Getting used to skipping breakfast

I never eat breakfast, I just can't face food in the morning, and since I've been doing 5:2 I don't even look for food before lunch time, whether I'm on a fasting day or an eating day.

If I don't eat breakfast, I'm not hungry until well into the afternoon (waking at 6am). I do have a cup of coffee or a caffeine pill and usually about 40oz of water in the mornings.

Sounds like you're IF by accident

I IF 16:8 11 am to 7 pm
I do not like sweets in the morning. I still have breakfast just at 11 am

IF gives me the discipline on a cut to actually cut. I can stick to my deficit with a small window to eat.

I wake at 3:45 am. I'm in the gym by 5 am having only had coffee. I have never been an early eater even when I was obese.

The discipline of saying NO until 11 am TO ANY food on plan or not on plan, aids in beginning the process of a disciplined diet through out the day. I sat through HOURS of NO. Now I will eat my beef and broccoli stir fry. I will stay on plan I will not break my fast and be off plan.

I use to be ravenously hungry all the time, but learned that it was, as Lemurcat12 said, habitual hunger. Or fake hunger. I started listening to my body's signals(stomach pains/lots of noise) and my mind has kind of given up. It doesn't even try it's fake hunger crap with me anymore, haha. Sometimes I wake up and feel hungry, but most times i'm not actually hungry until around lunch time.

I'm happy that skipping breakfast works for you! I get a terrible headache if I don't eat something within half an hour of getting out of bed, and I certainly wouldn't be able to exercise without food! My favorite snack after the gym was a hard-boiled egg. Do whatever works best for you, but there are plenty of things to eat for breakfast that aren't savory.

I have only started to eat breakfast at work recently. It usually consists of yogurt and some granola, as well as coffee. I'm pretty hectic in the morning so I often forget but I'm trying to get better at eating breakfast.

On weekends I will eat some eggs and maybe some bacon, with the coffee.

I haven't really noticed me being extra hungry or less hungry but eating breakfast but it does help spread calories throughout the day, so I'm not eating an extra big dinner.

hesn92 wrote: »

I stopped eating breakfast a few months ago to save calories. I didn't stop being hungry but I am no more hungry than I was when I used to eat breakfast every day.

I feel this way, too. My hunger is about the same either way. Half the year I do cardio in the morning before eating anything. I do feel hungry when I start the cardio but by the time I'm done, 3 cups of coffee get me through the morning just fine.

About half the time, I do have a mid-morning fat bomb. It's some variation of an almond ricotta coffee cake (flourless sugarless). This week it has orange zest and black cherries. At <200cal, it does not fill me up, but I do enjoy the heck out of it with my coffee. So more mentally satisfying than anything else.

The worst I can do is eat sweet high carb early in the day. It sets me up for overeating all day, unfortunately. The fat bomb helps me balance my macros but is truly a sweet treat. Maybe you could try something like that?

ETA: I also stop eating about 7PM. I have no problem with fasted morning cardio, FWIW.

I'm in the eating in the morning won't stop my hunger boat. I have coffee and tea with a bit of half and half until lunch at one or two. I like to snack and eat a large dinner so it works for me. I often a little hungry in the morning but I ignore it and stay busy.

Spiderpug wrote: »

I eat brekkie after walking the dog so 10-ish then lunch 2-3pm and dinner 7-8pm. I find I snack less this way

My dad also calls it brekkie. fond memory...

Loving this thread as I've been finding it easier to stick to my calorie goal when I skip breakfast. Coffee with some half and half is usually enough for me, but I do usually have to be able to eat lunch a little earlier when I do this.

I empathize with you on the weight gain and finding it hard to get back into deficit. I gained 11 pounds last year, very slowly but surely and I couldn't figure out why. I was logging in every day and mostly doing what MFP told me to do, except when I wasn't.

The thing that has helped me is Judith Beck's "The Beck Diet Solution". (Actually, I read through several of her books: The Beck Diet for Life, The Diet Trap Solution. They are slightly different takes on the same approach, but Diet Solution is the main one). Basically, it's about dealing with the thoughts that cause you to sabotage your own efforts. I didn't think I needed that, but it turns out that, yes, I did. I still go over my goal some days, but now I'm better equipped to deal with those slips and I know what to do to get back on track much more quickly. Last year I whenever I got off track, it might cause me to check out for several days, which of course only compounded the problem.

I'm down almost 8 lbs since then, and still have a lot to go, but the best thing has been I feel much more confident in my ability to keep losing now because I know what has been getting in my way.

Ive never been big on eating breakfast, I usually drink coffee until 10 or 11, then a small snack, the, lunch between 12 and 1. If I eat before 10, Im starving all day. so I eats something like this
10am-snack(150 calories)
1pm-lunch (400 calories)
3pm snack(150 calories)
5pm-snack(150 calories)
630pm-dinner(500 calories)

Francl27 wrote: »

jayemes wrote: »

I almost never eat breakfast. I have two cups of coffee and that's it.
Occasionally I'm hungry, but like you said, I prefer to ignore it and leave myself more calories for dinner time.
I'd say after a few weeks I got used to it and wasn't looking for food in the morning.
If you don't want savory in the morning but want to eat, what about some kind of protein pancakes or overnight oats or even just a banana?

The problem is that pretty often, I just keep eating because I don't feel satisfied. 600+ calories later and I'm still not satisfied and still hungry by 11am

I'm usually up by 6.30am.

That is me. I get up between 4 and 4:30 to exercise and I tried waiting until I get to work at 7:30 to eat, which normally did not happen because I do not really sit down until about 8:30. By then I am starving and I felt like I could never feel satiated. So what I do is eat maybe a half serving of cottage cheese and some fruit or a piece of a belvita cookie before I leave home at 7. Then I just have a small snack at about 9, usually just some veggies and that holds me until I eat my snack at about 10.

Francl27 wrote: »

I'm always hungry in the morning, but savory food just doesn't appeal to me at all anymore then... so instead of just eating empty carbs and still be hungry after 500 calories, I've started skipping breakfast and end up eating around 11am. It makes the rest of the day MUCH easier, but, well, I'm hungry, and I exercise in the morning so it's not really ideal...

The question is - if you started skipping breakfast, did you stop being hungry at some point? I typically don't eat later than 7pm at night, so it's a pretty long time without food. It's easier for me to ignore hunger in the morning, but it would be easier if I'd just get used to it...

I've tried adjusting my food timings for around a month so that I skip breakfast and have my main meal as dinner. Didn't work for me because I'd be sooo hungry by dinner that I used to binge a lot. So I moved back to my normal routine:

Breakfast: 800 cals
Lunch: 400 cals
Dinner: 200 cals

I'm on a 1400 cal diet and I stop eating around 7pm.

I eat two slices of Dave's Killer raisin bread warmed in the toaster. It is nice and hardy with complex carbs and isn't savory nor overly sweet. 2 slices has 2g fiber and 8g protein, and holds me to lunch when eaten with my coffee.