Why Breakfast Isn’t the Most Important Meal of the Day
If you’ve been interested in health and fitness at all, you’ve probably seen the options “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” “eat breakfast to kickstart your metabolism,” or perhaps “skip breakfast and die.” As it turns out, this is all probably wrong.
I also have a long and fickle history with breakfast. When I was a chubby child , I couldn’t afford to eat it. But in 2010, breakfast of oats and whey became my morning’s trademark. It was like worshiping deities: each morning began with a tribute to the gods of “clean food” not out of love, but out of fear that their capricious nature would amaze me with slow metabolism, muscle loss, poor training, and so on.
But then I started reading more about fitness, trying different protocols, and heard on the Leangains blog about a protocol called Intermittent Fasting (IF). At IF, practitioners only eat for a short period of time each day and go hungry during rest. This usually meant skipping breakfast. I was skeptical at first, but through research and experimentation, I have learned a lot about the relative (not) importance of breakfast in the diet.
Why we believe breakfast is essential (and why it isn’t)
There is no shortage of research praising the health benefits of breakfast. They speculate that skipping itis unhealthy for the cardiovascular system , kids who eat breakfastdo better in school , etc., etc. But a deeper look at most of these studies shows that they are mostly observational . This means that instead of applying certain conditions to a controlled test group (such as a pilot study), they look at the data and then try to draw conclusions.
The problem is that any process in the body is incredibly multifaceted and depends on a huge number of variables. Couldn’t it be, for example, that the kids who had breakfast came from higher-income families, which means they did better in school? Correlation does not equal causation .
In the absence of a controlled environment, it is difficult to say whether one is the cause of the results obtained, or whether the effects coincide with the effects of another variable (of course, it is difficult to study the human body in any other way than observation.)
A relic of older, outdated research is the widespread myth that eating several small meals throughout the day will “speed up your metabolism.” Over time, this has evolved into the belief that breakfast is the foundation of any healthy diet. It logically follows from this: if you sleep eight hours a day, this is eight hours that have passed without the fire of the notorious stove (if you do not sleep and do not eat ), so you need to immediately eat breakfast to start it up again. But in reality, there isno real evidence to support the previous argument.
In the short term, changing your meal frequency can affect the thermic effect of food (TEF, or the amount of energy you use to digest, absorb, and distribute nutrients). But there is no difference within 24 hours.The British Journal of Nutrition followed subjects eating three or six meals a day and found that if the total calorie intake and nutrient intake remained the same, metabolism did as well.
What about meal time? In a study recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , researchers divided volunteers into breakfast and non-breakfast groups and then instructed them to either always skip breakfast or always eat breakfast. Thus, some retained their current eating habits, while others changed them. Sixteen weeks later, no one has lost any significant weight — an average of about a pound or so. Neither skipping breakfast nor eating in the group affected weight. A similar twelve-week study also found that skipping or taking breakfast for weight loss did not provide significant benefits. Rather, those who lost the most weight were in groups that were encouraged to change their habits.
In short: breakfast really doesn’t really matter. Besides that the pancakes are the best. (Waffle lovers, are you so thirsty for syrup that you need extra pockets?)
What Skipping Breakfast Taught Me
There are many myths around IF (fasting and not fasting alternating), one form of which is skipping breakfast. It turns out that the ideas that skipping breakfast will negatively affect cognition, metabolism, etc., are based on erroneous observational studies. In fact,short-term fasting does not negatively affect cognition and actually increases metabolism through the release of catecholamines.
But I have found that the real benefit lies in the freedom it gives to all dieters. Around 2010, when I started experimenting with IF, I was surprised. My metabolism didn’t slow down ,later Ididn’t get hungry or overeat , and I didn’t lose my gains, didn’t wither and didn’t die, as most of the Internet led me to believe. (Thanks for nothing, Internet.)
Because of the hormone ghrelin , which makes you eat at the same time every day, it took me a week to get used to. After that, I found that my morning was more productive. In the morning I had one less thing to worry about. I could exercise, read, or lay sleep instead of opening eggs or boiling oatmeal because I had to.
This is true for most of my clients. I have encouraged many of my students to experiment with IF. Of course, this is not a universal answer to the question of losing weight. But it allows them to find a diet based on their preferences, and not dogmas. Most actually continue with the protocol, but some do not. The importance is to demonstrate that your ability to achieve your goals is not limited to the little details of your daily routine. It all comes down to being consistent.
So is it worth skipping breakfast? Do what works for you. If you like breakfast, eat it. If you can’t stomach it, skip it – nothing bad will happen (but remember to give him a week to get used to). Your decision should be based on personal preferences and on that , then you can stick to in the long run .
So what is the most important meal of the day? Any food you want.