I think it's totally up to what works for you.

I do eat a very high protein/whole grain breakfast during the week. I have a very physically demanding job, my body needs fuel to make it from 7:30 start time to 12:30 ish, give or take what's going on. We may or may not get a break, for a snack, depends.

On the weekends, I may or may not eat breakfast, or I might eat early or late, just depends on what's up.

Just do what works for you. It's not like anyone is going to take away your birthday if you don't eat breakfast.;)

Excellent point, which typically gets overlooked when the 78% stat is bandied around.

F.

Another thing I wonder about the 78% statistic is what defines breakfast. How soon after waking are these breakfast eaters eating? When people ask me if eat breakfast, I say "sure - my first meal of the day is breakfast (a meal that breaks the fast) whether I eat it at 8:30 am or 4:00 pm."

Also, I know from experience in WW and other weight loss groups that some people define meals according to the food - or the clock time, so one person might say " I never eat breakfast, even though they have a meal within two hours of getting up, either because they didn't eat breakfast foods, or because their normal wake up time is close to noon (they see it as having slept through breakfast)

How the survey questions were written, and how participants interpreted the question could muddy the waters.

Even a simple question such as, "Do you eat breakfast?" is open to interpretation. Someone might consider a cup of coffee and a small piece of fruit as breakfast, even though said breakfast contains only 50 to 75 calories. Other folks (including me) wouldn't call or count that as breakfast.

Even taking the statistics at face value and assuming all participants had the same definition of breakfast, the non-breakfast groups success rate of 28% isn't too shabby. I would love to have a 28% shot at winning the lottery. More than 1 in 4 of participants didn't eat breakfast (or didn't call it breakfast), and succeeded anyway.

I also wonder what the breakfast eating numbers are for thin folks, still fat folks, and for the general population overall. If 78% of all groups eat breakfast, that would suggest that breakfast eating has absolutely no bearing on successful weight loss.

Orphan statistics are meaningless, without other statistics to compare them to, they mean absolutely nothing.

In the morning if I feel like I need something in my stomach, I eat fruit. Sometimes I drink fruit juice or a fruit mixed with veggie drink. Sometimes I just drink water.

I eat it now, right before my workout, I really need it. My husband, on the other hand, loves to eat at night and 'saves' his breakfast - he starts eating at noon, after waking at 5am. Both methods work great for us.

Bottom line, do what works for you, and whatever helps you achieve your deficit.

Once I found out that not eating within a few hours of waking has no effect whatsoever on metabolism, I stopped eating breakfast. My first meal is generally around 11:30 or later, even though I get up at 5am.

Ok, so I am even more confused than I was before!

So does it matter WHEN we eat during the day, or what types of foods we eat at certain times of the day? Orr does the only thing that matters the amount of calories we eat in a given 24 hour period?

Growing up, I was always told (by my mom of course) that it is important to eat breakfast... its the most important meal of the day... it gets your metabolism going, etc. I suppose this is the "conventional wisdom" that OP was referring to. I've also been told (by various diet regimens) not to eat later than a particular hour of the night, and not to eat certain things beyond a certain hour. I don't know what to believe!

It seems that most people are saying that breakfast is not necessarily important... that it can be skipped. Does this mean that it doesn't matter when you eat? If it doesn't matter when you eat, then what is the purpose of the intermittent fasting that some people do? After all, if I eat 1000 calories a day, why would changing up my daily caloric limit to eat 500 calories one day, and 1500 the next, etc. yield any different results than just eating 1000 calories per day? If it does, how?

Joefla70 - simple answer - it doesn't matter. Neither meal timing nor meal frequency make any difference.

Calorie cycling doesn't matter either except in specific circumstances that are applicable to athletes cutting weight that need to support training goals or bodybuilders getting extremely lean but for the average person it makes virtually no difference from a physiological perspective.

Compliance is another matter. Some people might find it easier to be compliant to a diet where one day they are eating very little so the next they can eat more but others might find it easier to keep calories about the same level. Regardless it is net calories that matter.

I eat breakfast every day during the week within a couple of hours of waking up. On weekends I can take it or leave it.

I think it's more important to eat when you're hungry and focus on that as opposed to having certain times that you have to eat.

I'm one of those people who likes big breakfasts, just not at the traditional breakfast time. I'm not generally hungry in the morning and not willing to sacrifice sleep to get up earlier just in case it happens to be one of the days I am. I might have some toast with butter for breakfast if I'm still hungry when I get into work (2.5 hours after I wake up) but if I'm not hungry when I get into work, I'll wait until lunchtime before I have anything. Skipping breakfast didn't do me any harm losing weight, but I've never been a big breakfast eater and a heavy breakfast in the morning tends to make me feel slightly nauseous, so I've never gotten into the habit of eating when I wake up.

I also think re the 78% that you'd have to look at the data in context of all the other data in the study. You really can't single out one behavior that you are trying to prove contributes to success & cite it as some kind of evidence that eating breakfast helps in weight loss.

I'm typically up around 5am everyday and I eat a small breakfast around 10. It just happens to be the first time I'm hungry. On weekends, I skip it and often run errands until I'm starving around 2-3 and have a bigger breakfast.

I lost weight as a kid by not eating until dinner daily. I lost weight as an adult by eating every two hours. Like John said, it doesn't seem to make a difference when I eat, just as long as the dietary habits are established.

I wasn't always a breakfast person, but eased into it when I started taking vitamins recommended by the doctor. Having them with breakfast made sense; I'd get the vitamins out of the way so I wouldn't forget about them later, and breakfast just became a part of my routine.

While I don't get anal about calorie-counting, over the past year I've tried to average about 500 calories per meal and allowed 100-300 for snacks, so I'd typically be between 1600-1800 per day. And if I had a lighter breakfast, that left me more room to indulge later in the day! :hun: Throughout all this I was tracking my food by writing it down in a journal, which allowed me to make adjustments; big breakfasts meant smaller dinners, and vice-versa. For me, it's all about finding an overall balance throughout the day.

I used to be able to skip breakfast to allow even more indulgences for lunch or dinner (especially when planning for a special occasion), but just in the past few weeks I'm simply starving when I wake up. :preg: I'm doing my best to listen to my body, and at the same time I'm continuing to track so I keep eating healthy and don't go overboard.

I think I'm doing well because I've got a well-established routine down, and it's something that works well for me. If I ever got back to skipping breakfast again, I'm sure I'd be fine as long as the rest of the day was kept in check. :)

Now that my blood sugar is more stable and my diet highly nourishing, I can delay or skip breakfast (as I did today - ate dinner at 6 pm and didn't eat again today, except one coffee with a little hwc, until 1:30 pm). Many days I'm done eating by 5:00 and eat breakfast around 10 am. But that's just because I like eggs, and my breakfast, lunch, and dinner all blurs together in that eating window.

I used to eat more breakfast and need it. These days I can go much longer without eating. I blame starches, they ratchet my appetite up hugely.

I always, without fail, eat breakfast! There are some weekdays when I wake up so early, I'm not hungry yet. But I know that time is the last chance I'll have to eat for the next 4-6 hours, so you bet your booty I'm eating! I am always hungry within 1-2 hours of waking up, and that is a kick you in your teeth hunger, so I would rather just eat before I hit that point (especially since there is no way I could bring as good of a breakfast to work as I can make at home!). But that is MY body. I know I will be hungry soon, if I'm not already. Personally, I do believe in eating something when you wake up. It's not backed by anything scientific, it just doesn't feel right to me to go many, many hours without food. But to each their own :)

My breakfast are primarily an egg white, spinach, turkey, broccoli, and tomato scramble, with a whole wheat english muffin topped with cottage cheese.