New study: breakfast is very overrated
Overrated?
A new high-quality (RCT) study tested the concept. Forty-nine women who did not usually eat breakfast were randomized to one of two groups: keep skipping breakfast, or start eating it. They were then followed for four weeks to see what happened.
According to conventional wisdom the people who started to eat breakfast would miraculously start losing weight and feeling great. But that’s not what the study found.
The women who started to eat breakfast…
- Ate more food in total over the day
- Ate more carbs in total
- Finally, not surprisingly, they gained weight
Nobody should be surprised. Feel free to eat breakfast if you’re hungry and it makes you feel good. But there’s no need to eat breakfast, and it’s certainly not going to help you lose weight.
It’s perfectly OK to break your fast (“break fast”) by eating lunch instead…
How to NOT eat breakfast
More
Intermittent Fasting for Beginners
Skipping breakfast gave no to negative results on weight, while skipping dinner gave great results.
Minimizing dinner is generally a very good way to manage weight.
For at least some people, skipping breakfast may be a very bad advice.
The woman in the study did not loose weight by ADDING food to their daily menu, that is hardly a surprise.
If you eat breakfast and that benefits you, you should by all means continue to do so.
Personally, I'd rather eat at bigger dinner than eat breakfast, and since that works for me I can continue to do so without being concerned.
I get nauseous if I try to eat anything solid for the first 4-5 hours after getting up in the morning. The last place where I did eat breakfast was training seminars (martial art 5-7 days x 9 hours per day). When I finally tried to start my morning on training seminar with just my normal coffee+full cream+butter, I was overjoyed that my training got better - whole 3 hours of training before lunch without feeling bloated and nauseous.
Hunter-gatherers typically eat most of their calories in the evening, because the daytime is spent hunting and gathering. Perhaps some leftovers from previous night are eaten in the morning, but if there's none, it's enough to pick a couple of berries during the day or eat a juicy grub etc.
My body wants me to eat no breakfast and my body wants me to eat most of my calories in the evening. ( My first solid food about 4-6 hours after waking up is my lightest and carb-richest meal of the day). I eat like this, because my body insists on it. No weight problems whatsoever.
I have no reference, because I don't have the book at hand and the reference is there, but one Finnish book about paleo mentions, that regardless of the timing of your meals, the secretion of digestive enzymes etc. is the best in the evening. 200 000 years as hunter-gatherers versus 10 000 years of agriculture...
Individual though, my hubby skips breakfast the. Is starving by 11 am and goes for bacon sandwiches, pizzas!
Any suggestions?