Is Breakfast REALLY necessary?

joejccva71

At least something small with in 30-45 in of waking up to get the metabolisim going. If your wait to eat your not getting you engine running. Breakfast is the MOST important meal of the day.

Eat like a King for breakfast

Eat like a queen for lunch

Eat like a pauper for dinner

This is true. Look at it this way. Your body has spent the night working hard to repair tissues and cells damaged from the stress of the previous day. This is where the majority of your cellular rebuilding happens and it's a huge part of your overall fitness growth.

So you when you get up after 7-8 hours of rest, your body needs additional nutrients and fuel to function effectively through the day.

Ask yourself this: Would you go through and entire 8hour workday, and then come home and skip dinner? Not likely so by the same token, you need to fuel in the morning in order to be able to perform your best through the day.

Thats not what the OP asked. She asked if breakfast was really necessary, and the answer is no.

You should eat when you are hungry as long as it fits within your daily calorie limits based on your TDEE and your goals.

robinpickles

The advantage of this for me, is that I don't feel like I am hungry and deprived all day long, I feel full to start the day, and then just add food to keep fueling myself as the day wears on.

If I skip breakfast then lunch will surely be an overeating situation, because by the time it comes, I'll be ready mentally to eat the house down.....

I still can't figure out what my metabolism is doing or not doing. But for me, breakfast is a good thing

HMonsterX

nope, if you're not hungry i wouldn't eat breakfast and instead use those cals for bigger meals later in the day

This is exactly what i do. For me personally, breakfast is just a waste of calories i could have when i really want it, i.e. dinner, evening. The only "downside" to not having breakfast is you may end up making bad choices later for snacks. If you dont make these bad choices, and have self control, its all good. (Unless you are a child, in which case breakfast helps you at school).

Ebbsies

Nope. Unless you have medical issues that require some sort of sustenance every few hours, it's not necessary to eat at specific times of the day.

This exactly! ^ Once I started intermittent fasting and skipping breakfast, having a late lunch and bigger dinners, I was on cloud 9 in eating land.

fallenangelloves

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-and-nutrition/AN01119

Do some research.... This is just one EXPERTS opinion...

HMonsterX

http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/is-skipping-breakfast-bad-for-you.aspx

Likewise, to the contrary.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-and-nutrition/AN01119

Do some research.... This is just one EXPERTS opinion...

"Reduced hunger. Eating breakfast may..."
"Healthy choices. Eating breakfast may..."
"More energy. Eating breakfast may..."

A lot of "may"s there. Shows its not actual fact, just possibilities. I like to think we have the control to actually do the right thing.

fallenangelloves

Yes but I'm assuming we are talking about in conjunction with weight loss....

HMonsterX

Yes but I'm assuming we are talking about in conjunction with weight loss....

Yes, we are. But when a report mentions things like "may", "could", "can possibly", it instantly becomes advice, rather than fact. I could say that eating breakfast may get me in the mood for food, and i could end up gaining weight. Would that be sound advice? Of course not.

The OP was is Breakfast really necessary. The answer is no. It is not NECESSARY. Helpful to some, sure. Wrong for others, sure. If you cant control your snacking urges, or control your calories, then yes, it is helpful. If you can control urges, track your calories, and have no need for appetite suppressors, then it's not necessary.

hamton

No, you don't have to eat breakfast if you don't want to. It won't affect your metabolism. I've tried 3 meals, 7 meals, and 2 meals a day. They all work roughly the same. Now I'm doing 2 meals a day because it makes life so much easier. I don't have to wake up and make breakfast. I don't have to pack tiny meals all the time. I don't have to clean up all the time. I can eat until I'm full and not worry about eating again for a long time.

It's so silly now that I think about when I was eating 7 meals a day. I used to get upset when meetings went long and I'm missing my small meal. It's like I could feel my muscles shrinking.

rileysowner

So far every study I have seen that links skipping breakfast with higher weight is an epidemiological study. They have the fatal flaw of not ever being able to establish causality. At best they can establish a correlation, hence the "may" "could" and similar language. All the actually clinical studies (ones where a group of people is taken and eats according to a certain pattern for a certain amount of time with tests of the results being done) show little or no difference. Just to be clear, there are not a lot of studies, and most are with small groups so research still needs to be done, but related to this is the studies on meal frequency which show the same thing, meal frequency whether 1 or 9 meals makes not significant difference.

Once I have the time I will search up some of the references in the Mayo article above, but a quick scan of the titles reveals many of them (perhaps all but until I look them up I can't say) are epidemiological studies, thus conclusions from them should be no more than we should study this clinically to see if what we think it happening is actually happening.

For what it is worth I didn't eat today until 6, and then I had a good nutritious and rather large but well under my calories meal. I had lots of energy through the day and did not feel deprived at all. If I had been hungry earlier, I would have eaten earlier.

Edit:
I did a quick google search of the article cited in the mayo article. All the ones I could find (the vast majority of them) were epidemiological studies. Not one was an actual clinical trial. That right away called the suggestions into question as the author is assuming they can make such conclusions from the studies, of course they are smarter than that, hence the "may" and "could" language instead of something stronger.

mdfeller

My opinion - not necessary at all...

I lost 7 pounds when I just started tracking my food here, and a little exercise. I did not eat breakfast. Sometimes I would have a dr pepper, but not a meal until noon or so. I ate lunch, had a snack (generally a snickers fun size) and had dinner. I had leftover calories and would drink them in the form of martinis in the evening. Again, I lost 7 pounds, then plateaued. I tried eating breakfast, healthy semi. Egg whites with 50 cal carb smart tortilla, a little cheese and sausage/bacon/chicken? I gained back 4 pounds. I joined a bootcamp, where I told the trainer I hated eating bfast, and felt like it makes me gain weight every single time. He said switch to almonds, raw. Have done that for almost 4 weeks, and attended bootcamp 5-6 times per week. Bootcamp was a lot like insanity in the first couple of weeks, and now fluctuates between weight training and cardio. I have not lost anything. At all. I stopped eating almonds this week, and am now partaking of a shakeology challenge, making the shake my breakfast. I haven't weighed in yet, but will in 2 days to see if I've lost anything. I am still doing the bootcamp, but this will be the last week, then I will go back to my own diet (no breakfast or only dr pepper)

So IMO, breakfast not necessary.