Your breakfast choices could be personalized based on your metabolism – if you're trying to stay trim. A new study suggests that men and women process and store energy from foods in different ways, which can then affect weight loss.
The research by two biologists at the University of Waterloo in Canada was based on models incorporating multiple organs that described key sex-based variations in metabolic responses to food after fasting for several hours.
"Whether attempting to lose weight, maintain weight, or just keep up your energy, understanding your diet's impact on your metabolism is important," says computational biologist Stéphanie Abo.
For men's metabolisms, meals rich in high carbohydrates (like oats and grain) are preferable; for women's metabolisms, meals with more fat are better (think omelets and avocados).
In other words, that means those types of foods could well be more suitable for keeping energy high, reducing fat deposits, and regulating blood sugar levels – although breakfast is of course only one part of the overall picture.
"We often have less research data on women's bodies than on men's bodies," says mathematical biologist Anita Layton.
"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."
The model developed by Abo and Layton covered metabolic processes across multiple parts of the body, including the heart, liver, and gastrointestinal tract, as well as across skeletal muscle and adipose tissue (or fat).
Also included were an extensive number of metabolites (the products of metabolism), including glucose, glycogen, insulin, and free fatty acids (or FFAs). These metabolites were tracked across times of eating and fasting.
Key to the findings of the study were the different ways in which men and women break down fats for energy after eating, which then plays into food choices that would complement rather than interfere with those metabolic processes.
"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," says Layton.
"The results of the model suggest that women store more fat immediately after a meal but also burn more fat during a fast."
According to the team, a biological process known as the TG-FFA cycle could be responsible for these differences in energy use and fat storage – something worth investigating further in future studies.
"Lifestyle is a big factor in our overall health," explains Abo.
"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."
The research has been published in Computers in Biology and Medicine.
