Backwards Logic?

Long before I ever discovered Intermittent Fasting, one thing I never could understand was the idea that if you miss a meal, your metabolism slows down and your body breaks down precious muscle tissue and holds onto fat.

Now, I am not talking about long term starvation here. No, I refer only to missing ONE meal or so.

So lets get this straight. You eat too many calories you get fatter. Then if you miss meals, your body holds onto stored fat and breaks down muscle tissue.

My background is in health and fitness and I even did a degree in exercise science. During all of the courses I have done, this principle of metabolic breakdown was a truth unquestioned by anyone.

If its true that our bodies start to breakdown muscle when food is scarce, would we not have HUGE muscles when we stuffed ourselves? How cool woud that be?

And when you think about it, in an evolutionary sense, it doesnt make much sense does it? When we were living in caves food was scarce, and we would not necessarily eat evey day. We would need our muscles to hunt or search for food right?

So if our bodies started to break down our precious muscle tissue after short periods without food, then each day it would become PHYSICALLY more difficut to search for food. Im pretty sure the Human race would have died out long ago.

This is why I think Intermittent fasting can be so successful for people. Its not for everyone thats for sure, but I think people should not feel guilty about missing a meal if it happens.

We need to give the human survival mechanism more credit!