Is breakfast necessary??

mmapags

Even just having a piece of fruit and some milk is better than nothing...your body needs to know when to start "burning" & if you don't give it anything to "burn" when you start your day, it'll tend to "hold on" to the calories/fat you give it a few hours later at lunch time...so, yes, technically you really SHOULD eat breakfast & it really DOES get your metabolism going...

Totally made up! You body is always "burning". If not, you are dead. It will not "hold on" to calories/ fat. Your BMR is your BMR. And fat is actually the primary source of energy when fasted for more than a couple of hours so you do "hold on" to anything. So, technically no, it makes no difference if you eat breakfast except if it helps you to over eat and it DOES NOT get your metabolism going. It is already going.

I mean really! Have you read any of the links and science that have been posted here? You post is nothing but one myth after another backed by a total lack of science!

Helloitsdan

Even just having a piece of fruit and some milk is better than nothing...your body needs to know when to start "burning" & if you don't give it anything to "burn" when you start your day, it'll tend to "hold on" to the calories/fat you give it a few hours later at lunch time...so, yes, technically you really SHOULD eat breakfast & it really DOES get your metabolism going...

All IQs have suddenly dropped in this thread.

Eat breakfast if you want.
Dont eat breakfast if you dont want to.
The TEF throughout the day is roughly the same.
Theres no "Jumpstarting metabolism" or "priming your day for better eating".

The above statement is false and makes most of us cringe and mostly makes me want to punch myself in the face!

ironanimal

FYI: If your metabolism stops, you die.

DarthH8

What I think:

If you eat 2000 calories a day for 30 days. You have eaten 60000 calories. It doesn't matter if you eat those calories in two meals or ten meals every day. Your body, overtime, understands that it is getting a certain amount of energy at a certain frequency and will then adjust it's metabolism at an extremely slow rate to make up for this. I have no idea what kind of time frame the body needs for these adjustments. But, I've heard there are extreme cases where the body can shut down after several days of not eating food and try to retain as much energy as possible. But I can bet none of you could get to the point if you tried.

My body has lost weight with 1800 calories a day. 3000 calories a day. No breakfast. Only eating twice a day. And it always goes through jumps and spouts when I change **** up. I'm guessing that is a combination of aspects that include the metabolism adjusting to the amount of food I'm consuming on an average over a certain period of time.

What I've found works best for me. Eating all day long. Around 6-7 4-600 calorie meals. However, I really really want to get into IF. The science behind it is AMAZING and it will blow you away if you are truly capable of understanding it. I think that will work better for gains and fat loss. It's just the one thing I haven't tried yet. So the eat more food. Stay highly active. And IF way is really the way I want to go after trying and being successful with just about everything.

yoovie

Helloitsdan

MGoodElite9

9 out of 10 towels agree that, yes, towels are necessary.

http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Towelie

Anyone else notice that the person who created the thread seems to have no interest in replying while everyone else bickers. This crap is more annoying than politics.

but you CAN airdry without a towel. I mean, towels make the process of getting dry quicker but are they NECESSARY? Or is that subjective?

I have to disagree, not because I have a valid reason, but because I tried air drying and it didn't work for me...I waited 30 seconds and I was STILL WET!!! I am NOT goin to wait longer than that, so I have to say your theory is wrong, and I am going to act like you are stupid for even saying that...air dry....what a stupid idea... There is only one way to dry, and that is with a towel!! Anyone who says other wise is an idiot.

yoovie

♥

JudyMartinAyers

I think its the most important meal of the day. Keep your blood sugar from spiking. Any trainer or weight loss problem stresess eat your largest meals for breakfast and lunch. Light on dinner. I feel much better eating breakfast every morning and only been doing it regular for 2 months but see a difference in energy and ability to drink more water.

ninerbuff

I HATE eating in the morning, I'm not even remotely hungry when I get up. Is eating breakfast completely necessary for successful weight loss? Because I'd rather save calories for lunch lol. Any tips or suggestions for easy breakfasts would be much appreciated!
:yawn:

I am not an advocate of skipping breakfast despite this post. I AM an advocate of the individual finding the right aspects of dieting that are clearly personal preference, and utilizing those aspects to create the best long-term adherence possible.

That said, there seems to be a lot of sillyness going on in here.

First of all, note the quoted part above. The OP is asking if breakfast is necessary for weight loss.

All of these claims about breakfast boosting your metabolism aren't backed by anything substantial. In fact, can ANYONE find me any set of studies that show greater expenditure given equal calories and macronutrients but with different partitioning? Go ahead, I'll wait.

There's a few different things to address here. One of them is the concept of food increasing your metabolism and the other thing to address would be the effects of short term fasting on metabolic rate.

As far as feeding frequency goes, any time you eat, you are expending calories through various digestive means. In other words, there's an energy cost associated with eating and this cost is based on the macronutrient composition of foods and total calories.

Meal Frequency and Energy Balance.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9155494
...studies using whole-body calorimetry and doubly-labelled water to assess total 24 h energy expenditure find no difference between nibbling and gorging. Finally, with the exception of a single study, there is no evidence that weight loss on hypoenergetic regimens is altered by meal frequency...

Different macronutrients do have a different thermic effect, but if we are comparing different meal timing we keep macronutrient intake and calories constant and just vary the timing of the meal.

Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss in subjects who were prescribed an 8-week equi-energetic energy-restricted diet.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19943985
...We conclude that increasing MF does not promote greater body weight loss under the conditions described in the present study.


Lyle McDonald's comments: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html
Steve Troutman's explanation: http://body-improvements.com/resources/eat/#frequency


Now, as far as "your body needs food, you've been sleeping for 10 hours!" or whatever the claim is.....

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2405717
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837292

There's at least some research suggesting the opposite, see above.


Now in closing there's something quite important to remember, and msf pointed some of this out already:

There is research that shows a correlation between weight gain and skipping breakfast but it's specifically because some people who skip breakfast will end up over-compensating so to speak, and eating too many calories for the day. But it's not the skipping breakfast that made them gain weight, it was the overeating of calories.

As msf pointed out in a previous reply, there's a pretty significant difference between a population that controls intake (we are tracking on MFP) and a population that eats ad-libitum. If you're tracking intake, and you can see that skipping breakfast causes you to over-eat, then you should eat breakfast.



However, if you're like the OP in this thread who clearly does not want to eat breakfast due to preferential/lifestyle reasons, then she can freely do so and monitor total daily intake. If she's not overeating for the day, her breakfast skipping behavior is perfectly fine.

You always steal my ****.:laugh: Good job.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Sidesteal

You always steal my ****.:laugh: Good job.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Oh hai Niner!

Thanks. Nice new pics btw.

mmapags

I think its the most important meal of the day. Keep your blood sugar from spiking. Any trainer or weight loss problem stresess eat your largest meals for breakfast and lunch. Light on dinner. I feel much better eating breakfast every morning and only been doing it regular for 2 months but see a difference in energy and ability to drink more water.

If you would be so kind as to help me understand how breakfast keeps your blood sugar from spiking?? When you are in the middle of fasting overnight wouldn't eating spike your blood sugar? Or am I confused?

Akijade

I usually only eat breakfast because I know that by the time lunch rolls around, I will be ravenously hungry, and being hungry at work sucks. I'm not usually hungry in the morning, but it's more of a preventitive meal than anything. On my days off, I don't usually eat breakfast.

Sarauk2sf

For everyone that says that breakfast 'kick starts your metabolism' or other such silliness, have you not noticed that there are numerous studies linked here that show that there is no metabolic impact of meal timing, calories and macros being equal. There is not a single credible source stating that it does. If it exists, I (and many others I am sure) would love to see them.

While one breakfast meal may not "kickstart your metabolism" in and of itself, the long term result of skipping breakfasts day after day and eating fewer meals per day is a higher liklihood of obesity. Anyone who makes an absolute statement like "There is not a single credible source stating that it does" obviously hasn't looked very hard.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/most-important-meal
According to research, skipping meals, especially breakfast, can actually make weight control more difficult. Breakfast skippers tend to eat more food than usual at the next meal or nibble on high-calorie snacks to stave off hunger. Several studies suggest that people tend to accumulate more body fat when they eat fewer, larger meals than when they eat the same number of calories in smaller, more frequent meals. To teens, especially teenage girls, skipping breakfast may seem like a perfectly logical way to cut down on calories and lose weight. It's important for moms to educate their kids about the importance of the morning meal and the role it plays in maintaining good health and preventing obesity.

http://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/?p=1525
Cross sectional data from a large prospective study, the Seasonal Variation of Blood Cholesterol Study (SEASONS), also evaluated the relation between obesity and eating patterns. The study showed that subjects who regularly skipped breakfast had 4.5 times the risk of obesity as those who consumed breakfast regularly (95% CI 1.57-12.90) (2).

To clarify, even though I am not aware of one actually existing, I was referring to a credible source being cited on this thread. I specifically asked for studies that show there is an impact on metabolism and I am still waiting.

I hate to use the cliche but correlation =/= causation. And if you look back at older posts, I did note that this myth probably came out of the studies that show this correlation (which I was well aware of already).

So....still waiting for someone to provide one.

rlmadrid

What I think:

If you eat 2000 calories a day for 30 days. You have eaten 60000 calories. It doesn't matter if you eat those calories in two meals or ten meals every day. Your body, overtime, understands that it is getting a certain amount of energy at a certain frequency and will then adjust it's metabolism at an extremely slow rate to make up for this. I have no idea what kind of time frame the body needs for these adjustments. But, I've heard there are extreme cases where the body can shut down after several days of not eating food and try to retain as much energy as possible. But I can bet none of you could get to the point if you tried.

My body has lost weight with 1800 calories a day. 3000 calories a day. No breakfast. Only eating twice a day. And it always goes through jumps and spouts when I change **** up. I'm guessing that is a combination of aspects that include the metabolism adjusting to the amount of food I'm consuming on an average over a certain period of time.

What I've found works best for me. Eating all day long. Around 6-7 4-600 calorie meals. However, I really really want to get into IF. The science behind it is AMAZING and it will blow you away if you are truly capable of understanding it. I think that will work better for gains and fat loss. It's just the one thing I haven't tried yet. So the eat more food. Stay highly active. And IF way is really the way I want to go after trying and being successful with just about everything.

IF works! I just started the program when I learned about it the other day, but nothing compares."
I've also found that HIIT IF is the way to go.

secretlobster

I'm boycotting breakfast to spite this thread. Gee I hope my metabolism doesn't sll......ooooooooooooo


.....

mmapags

For everyone that says that breakfast 'kick starts your metabolism' or other such silliness, have you not noticed that there are numerous studies linked here that show that there is no metabolic impact of meal timing, calories and macros being equal. There is not a single credible source stating that it does. If it exists, I (and many others I am sure) would love to see them.

While one breakfast meal may not "kickstart your metabolism" in and of itself, the long term result of skipping breakfasts day after day and eating fewer meals per day is a higher liklihood of obesity. Anyone who makes an absolute statement like "There is not a single credible source stating that it does" obviously hasn't looked very hard.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/most-important-meal
According to research, skipping meals, especially breakfast, can actually make weight control more difficult. Breakfast skippers tend to eat more food than usual at the next meal or nibble on high-calorie snacks to stave off hunger. Several studies suggest that people tend to accumulate more body fat when they eat fewer, larger meals than when they eat the same number of calories in smaller, more frequent meals. To teens, especially teenage girls, skipping breakfast may seem like a perfectly logical way to cut down on calories and lose weight. It's important for moms to educate their kids about the importance of the morning meal and the role it plays in maintaining good health and preventing obesity.

http://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/?p=1525
Cross sectional data from a large prospective study, the Seasonal Variation of Blood Cholesterol Study (SEASONS), also evaluated the relation between obesity and eating patterns. The study showed that subjects who regularly skipped breakfast had 4.5 times the risk of obesity as those who consumed breakfast regularly (95% CI 1.57-12.90) (2).

To clarify, even though I am not aware of one actually existing, I was referring to a credible source being cited on this thread. I specifically asked for studies that show there is an impact on metabolism and I am still waiting.

I hate to use the cliche but correlation =/= causation. And if you look back at older posts, I did note that this myth probably came out of the studies that show this correlation (which I was well aware of already).

So....still waiting for someone to provide one.

Do what you want, I'll do what works for me. It is not like skipping breakfast is the end of the world.

And I think that would be Sara's point. It's not the end of the world and most studies indicate that, for a certain segment of the poulation, it help with satiety and prevention of overeating later in the day. That is correlation and not causation. This is one of those hot button topics around here as there is always a large divide with some saying "you must" and others saying "it doesn't matter". Functionally, it's a little of both depending on the individual. Where it spins out is with some posts, as you've seen in this thread that get all crazy and absolute like you have to eat breakfast to "kickstart you metabolism" or you'll go into "starvation mode" and other such bogus myths.

Now you are a new member but fairly knowledgeable. Think of the new member that is not and searching for the right way but is not hungry in the morning and sees all this baloney about jump starting the metabolism and starvation mode and the most important meal of the day....... Many are just trying to help that person see that fitness and fat loss does not have to follow a complicated set of rules.

Burn more than you eat
Manage your macros with mostly whole minimally processed foods for optimal health

Simple really.

skinnygurl02

Not necessary but personally I find that is I do eat breakfast, those are the weeks I lose more weight...

Sarauk2sf

@mmapags - thank you, that was exactly my point, but you expressed it far more eloquently than me.

vkruithof

Eat breakfast. Your body hasn't eaten for 10-12 hours and it needs nourishment. You'll be more aware and awake, and you'll be less likely to overeat at lunch and dinner.

At least there is one reasonable minded person on the forums this morning.

Two.

Eat breakfast. Your body needs a constant supply of fuel. If you wait to eat when you're hungry, you run the risk of over eating.

EAT BREAKFAST LIKE A KING....
EAT LUNCH LIKE A QUEEN....
EAT DINNER LIKE A PAUPER...

Good luck!