BREAKFAST - what is the truth?

You don't need to skip breakfast to burn fat.

You don't need to eat breakfast to burn fat.

The best decision is the one that fits with your preferences and lifestyle.

I feel terrible if I don't eat within 30 minutes or so or finishing my morning run. Breakfast is a non-negotiable part of me feeling happy and energetic. Other people can skip it easily and, in fact, find it makes it easier for them to meet their calorie goals.

There is no universal answer, the truth is that breakfast-eaters, breakfast-skippers, and breakfast-sometimers are all meeting their goals.

If you're not hungry in the AM, it sounds like skipping breakfast is the right call for you (unless there is a medical reason that you need to be eating something).

there is no one-size-fits-all answer. there are intermittent fasters who do great on no breakfast. other people feel weak and crappy when they skip breakfast.

heck, the answer to this may change for you over time.

i used to do without breakfast in my teens because i wasn't hungry, but in my 30s and 40s when i was working out super heavy, i felt better and had better gains if i didn't skip any meals and included plenty of protein and enough carbs. now, years later and in poor shape, i'm not usually hungry first thing; i do best eating about 2 hours after i wake up - 1 hour after a heavy lifting day.

i can't see how it would be healthy to stuff down food when you're not hungry. do you get hungry at lunch or at a mid-point between breakfast and lunch time?

btw, starvation mode is a myth or no one would ever starve to death. your metabolism isn't a single thing but a combination of factors, and you burn calories all night while you sleep - your metabolism doesn't shut down so you don't need to wake it up.

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

There has to be some science to when and how fat stores burn fastest.

I doubt the science behind Intermittent Fasting and why you fast is total BS right? I've read it helps you burn fat instead of the food your eating.

And I don't really know which works for me - both of them I guess.

some of the people i know who intermittent fast simply do it to keep their calories down.

calories in, calories out - eat less than your body uses, lose weight. but if you lose weight fast, you'll be burning muscle along with fat, not a good thing, and you can make yourself weak and sick. also if you lose weight fast without changing your habits, you'll put that weight right back on.

janejellyroll wrote: »

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

There has to be some science to when and how fat stores burn fastest.

I doubt the science behind Intermittent Fasting and why you fast is total BS right? I've read it helps you burn fat instead of the food your eating.

And I don't really know which works for me - both of them I guess.

Is the goal to lose fat the absolute fastest? Or is the goal to find a weight management strategy that is sustainable and fits easily into your life?

There probably is a fastest way to burn fat. But if it is IF, how does that help me if I'm doing it and feeling miserable, hungry, and weak? If it's always eating breakfast, how does that help someone who isn't hungry but is forcing themselves to wake up and choke down food they don't want?

The truth is that both approaches (or a mixture of the approaches, if your preference varies by day) work for fat loss in the context of a calorie deficit. I'm not sure why it has to be more complicated than that.

You might burn a handful of calories more per day with the "optimal" meal scheduling, but figuring that out and adhering to it is going to be a waste of time for all but the most elite body builders. Most of us are looking to shed excess pounds and then maintain that weight loss and we don't need to get all fancy with the meal timing for that.

Exactly.

Let's just say that there's a fastest way, at the physiological level. Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that it's the intermittent fasting method. So, we'll pretend that my body burns fat faster if I don't eat until later in the day. (I'm not saying it does or doesn't, at this point.)

How much faster? Since research studies aren't seeing *big* differences between calorie-controlled eating schedules, it should be a relatively small difference. (Criticism of calorie controlled studies: Inevitably short in duration, because you can't hold people prisoner to control calories, and free-living people cheat on the calories, and don't tell the truth about it. Been demonstrated - may not be intentional, but that's the effect.)

Me, personally, I feel crapola if I don't eat breakfast. I drag around. I get tired quickly/easily. If I work out, my workout is not very effective. I struggle to achieve intensity. Even my heart rate response to the same exercise stimulus tends to be worse, and the workout feels miserable. So, until I eat, I'm burning fewer calories because I feel fatigued and I'm doing less. How much less? Well, some other reasearch has show a difference up to low hundreds of calories per day between people who are fidgeters, and similar people who are non-fidgeters. So, probably draggy morning is somewhere in that realm, too.

Essentially, this is why we're saying that it makes the most sense to do what works best for you. Generally, evidence (short studies) suggests that IF and non-IF at constant calories end up with the same fat loss. (Admittedly, there's ongoing debate; and there are non-weight-loss benefits of fasting being investigated . . . but that wasn't what you asked about. And conclusions are very mixed, anyway.)

So, if the calorie differences between fasting and not fasting are fairly small, and I feel like crud fasted and therefore do less (thus burning fewer calories), how do those effects net out? There is certainly not a *big* calorie win there by forcing myself to fast, and there's a potential calorie expenditure loss, plus I would feel more miserable, more of the time. Why would that be a good plan, realistically, for my overall life balance and happiness? I think nuh-uh.

Oversimplifying, there are a couple of approaches to weight management. Some people like to pursue every last potential extra calorie-burning strategy, even if the proof for it is pretty light - so all the purported fat burning supplements and superfoods (no matter how unpleasant taste-wise), and special extra-intense exercise (no matter whether they enjoy it), and special ways of eating (food combining, fasting, calorie cycling, carb cycling, keto, whatever . . .). Other people like to seek out a set of habits that for them personally result in the right number of calories, but are relatively easy and relatively pleasant. (If you find the supplements tasty, the intense exercise fun, and whatever eating regimen congenial, that's great. Not saying no one does. Just saying it's obvious some people do them for the supposed weight-loss results, even though they hate doing them.)

Given that weight management is not a limited-duration project, but rather a lifelong need, I'm going to stick with that second approach, and find things that get/keep my weight where I want it, but are easy and pleasant, even if they're not theoretically the Absolute Most Ideal Way Technically Speaking.

Since I'm in year 4+ of maintenance after 3 previous decades of obesity, I'd say that for me, something about this approach is working. That's really all *I* need. So, if you want to try IF, and feel like it helps you . . . go for it. It is helpful for some people, usually those not hungry in the AM, or who prefer big meals, or that sort of thing.

There are a bunch of threads over in the debate section where people talk about IF nearly ad infinitum. They will cite the studies, and make more formal arguments. Here are a couple, at random:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10765344/please-help-with-this-argument-intermittent-fasting-related/p1
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10746848/intermittent-fasting-is-it-a-good-idea/p1

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

There has to be some science to when and how fat stores burn fastest.

Although there are limited. short term studies that show an advantage to almost any specific weight loss scheme (IF, Keto, lo-fat, Gluten-free, 5:2, OMAD, etc.) any large and long term studies have shown none of them are any different from each other in terms of weight loss (how much and how long kept off).

So, as others have said, do what works for you. If dividing your eating into 5 evenly spaced meals of the same number of calories helps you stay on track, do it. If skipping breakfast and only eating between noon and 8 works for you, do that. Ending my eating day with 2-3 ounces of mixed nuts works for me. Do what works for you.

lgfrie wrote: »

Dogmom1978 wrote: »

lgfrie wrote: »

There is no truth. There's very little truth in dieting besides "try to eat healthy foods most of the time, and if you wanna lose weight, eat less of them". Best not to even seek the hidden truth; there's only what works, and that's person-specific.

When it comes to breakfast, some people find eating it is beneficial for dieting, some don't. I've been doing IF for 15 months, so breakfast has not been part of the plan. I find it helpful to free up those calories to put into two larger meals (lunch and dinner). For other people, that doesn't work. I went on diet hiatus last week and find I still don't actually want breakfast even though I am now eating at maintenance and free to have it. Just not used to eating breakfast anymore and it does nothing for me.

I agree with the above posters about two things: one, you do adjust to not eating breakfast when you do IF and then you're just not hungry until lunch. Some kind of adaptation takes place, which is probably entirely psychological, but when you don't just "skip" breakfast now and then but have a time before which you never or very rarely eat, you do sort of get past the hunger pangs and fixation on food in the morning.

Two, while I love carbs and make no effort not to eat them, I'd have to admit that lower carb meals as the first meal tend to leave me less hungry later on. By which I mean higher protein, since I'm not going to eat a pailful of lard. Higher protein first-meals do seem to stave off the hunger longer. Why, I don't really know. If I know I have a high calorie dinner coming up such that there needs to be NO snacking between lunch and dinner, I will eat a high protein (aka lower carb) lunch so that I won't be hungry during the day.

The healthy foods isn’t even the truth. Eat what you like so you can stick to your diet. If that’s TV dinners, simply choose ones that let you remain within your calorie goals.

A calorie deficit is all that matters for losing weight, not healthy foods.

That is the truth for weight loss ONLY. If someone has 5 or 10 pounds to lose, yes, they can lose it eating Doritos. But many people have far more to lose than 10 pounds and their "diet" projects are going to be yearlong or multi-year or forever efforts. Eating Doritos around the clock is not going to work for them. The extreme position of "eat whatever you want within your calories" is fine short-term but there's more to good health than losing weight, as anyone who's crossed that 30 or 50 pound line knows. At some point you have to start paying attention to what goes in your mouth, not just how much of it.

TV dinners aren't that unhealthy. They're usually high in sodium, but otherwise they tend to be fairly well balanced and of moderate or at least measured calories. I've eaten plenty of them.

you can be thin and eat crap. my very slim ex lived on snickers bars, pizza and chips, and he weighed a whopping 126 at 5' 8" tall.

Along with all the platitudes I've always been told about breakfast is the simple realization that breakfast is by far my favorite meal! Everything else is salads and roasted vegetables and such. Breakfast is a variety of healthy foods - fiber, carbs, protein, fruit! I love it. It would be far easier to skip lunch or dinner because I'm never again as hungry during the day as I am at breakfast time.