breakfast and metabolism

lemurcat12

malibu927 wrote: »

cwlsr wrote: »

I wil

missiontofitness wrote: »

keziak1 wrote: »

I've read lots of places that it's important to eat breakfast to get one's metabolism up for the day. Today I read in Weight Watchers that recent studies have found no difference in weight over a period of a few months in groups either eating or skipping breakfast. Perhaps this indicates that any bump-up in metabolism from eating early is not great.

Bodies don't have little clocks; they can't tell time. If you aren't hungry at breakfast, adjust to hit your goals for the rest of the day. If you are, power to you. Eating food will not affect your metabolism or its ability to run during the day.

I will keep it short! I don't agree with the quotes above. You may not have heard of the "Circadian Rhythm" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm . If you fine tune your way of living your body will run like a well oil machine that it is. Recommendation: Eat your food at specific times regularly and your body will assimilate your food better.

Which for me, working shifts in retail and going to school, is next to impossible. Yet I'm losing by eating at a time that is convenient for me.

This is the key. People overcomplicate it, relying on studies that indicate--at most--relatively minor differences, on average, for large groups of people. But that doesn't mean that any difference (even if real, and again I think the jury is out on that) will either hold up for any particular individual or, even more important, outweigh other factors, such as what is actually possible or makes for a sustainable lifestyle. For example, it's possible that eating 6 mini meals is, on average, more effective, because some percentage of people do better never letting themselves get hungry and don't care about having real meals. But for me that would be such an annoying way to eat that I'd quit. So any small advantage (which I suspect wouldn't exist at all for me) would be outweighed by the fact it would be non-sustainable. But on the other hand I've lost 90 lbs while eating mostly 3 larger meals and quite late dinners.

Often people get too caught up in trying to figure out the perfect diet and the details and ignore that what really works is whatever allows them to eat consistently in a deficit, period. If you are unhappy because you hate eating breakfast and so are miserable doing your perfect plan, it won't work.