is skipping a meal bad or okay?

Hm, it really depends, if skipping breakfast, makes you overeat at lunch, then, maybe having a little bit of breakfast would help. Otherwise, as long as you keep your allotted calories within the day regardless of meal times, it should be alright. Spread your meals according to your personal preference Good luck!

As long as you are getting your calories (and macros) in at some time during the day - when you eat them is not an issue as long as you do not have problems with energy or a medical reason why you would need to eat often. When you eat in the day has no appreciable impact on weight loss.

The old-school reasoning behind the "don't skip meals" rule is that people tend to overeat in the rest of the day. If you're accurately tracking with MFP and keeping to your goals, don't worry about it. Yay MFP!

Didn't your mama ever tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? In all seriousness, I have forced myself to eat breakfast since starting my healthy eating. It jump starts your metabolism for the rest of the day. If you are going to skip a meal, the best one to skip is dinner. I don't like to get up early enough to sit down and have a meal, so I make a smoothie every morning.

As long as you are getting your calories (and macros) in at some time during the day - when you eat them is not an issue as long as you do not have problems with energy or a medical reason why you would need to eat often. When you eat in the day has no appreciable impact on weight loss.

I disagree respectfully to a certain extent. If you are trying to lose weight, then I say it hurts you. Your body works like a furnace and you need to keep putting wood if the furnace to get it hotter and keep it burning. Your metabolism is the furnace, and what you eat is the wood. Its a simple analogy but it works! Anyone can lose SOME weight just by not eating but is not healthy!

Intra-day meal timing has no impact on your metabolism.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html
http://www.leangains.com/2011/04/critique-of-issn-position-stand-on-meal.html
http://body-improvements.com/resources/eat/#frequency
http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html

Eat when you're hungry and stay within your calories. Meal time doesn't matter all that much.

As long as you are getting your calories (and macros) in at some time during the day - when you eat them is not an issue as long as you do not have problems with energy or a medical reason why you would need to eat often. When you eat in the day has no appreciable impact on weight loss.

I disagree respectfully to a certain extent. If you are trying to lose weight, then I say it hurts you. Your body works like a furnace and you need to keep putting wood if the furnace to get it hotter and keep it burning. Your metabolism is the furnace, and what you eat is the wood. Its a simple analogy but it works! Anyone can lose SOME weight just by not eating but is not healthy!

Intra-day meal timing has no impact on your metabolism.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html
http://www.leangains.com/2011/04/critique-of-issn-position-stand-on-meal.html
http://body-improvements.com/resources/eat/#frequency
http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html

I can post links as well to support my theory, and have pics to back mine up.

As long as you are getting your calories (and macros) in at some time during the day - when you eat them is not an issue as long as you do not have problems with energy or a medical reason why you would need to eat often. When you eat in the day has no appreciable impact on weight loss.

I disagree respectfully to a certain extent. If you are trying to lose weight, then I say it hurts you. Your body works like a furnace and you need to keep putting wood if the furnace to get it hotter and keep it burning. Your metabolism is the furnace, and what you eat is the wood. Its a simple analogy but it works! Anyone can lose SOME weight just by not eating but is not healthy!

Intra-day meal timing has no impact on your metabolism.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html
http://www.leangains.com/2011/04/critique-of-issn-position-stand-on-meal.html
http://body-improvements.com/resources/eat/#frequency
http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html

I can post links as well to support my theory, and have pics to back mine up.

Do you have any research to back that up? What she posted is correct.

Portion control is important.Good luck

Jxlan- edited out false information for you. You're welcome! :flowerforyou:

As long as you are getting your calories (and macros) in at some time during the day - when you eat them is not an issue as long as you do not have problems with energy or a medical reason why you would need to eat often. When you eat in the day has no appreciable impact on weight loss.

I disagree respectfully to a certain extent. If you are trying to lose weight, then I say it hurts you. Your body works like a furnace and you need to keep putting wood if the furnace to get it hotter and keep it burning. Your metabolism is the furnace, and what you eat is the wood. Its a simple analogy but it works! Anyone can lose SOME weight just by not eating but is not healthy!

the wood burning furnace is a common analogy and one that I used to believe in also because it does sound sort of logical. But if you get a basic understanding of how the body works and the digestion processes that take place and how much fat you have stored, you realize that the wood burning furnace is not an accurate analogy after all.

we all fast while we sleep. we dont wake up and stoke the furnace. to keep the fire going. the meal you ate for dinner and your stored fat will feed the fire for days.

if you want to eat breajfast, then you should. If you do not want to eat breakfast, skipping it will not harm you or slow your progress if you hit your caloric goals. whether your goal is to gain or lose, breakfast is irrelevant.

Skipping meal is definitely bad as your body thinks it is going into starvation mode and it will hang onto all the fat for reserves, therefore harder to shift the fat. Like ndj1979 says, breakfast gets your metabolism going and also you will make more rational decisions than when you are starving. Its better to eat regular small meals. Portion control is important.Good luck

Did you not look at the responses to that or the articles I quoted? It is terribly not correct.

Didn't your mama ever tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? In all seriousness, I have forced myself to eat breakfast since starting my healthy eating. It jump starts your metabolism for the rest of the day. If you are going to skip a meal, the best one to skip is dinner. I don't like to get up early enough to sit down and have a meal, so I make a smoothie every morning.

Does it really? So, missing one meal kills your bodies metabolic process stone dead? Or is it because the my fitness app says so if you go below your calories? It also says you'll weigh x amount in five weeks, do you believe that as well?

The body uses something called ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) for energy. ATP transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism. ATP can be achieved by glycosis which uses blood sugar Glucose or lipolysis which uses Lipids or fat (we’ll come back to this later).

It takes a lot longer for your body to catabolise protein as a fuel source that the odd missed feed. Carbohydrates and fats have to be near depletion before this happens and are utilised in that order before protein is considered. I doubt very much that anyone on here has experienced real hunger, not just stuffing your face when you fancy junk food but hunger as in no food for weeks, that is starvation and that causes muscle/protein catabolism.

As for skipping breakfast, as some people on here have correctly pointed out, skipping breakfast will not impact weight loss. In fact, the opposite is true. Glucagon secretion by the pancreas stops once blood sugar rises and insulin takes it place which is what happens when your carbohydrate laden breakfast is consumed. Yes, protein does create an insulin response by the body but nowhere near that of carbohydrates.

What is Glucagon I hear you cry? It is that all important hormone that utilises body fat for energy as opposed to insulin transporting glucose for energy when blood sugar rises. When you stop Glucagon production, you stop burning body fat as your body cannot produce both Glucagon and Insulin at the same time so it has to be one or the other. Your body can not exist in both states; it defies the law of thermodynamics. So you need to choose, fat utilisation loss or glucose transportation.

Just remember, any excess in carbohydrates that your body concerts to glucose and does not use will be stored as body fat; regardless. Your body is not like a furnace, it does not require constant timed feeds to burn fat. What if you ate nothing but carbohydrates in your small, regular meals? Try it and see what happens.

Your metabolism does just as the name suggests, it breaks down what it needs for energy. So if you don't eat breakfast, do you grind to a halt and die? No, your body uses what fuel it can find to convert to energy. Lipids or fat by another name will be used and everyone besides super models and prisoners of war have these which your body will use in the event of lack of digested food.

Forget the most important meal of the day; this is complete and utter rubbish. Most adhere to this and will defend it to their dying breath but these are the ones who struggle to lose weight. Does this sound familiar? Despite your best efforts, you still don’t lose weigh even though you exercise and eat what you have been told is “healthy”? Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. Biologically, what you eat immediately post work out is.

Delay eating breakfast and let your body do what it does best; use its reserves to keep going. This has served the human race for thousands of years, it is how the human body was designed, evolved and subsequently survived. Neolithic man didn’t stop off at the bronto burger, they survived on what they ate and what body fat they had, eating enough until the next kill. Never killed more than they needed but modern day, people eat as much as they can of the wrong type of food.

Only in modern day when fast food and junk food has become the staple diet with high calorie food has the obesity epidemic exploded. Fast food chains, sugar laden drinks, processed food, junk food are all responsible for the weight pandemic, yes pandemic. With over a billion people on the planet affected by obesity calling it anything less is brushing it under a very, very large carpet.

Only of the last 40 year when before then, the fat man or woman at the circus was afforded a pound to see their gigantic frame, this was the exception as opposed to the norm. Diet is the biggest problem, you can exercise until you are red in the face, if you are not in a state to utilise body fat as the energy source then you will not any. An insulin spike stops this process dead in its track and your body will remain that way until the blood sugar levels return to normal when glucagon production can resume.

So what do you do?

Simple, stop eating rubbish and be selective when you eat carbohydrates.

Save these until after your work out. The condition of your body post work out finds it practically impossible to store carbohydrates as fat for 60 - 90 minutes. If you've exercises with intensity, again, most on here cannot be found guilty of this, the food will be used to repair and refuel your body so capitalise on this and avoid fat production.

People eat way too many carbohydrates and avoid fats like the plague which is touted everywhere, this is the biggest lie to be believed by the human race. The food industry is responsible and has been shoving it down peoples’ throats whilst they smile behind the multibillion pound industry turnover. Low fat this, fat free that; fats are the devil, you’ll burn in hell if you eat fat. Good fats are needed by the body and should make up a decent amount of your daily requirement if weight loss is your goal Fats are bad is just another myth perpetuated to keep you buying what they say you should be eating.

Will an industry that thrives on our consumption tell you to stop buying their products in order to be healthy?

If you need the answer to that then you need to stop reading.

I read an article months ago that was something like "10 habits of healthy people" It actually kicked my motivation to loose weight by adopting the traits. One was to always eat breakfast. I have never been much of a breakfast eater, Im just not hungry in the morning. I started by eating something small. like a 1/2 cup of cottage cheese and some blueberries. Once I got in that habit I found that I was hungry in the morning and started to eat a little more. I think before my body was not used to eating in the morning. Now I love eating breakfast and do believe that it is a good way to start the day. But that is not to say I have mornings I m just not hungry. If its one of those days I dont eat until I, hungry. I guess this is a long way of saying if you think you should be eating breakfast, start with something small and see how your body feels after doing it for several weeks.