Is skipping breakfast really that bad?
 

The prevailing wisdom tells me that I need to eat breakfast and that it needs to incorporate protein, fiber and other nutrients in order to kickstart my metabolism and keep me going.

I listened to the wisdom and have been making myself eat breakfast for the past few months. A handful of raw almonds with no-sugar-added yogurt or just the yogurt or a banana is about all I can manage. I just don't feel like eating in the mornings, and making myself do so sometimes makes me feel nauseous or just "off". It also makes me really hungry all morning, which often leads me to pick snacks out of the snack bin at work, which generally has crackers, senbei or small pieces of chocolate.

My question is, how bad is it if I go back to not eating breakfast? When I skip it, I'm not ravenous for lunch and I don't end up snacking; I generally feel more in control of my eating throughout the day. If it's helping me maintain weightloss, is it really terrible to skip breakfast as long as I make sure I'm getting the vitamins, nutrients and calories I need over the course of the day?

I will be curious what the responses are to this. I happen to be an earlier in the day eater. That being said, I don't know if it matters much when you consume your calories just that you do.

I have a friend who is opposite of me. All her eating is more later in the day on.

I probably wouldn't push myself personally if I didn't want to eat, but I don't want to give bad or unhealthy advice because I have no real qualifications.

WE all need to do what works for our bodies.

For me, there is now way I could skip breakfast. I work for a veterinarian and have a very physically active job. I eat a High protein breakfast. I get to work at 7:30 and depending on how the day goes, I might not get to eat until 12:30, if then, depending on whats happening.

Plus, I roll out of bed at 5:15 am. and I don't get off of work until 5 pm, if we don't have an emergency at work.

Whatever plan you choose to follow, has to work for you. It has to be reasonable, flexible, and fit into your current lifestyle, but it also needs to be portable, so when your life changes you can take your good habits with you.

I've read so many articles that go both ways... I was researching because I had a similar concern. In the end I have to agree that you have to figure out what works best for you and your lifestyle.

I used to make sure I ate breakfast but like you my body went into a bit of a funk after, the opposite of what I wanted which was a boost to get the day going. I stopped eating breakfast and now just have an early lunch, works great for me and that's what counts.

As you mentioned as long as you get the goods your body needs when you do eat and not eating does not make you over eat later and it makes you feel better... I say listen to your body.

I am definitely an advocate of doing what makes you feel good.

I am a full time nanny for two little boys so I have to eat something before I go to work or I get pretty light headed by snack time! I can't say that I enjoy breakfast, I don't like breakfast food no matter the time of day, but I feel better when I eat it.

If eating breakfast makes your day all wonky, don't do it! I'm with all the responders who said to do what works for your body! Everyone is different so the same measures cannot be used on all people.

I was at my thinnest when I didn't eat breakfast. I'm back to not eating breakfast again and I feel better. I think it works for some of us.

Thanks for the all the responses! I'm glad to hear advocates of "do what feels good," because even if breakfast is supposed to be a good thing, I just don't enjoy it (and it doesn't seem to benefit me like other healthy habits do).

There is no reason to eat breakfast at all if you do not have a massive urge to binge at lunch. No reason.

I don't eat breakfast. I'm not hungry until much later in the day, so what's the point? I hate forcing myself to eat only to be desperately rationing calories later when I'm actually hungry! I've maintained my weight for over a year doing this... something I've NEVER been successful at while I was forcefeeding myself a morning meal. Listen to your body!

Not at all necessary. It's the total calories in vs. out that matter. I don't eat my first meal until 2 or 3 pm, and my last meal is usually at 10 or 11. If I listened to prevailing diet wisdom and forced myself to eat at 7 am and eat every three hours and stop eating after 7 pm, I never would have lost weight. Listen to your body. If you're not hungry in the morning, don't force yourself to eat. It will not hinder your weight loss in the slightest if you are consuming less calories than you burn. I'd suggest you check out Intermittent Fasting (leangains is a good place to start)

^^THIS!! And the reason I wouldn't have lost any weight is because I would have been so miserable I'd have given up pretty quickly. "The best diet is the one you can stick to" - so whatever works for YOU when it comes to weight loss is absolutely the way to go.

Here is a speech I wrote on the topic.

The most important meal of the day is your <pause> breakfast.
We've all heard it. Our parents told us, we learned it in a health class, health experts on TV have told us, and you probably read it on the internet.

And yet - how many of us have occasionally skipped breakfast?
Be honest... How many skipped it today?
Some of us would probably skip breakfast altogether if we didn't feel so guilty about it.

Fellow toastmasters and honored guests tonight I will examine why health experts say breakfast is important. According to wikipedia there are three main reasons. Your metabolism, your cognative ability, and your weight. Lets start with your metabolism.

You may have heard that breakfast kick starts your metabolism for the day. To take it a step further you may have heard that if you miss a meal your body will sense there is a famine and go into "stavation mode". It is true that not eating will slow down your metabolism. A study done at the University of Rochester in 1987 showed that your metabolism slowed down
by nearly 8%. Aha! But ... it took 60 hours for this to happen. That's almost three days, with no food! In fact, the body's first response
to fasting is to speed up our metabolism. In a study in done in the year 2000 at the University of Vienna subjects were fasted and over a period of three days showed increases of 5-10% in their metabolisms as well as increased levels of adrenaline. All of this makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. If thereis no food our bodies react by giving us increased energy so we can go find some but if there is none to be found it slows things down so we can survive longer. For us tonight it is clear that eating breakfast or not is not a metabolism issue but what about breakfast fueling our brains?

There have been a lot of studies done on children's cognative abilities and breakfast and most say the same thing. Skipping breakfast impairs our brains. In 2009 The University of Leeds in the UK did a systematic review of 45 studies published between 1950 and 2008. They found the overall quality of the studies was poor, most had industry sponsership (Kellogs anyone?,) and the effects of not eating breakfast were more easily demonstrated on nutrionally at risk children. Regardless, it appears children do better even if only marginally in cognative testing by eating breakfast. But what about adults?

In 2008 the US Army did a double blind placebo controlled study where participants were fed only 300 calories over the course of 2 days. After being fed almost nothing for two days reaction time, learning, memory, logical reasoning were tested and were not adversely effected. It is hardly a leap of logic to conclude that for an adult missing breakfast weill have no effect of our brain's abilities. This leads us to the final reason breakfast is considered important, our weight.

Research demonstrates that those people who do not regularly eat breakfast are more likely to be overweight. But why? It's a good question. If you dig into the research people who skip breakfast seem to have less healthy eating habits. But wait, there's more. In 2009 a group from the Imperial College in London hooked people up to functional MRIs to measure brain activity and found that when skipping breakfast participants brain “reward” centers were
activated more by the sight of high-calorie than low-calorie foods. In otherwords, our brains are pushing us towards making a poor food choice when we miss a meal. Makes sense. In light of this if you skip breakfast be aware that you need to eat a healthy lunch dispite what your instincts and brain are pushing you to do.

In light of all these facts I ask Is breakfast truly important? Does it have unique metabolic and health-related benefits? It doesn't affect your metabolism. It doesn't affect your mental abilities. All we're left with is that missing a meal does make those high calorie foods look better.

Yet research does show that eating breakfast is correlated with good health. In other words those people who tend to eat breakfast tend to be healthier. However, one of the first things you learn in science is correlation is not causation.

In my opinion, the real reason that eating breakfast is correlated with good
health is because regular breakfast eaters maintain better dietary habits overall. Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

I haven't eaten breakfast in almost two years. I maintain good dietary habits I just don't eat until after noon. I'm not a breakfast hater. How could I be there are so many delicious breakfast foods I enjoy eating, in the afternoon or evening. My health? I brought my recent blood test in case you want to see it.

My point is simply this. Breakfast can be a healthy part of a dietary plan but it doesn't have to be. If you enjoy eating breakfast do it. If not, skip it, and don't feel any guilt about it.

Mr toastmaster

I think the biggest mistake in the field of weight loss as a whole, is treating weight loss as a one-size-fits-all endeavor.

The research is just starting to switch from "what works best (assuming everyone is the same" to "what works best for whom," (looking for ways to predict which strategies work best for which groups of people).


It's getting better, but even now, the mere suggestion to "experiment to see what works for you," is sometimes treated as if it were heretical advice (suggest making even the smallest adaptation to a popular weight loss program and in the wrong group, you'll almost face a lynch mob).


Personally, I define the word "breakfast" very literally - my first meal is breakfast (because it breaks the fast) whether I eat it at 5:30 in the moring or at 6:00 pm - whether I eat it within 15 minutes or 10 hours after waking up and I don't "time-base" my food choices. Pizza for breakfast - cereal for dinner - whatever.


I do tend to feel and function best when I eat within 3 hours of getting up, and when I eat frequent, small meals throughout the day (and don't let any of the meals be too carb-heavy, especially sugar heavy. I get very nauseous when I eat sugar on an empty stomach - so no donuts for breakfast ever).

Even as a young kid, I couldn't eat donuts for breakfast. I remember as young as 8 or 9, when my parents would take us out after church for donuts, maybe once a month or so, choosing the "french" style donuts (fried, airy donuts) because they were the lowest sugar/calorie donuts and because they were the only kind that didn't make me violently ill. Or, I'd order my donut, but would only drink the milk and would save my donut for later in the day when I could eat it without getting sick. It makes me wonder whether I had blood sugar issues even then (I'm type II diabetic).


From meeting people here and in in-person weight loss groups like Weight Watchers and TOPS (taking off pounds sensibly), and from experimenting myself, I've learned there are a lot of ways to distribute your calories throughout the day, and there is no best one that works best for everyone.

To find your best, you have to experiment,m and even then it's not written in stone. Your best pattern may depend on what you have planned for the day. I can postpone breakfast longer and can increase the time between meals on less-active days. If I'm going to the gym, skipping a meal beforehand usually isn't smart.

Being type II diabetic, there are a lot of variables I have to consider in determining when/what I should eat. The size of the meal, how long I'm going without eating, when I took my medication, how active I'm going to be, even the weather. Skipping meals during very hot, humid weather tends to put me at risk for lightheadedness and even passing out, which I learned the hard way about twenty years ago when I passed out in church (at the time Catholic) on a very hot day after skipping breakfast.

In Germany, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

They all eat homemade bread, hard boiled eggs, meats, cheeses (nothing sugary).

They all cringe when I don't want to eat breakfast, like I have some sort of disease, or like I may starve before lunch. Out of curiousity, are they also very serious about breakfast in Japan?

Even as a young child, I remember struggling to eat breakfast. We lived out in the country, so I would have to wake up super early. My Mother, being the caring woman she is, would feel embarassed if she sent her child to school without breakfast. So, every morning we would sit down and we would try to eat breakfast. It usually led to throwing up - not because I was mad at her, but because my stomach didn't like it. She even took me to the GP and then to a psychologist. Anyway, she eventually gave up and our morning became much more enjoyable.

Sometimes I do often feel ravenous for lunch. I give myself 500 calories for lunch. So, it can be a bit larger.

I also have always noticed that eating any type of breakfast actually makes me hungrier and snackier throughout the entire day. I wish I knew the reason for this.

I appreciate everyone's continued insight. Knowing that there are other people out there making healthy choices and weightloss progress who have also given up breakfast is really helpful.

There are certainly days when I want breakfast, and I listen to my body on those days, but like some of you, I just don't feel good when I eat breakfast on a regular day.

One of my town's ongoing campaigns is 「早寝、早起き、朝ごはん」–"Sleep early, wake early, eat breakfast"–and the homeroom teachers are known to check if their students have eaten breakfast. Although every family or person is different, on the whole, breakfast is a huge deal in Japan.

Personally, when I open my eyes I'm hungry haha so breakfast is a MUST for me. My friend on the other hand, can't eat that early because she says it makes her sick.

BUT do what works for you :)

It really goes to show just how different we all are. As for me, I'm definitely a breakfast person... if I don't eat a decent meal within an hour of waking up, I am pretty much set off for a bad day in terms of food. I get lightheaded and headachey, and my self control goes out the window when I do finally get access to food. But lunch? I've found in the last months I really don't care for lunch. An optimal day for me is a decent sized breakfast and a decent sized dinner with a handful of small snacks in between.

Really a "do what works for you" type of situation..!

I used to always eat breakfast - my favourite meal of the day! I could eat breakfast for every meal - I love everything about it. Hot cereals, fruit, muffins, pancakes, coffee, breads, sometimes cheese and eggs... yum!

But I, like other people mentioned on here, tend to eat MORE later in the day if I eat breakfast. Even a small one like an envelope of instant oatmeal. So since I'm usually not ravenous in the morning, I save those cals for later in the day. I do have coffee with milk and sugar every morning, and count this as my breakfast. (75 cals). I do sometimes get a little lightheaded later in the morning, especially after exercising.. and if I do I then have 1/2 banana or apple or a piece of cheese to bridge me to lunchtime.

Works for me! ;)

Personally the research I have read indicates that breakfast is extremely important. But I have no interest in getting in a pissing match with people who don't believe in what that research shows about the importance of not letting the body go so long without eating, so I'll simply tell you about a statistic.

I was selected for a research study that studies hundreds of people that have lost weight and kept it off. I get stats from them.

Of those in the study, 88% of people that have lost 50 pounds and kept it off more then 6 months eat breakfast. Of course that means that 12% that have kept it off don't. So statistically, it seems that eating breakfast correlates with successful weight loss. Notice I used the work correlate and not causes.

Take this as you will!

That is an interesting stat - thanks for bringing it to light. What is the name of the organization? I might add it in to a future speech. :D

All the research I am aware of correlates eating breakfast with better health and/or lower weight and/or lower chance of obesity which is so extremely interesting to me because scientifically it is meaningless except for the tendancy to make poorer food choices.

With the rise of obesity I can't help but wonder how breakfast plays in, if at all since culturally whether one eats a big breakfast or a little one varies quite a bit too.

It really is interesting. My personal thoughts are still what they were when I wrote that speech. That those who tend to be breakfast eaters tend to have healthier eating habits. It's lke the chicken and the egg - do they have healthier eating habits because they eat breafast or do they eat breakfast regularly because they've been told how important to health it is and they follow the rules.

P.S. - I think your idea that anyone wants to engage in a pissing match over the topic is a bit misguided. Most people here are able to discuss things without getting upset because someone said you must or must never eat breakfast.

Wow.

Please understand that not everyone is always going to agree with you.

It's insulting to describe disagreement with your views as a pissing match.

(BTW, six months of maintenance? That's not a long time.)

I know that, Maria. However in a previous thread, I had 2 people go off on me when we were discussing my ideas about breakfast, and the word "idiotic" was used. So I take that personally and pissing match is accurate as far as I am concerned.

John, I'll get you the exact name tomorrow.

I have read that the majority of those who successfully lose weight and maintain it eat breakfast. Even if that is true, so what? That doesn't mean that you must eat breakfast to successfully lose weight and maintain that loss. Years ago, I would try to get myself to fit into the mold of what was "supposed" to work. Now, though, I'm much more comfortable with accepting what works for me and what my limitations are. Even if something works for 99.9% of people, it may not work for me, and that's okay. I do still do enjoying reading studies and statistics about weight loss, but I enjoy that sort of thing about other issues as well.

As for me, I usually do eat some form of breakfast, but it's normally quite late (10:00 - 10:30) because I am simply not hungry at all when I first get up (and I get up at 5:30). Sometimes, if I eat breakfast late and then go to work, I will skip lunch or just have a piece of fruit because I'm so full from breakfast that I have no appetite for lunch.

Personally, I don't like eating breakfast most of the time. I'm not hungry, and what's the point of eating if I'm not hungry? I get no benefit from forcing myself to eat when I don't want to. I usually eat around 11-12, then again sometime between 3-5, then my evening meal sometime between 7-10.

Most of the people who lost weight probably also ate with a fork instead of their hands, but that doesn't mean eating with a fork helps with weight loss.

I'm not trying to be asinine- the 88% statistic is probably correct. But theres nothing you can infer from it. In statistics there is very little weight in variables which correlate. Even those which correlate can have nothing to do with each other. In order to properly identify a dependent relationship, control groups, random assignment, and double-blind aspects must be incorporated into the study. If the study had a large sample size of randomly assigned individuals who were told "do not eat breakfast" and an equally large sample size of "eat breakfast," the results would be useful.

There's very little you can draw from correlation, other than "a lot of people who lose weight eat breakfast" or "a lot of people who lose weight eat with forks."

I think you're making a bit of a staw argument here. Yes - you can't make any conclusions but putting breakfast eating in the same sentance as utensils is a bit over the top. :D

Of the research finding benefits to eating breakfast (including weight loss - but also school performance, for example), not all of it has been correlational.

Control groups, random assignment, and double-blind aspects have been incorporated into some of these studies. And many have indeed included large sample sizes of randomly assigned individuals told to eat or not eat breakfast. Some not only assigned people to a breakfast and no breakfast category, some have even assigned specific types of breakfast.


I can't remember specific studies, just that I easily found them at my University libraries (Illinois Wesleyan University and Illinois State University). Any university library should have the resource to find the research (and librarians who could help you use the resources).




Applying the research to your own life however, requires as much art as science.

The study didn't find that 88% of people who ate breakfast lost- it was that 88% of people who lost ate breakfast. We have no idea what the group who didn't lose looked like- did 88% of them eat breakfast too?

There are likely great, well-founded studies on the impact of eating breakfast on weight loss. I'm not arguing that point.

All I'm arguing is that you can't look at one group of people from a study, find a pattern, and say that the pattern relates to one of the variables in the study.

I usually feel sick when I eat breakfast, but I force myself to most of the time because of my job schedule. If I work a double, I am on at 11 and don't get a break until as late as 4 or 5, so even if it makes me nauseous at the time it's best for the long run. But I agree with what everyone says--do what's best for you. My sister will throw-up if she eats breakfast, without fail. None of our family members are very big on it.

I also don't eat breakfast.I prefer to save my calories for the evening, but more than that, I get ravenous if I eat breakfast, and I simply don't stay on plan. I love breakfast for dinner though! I usually eat 3 meals a day, but not early in the day.

Actually its not over the top. I have some background in this type of thing, and she is right - the 88% number is practically useless in telling us anything about breakfast's use in weight loss. From a statistical standpoint looking at only the percentage of the one group- the correlation between utensils and weight loss could actually be stronger than that of breakfast and weight loss! There are other life qualities that people who ate breakfast and lost weight could have had in common, or it could be just coincidence - it happens. The only thing that tells us is that there should be a follow up, more specific study. Drawing any conclusions from that study is premature.

I would be interested in knowing how many in the successful AND unsuccessful group ate breakfast, and if the difference between the two is statistically significant. That would be more telling. Yet, still would require a follow up study.

I over eat when I have breakfast. But I always stay around or under my calorie goal if I don't eat until after noon. I'd rather have one small meal at lunch and a huge meal at dinner than three medium sized meals throughout the day (plus all the snacks I'd throw in because I ate breakfast).

The original stat was not in reference to weight loss but maintience but that is besides the point.

Viewing the data in a vaccum is the only place you could make your argument. Given there is a massive amount of data showing correlation between breakfast/health markers/obesity there is certainly something more going on than what utensil someone is using. That's not to say the 88% number is a good number. That is why I asked for the organization.

Of course you have to look at a number of factors especially study design. Here is a really good example.

Consumer Reports recently ranked which diets work and here is their list.

No. 1: Jenny Craig Diet
No. 2: Slim-Fast Plan Diet
No. 3: Weight Watchers Diet
No. 4: Zone Diet
No. 5: Ornish Diet
No. 6: Atkins Diet
No. 7: NutriSystem Diet

Number one ranking of Jenny was based on a study where participants were eating Jenny food for two years and 92% of the study participants "adhered" to the program. Important caveat - the particpants were given the food for free.

Really? You give someone free food and they take it? No kidding?

I say "adhered" because clearly they were not sticking to the program as the average participant lost only 16 lbs over two years. (The study was also funded by Jenny)

Does Jenny Craig also own Slim-Fast? I've only heard of the occasional celeb losing weight on Jenny (and then gaining it back). Slimfast is worse for maintaining weight loss.

And what is the Ornish diet??

When i want breakfast I'll eat it. Sometimes I eat breakfast for lunch then I wait a hr and eat a snack then at 8 or 8:30 pm I'll eat dinner. Some days I'll eat all three. Its up to u. If it wrk for u hun then do it. :-)

I was just talking about this in another thread... when it comes to weight loss, it often seems that experimenting and customizing food plans is strongly discouraged.

"Someone" has to create diets, but we're not really encouraged to see ourselves as qualified to do so for ourselves (at least not until we right a book and get it published). Very often the diet book authors do NOT have professional credentials, but we "trust" the cabbage soup diet author but not ourselves to create a diet for us.

When we're "not dieting" we're not afraid to eat whatever we want without any plan at all, but when we are dieting, we don't trust ourselves to follow a plan unless someone else created it.

Tweaking a plan or creating one is often seen almost as sacreligious.

We're not encouraged to experiment, I think because we're so intolerant of weight loss failure. We're afraid to try anything that we're not assured has a proven track record. We'd rather not try than try and fail.

This has definitely been my problem. I don't like that my metabolism gets going so early if I eat breakfast because I feel like I have no control over my hunger or eating schedule when I'm so hungry!

Interesting point. I'm not on a specific plan like Atkins, Dukan or Weight Watchers but I still find myself wondering if it's "acceptable" to make tweaks like eliminating breakfast or changing my eating schedule to shift everything a bit later in the day. I'd like to be able to trust myself to try out tweaks without falling totally off the wagon!

I actually eat less throughout the day if I eat breakfast pretty early.

That said, I rarely eat breakfast as soon as I roll out of bed. Although I wake up ravenous most days, the idea of eating makes me feel sick. I would say that I break my fast with a meal about 2-3 hours after I wake up, and it's usually a bowl of chili or a turkey sandwich. Not sure if that counts as breakfast or not.

Weird how this seems to be the norm. Stranger, even, that I didn't start making real progress until I started changing things around the way I saw fit. I wish I would have spent more time figuring out what I wanted and not what some diet told me to do.

These days I prefer to wait a couple hours to have breakfast. I usually go for a few rounds of coffee first. It was a hard practice to break, because all of the conventional wisdom says to eat within a half hour or hour. I used to find myself bounding out of bed and eating quickly, only to wish I had the calories to spend later on in the day. It wasn't until I started pay more attention to eating intuitively that I realized I'm not truly hungry until a few hours later in the day. I find now that if I wait a couple hours, have my coffee, and then eat something sensible, I have a much easier time controlling my hunger throughout the day. Again, I wish I would have paid more attention to myself a long time ago! I think there's a lot of great diet advice out there; but some of it just doesn't quite apply to me.

And on a totally different note....Kaplods-I went to Illinois Wesleyan also! Haha, small world!

I do not eat breakfast most days and if I do it is very little. This helped me go from 25% Body Fat to maintain 9% body fat, but enough about me.

If you want to look into Intermittent Fasting more take a look at Martin Berkhan's site just google for Lean Gains.

Also there is the Warrior Diet site, and the eat-stop-eat ebook. I don't know much about either of those, just heard about them in passing.

If you are worried about any health issues you can look on Mark Sission's site he has a very good post about the health benefits of intermittent fasting.