Breakfast: The most important meal of the day?
Ever since we were kids, we have always been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I learned in school that the correct way to eat is to eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. The many claimed benefits of breakfast are weight control, overall health, more focus, and metabolic advantage but how true are they? If you skip breakfast does it instantly mean that you will eat more and gain weight?
The only way a person can weight is by eating more calories than the person burns. Technically, even if a person skips breakfast, as long as the person eats the same amount of calories, weight gain should not happen. Studies have claimed that skipping breakfast can cause you to be hungrier which can cause you to over eat. Here is one problem completely accepting that claim: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes we skip breakfast and we believe we messed up, we may subconsciously go pig out all day. The truth is that simply breaking your morning fast a few hours later doesn’t necessarily make you over eat. When we are in a fasted state, our body doesn’t actually experience hunger, but as soon as we break the fast, our body expects constant calories. In many ways eating breakfast at 7am can increase your feeding window (most of us don’t stop eating until 10pm) and simply having a long feeding window can cause us to over eat calories.
Many people would tell you that eating breakfast will help you increase your metabolism and insulin sensitivity. From a metabolic standpoint, the truth is that it doesn’t matter if you eat 3 large meals a day or 6 small meals a day. If you eat the same amount of calories, your body will spend an equal amount of energy for digestion. The metabolism boost from breakfast is really not true. Insulin sensitivity actually is increased with longer fast so technically if you eat breakfast a few hours later, you can actually increase your insulin sensitivity and have your body in fat burning mode longer.
What about overall health and focus? This varies from person to person. Some people just don’t like eating breakfast and forcing themselves to eat breakfast can actually cause them to feel sluggish, while other people need breakfast to stay focused for the morning. Some people may experience headache from skipping breakfast while others may feel quite energetic and happy. There is no singe set rule for everyone and the best way is to find out for yourself.
This video is not intended to say eating breakfast is bad and we all should start intermittent fasting but just want to point out that one particular meal of the day doesn’t make or break your overall diet. It is not just breakfast, but lunch, dinner or snacks. If you are a grazer, then so be it. If you like to eat three proper meals, then so be it. Do what works the best for you. The worst thing that can happen to us is to believe in some rigid eating rules then as soon as life happens and we can’t eat breakfast, we instantly feel that we screwed up. Or if you don’t like eating breakfast but you believed that you are a bad person by not being able to eat breakfast, then you can feel freer to do what your body wants the most.
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