouldnt bother trying to find “elsewhere” then it would simply die. No successive generations of advantageous genetic expression, because this particular set was ill-suited to the environment, the competition or other factors present in a given specimens biome. The skinny beaked birds are able to reach the food in this example and very likely pair up and mate with other slim-beaked birds that can also reach in far enough to get the biggest, tastiest and most nutritional grubs. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. But back to the science of it all, nature has come up with some very rare specimens, and the rarest probably don’t, and won’t ever be easily classified as “unmistakably male” or “unmistakably female” because Gender and sexuality are socially defined constructs. Since we tend to clothe ourselves, its not an easy process of staring at everyones crotch to see who has a penis to go with their breasts. Not to mention that in certain circles this might be considered a punishment from god, or a curse upon a family’s child… i don’t know how people got started down the path of dichotomous gender identity, maybe to do with the fact that 98%+ of us are very clearly female (X-X), or male(X-Y).. unless you suffer from Downs Syndrome, in which case they’re typically (X-Y-X) … but wait? Ive seen people with Downs who were very clearly male or female… the chromosomes would suggest that all downs sufferers are hermaphroditic. I havent checked, personally, but I think trying to label everyone on the planet as neatly fitting into category “Masculine”, or “Feminine” is not a simple algebraic “cancelling out like terms for simplicity’s sake” because of all the variability that exists in our genetic makeup.
TL;DR -> science isn’t saying that men and women are exactly the same without any difference between us. It never really tried to claim that, ever…. science seeks to understand how certain genetic expressions lead to feeling a belonging to one gender or the other. Please don’t conflate your “anti-woke, every preschooler is getting a sex change without parental consent, courtesy of your local demtards” hyperbolic rhetoric with real science. The fact that one of our presidential candidates openly believes in “alternative facts” should clue you in to the great deception. Science has never led humanity down the wrong path. However, what humans chose to do with the knowledge that science revealed to them is where it goes from altruism to dystopian.
The best breakfast is no breakfast. Intermittent fasting is not only a great weight loss strategy but it’s also great for you.