As much as 25% of the American population skip breakfast.
Why?
Don’t they know that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”? Or do they know something we don’t?
Breakfast proponents would argue that eating breakfast keeps you from overeating later in the day. Makes sense. If you skip breakfast, you are more likely to be starving by lunch and eat more. But HOW MUCH MORE you eat is really what’s important. Is it enough to overcompensate for the breakfast that you skipped?
Usually not. This is one of the concepts behind intermittent fasting. By restricting your eating window, you have less time to consume as many calories as you normally would.
For example, those who use the intermittent fasting 16/8 eating method (fast for 16 hours, eating within an 8-hour window) usually don’t have their first meal until noon. While this meal may be big, it’s often not as big as their breakfast and lunch would have been combined simply because it is difficult to consume that much food in one sitting.
There have even been studies conducted which show that those who skip breakfast may actually reduce their overall daily calorie intake by as many as 300-400 calories.
The truth is that WHEN you eat is not nearly as important as the total amount of calories you consume throughout the day.
Whether you eat breakfast or not is personal preference. It does not boost your metabolism and studies show no difference in weight between those who skip breakfast and those who don’t.
So if you’re the type of person who is not hungry in the morning, or maybe you overate the night before and want to make up for some of those extra calories, don’t eat.
If skipping breakfast makes you miserable and unable to focus at work, then eat.
At the end of the day, fat loss always comes down to calories in versus calories out, not meal timing.
Brian Donovan is a certified fitness and nutrition coach, and the founder of Online Fitness Coach – an online fitness program where clients get direct coaching and personalized training and nutrition plans. Coach Brian was voted Chicago’s “Best Personal Trainer” by Chicago Reader magazine, Best Of Chicago 2014 edition. He has been featured in publications and websites such as Muscle & Fitness, Chicago Reader, Voyage Chicago, Bach Performance, and The Personal Trainer Development Center (PTDC).
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