Rethink Breakfast - Is breakfast the most important meal of the day?
I have a shocking confession to make.
I haven’t consistently eaten breakfast for 8 years now. And I’m effortlessly maintaining my lean and toned physique. As well, most of my successful students, who’ve gotten their dream physique, don’t either.
This is why, here, I’d like to question the idea of breakfast.
Is it unhealthy to skip breakfast? Is it really the most important meal of the day, like traditionally thought? Let’s visit a few ideas as to where the idea came from and why most people think that way.
Here, let’s define what we mean by breakfast. Let’s define breakfast as the first meal of the day, eaten within 2 hours of waking up.
Idea 1 | Breakfast kickstarts our day by providing us with energy. Without breakfast, we will lack energy for the entire day.
Our body is a survival machine. We can run on our stored energy (as fat and other sources in our body) without eating more food for a long time. From an evolution theory point of view, if we’re so fragile that we will lose energy without breakfast, in the hunter-gatherer days when there were no fridges and fast food, we would’ve been eliminated by nature. Our bodies are passed on from those times, optimized for survival.
It has been shown that we are more focused and alert without food, because our survival-oriented body alerts us to work for food. We efficiently use our body fat (and other sources) as fuel during non-eating times. In fact, if you ate, your body thinks that you have enough food to survive, so it signals you to relax. This is why after a meal, you usually feel sleepy, not more energetic. We are actually more energetic and focused without food.
Idea 2 | Skipping breakfast could cause kidney/gall stone formation.
Kidney/gall stone is caused by the solidification of minerals from foods and beverages we consume. And such solidification won’t happen if we drink enough fluid. Past studies did show that breakfast eaters have a less chance of having stone formation, but new research has clarified that it’s because if you ate breakfast, you’re more likely to drink fluid with it. Drinking fluid is why you’d have less chance of getting kidney stones, not the breakfast itself.
So, drink plenty of fluid throughout the day, and you’ll be fine.
Idea 3 | Skipping breakfast could cause you to be hungrier later on, which causes you to eat more.
Modern studies have shown that, while it’s true that you would eat “less” in later meals if you ate breakfast, the calories from breakfast are never cancelled out by the “less” calories you didn’t eat later on.
A study shown that when compared to breakfast eaters that ate a breakfast of 700 calories, breakfast skippers who skipped that 700-calorie breakfast only naturally overate 161 calories later in the day, resulting in a net 539 calories less for breakfast skippers.
This means that if you skipped breakfast, EVEN IF you ate more later on, it would not cancel out the calories you could've ate for breakfast. Skipping breakfast will still cause you to comfortably eat less calories.
Idea 4 | Breakfast boosts metabolism. By skipping breakfast, your metabolism could slow down or crash.
The scientific truth is, our resting metabolism can’t really be raised or dropped in significant amounts that would affect our fat gain or loss, unless you have metabolic conditions that would need medical attention. Your resting metabolic rate is mainly determined by genetic factors and age, and there isn’t much you can do about it. It’s not changed by breakfast.
Your body indeed “burns” some energy if you eat breakfast, because it needs energy to digest the food. But the calories in the food are always more than the energy your body needs to burn the food. So you are never burning more calories by eating breakfast.
Idea 5 | Skipping breakfast could cause you to lose muscle, because you already don’t have food in your body during sleep. By skipping breakfast, you’re starving your body for way too long.
Again, let’s think about this logically with evolution theory. In the hunter-gatherer days, your body needs muscles to hunt and survive. It doesn’t easily break down if you’re just a few hours without food. Your body can keep muscles for a long time without food, and will only choose to break it down if it absolutely has no other efficient energy sources left.
In the old days, you could be without food for sometimes days, weeks, or even months. It’s not as fragile as you think. So relax, it won’t start to break down without breakfast.
Idea 6 | Breakfast is a modern society idea.
This is true! For hundreds of thousands of years, we didn’t have the luxury for breakfast. But only about 10,000 years ago, humans developed the ability to farm. Then we began to have more abundance in food, and slowly began the social idea of breakfast. But biologically, our bodies aren’t fully adjusted to this social idea of breakfast.
As well, when scientific research isn’t as complete as today’s, health professionals used to believe that breakfast “kickstarts” our day with energy we need. Now, we understand that it’s not true.
Remember as a kid, you might’ve naturally disliked breakfast, but your parents forced you to eat? This may be why.
FAQ About Breakfast
Question 1: Is skipping breakfast for everyone?
No, it is not. Depending on your caloric needs and how you feel, some people aren’t well-suited to skip breakfast. In my professional experience, if your goal is to gain more muscle mass, and getting enough calories throughout the day is already a difficult problem for you, then breakfast may be needed for you to eat.
Question 2: What if I get stomach aches when I skip breakfast?
In most cases, this is caused by acid reflux. This is because your body isn’t accustomed to a sudden change in meal timing. Acid is “prepared” because your body thinks it’s meal time. In cases like this, don’t change meal timing too drastically. Instead, push your first meal back by an hour every 2-3 days. If you still get stomach aches, have 100 calories of some carbohydrates, drink a mixture of baking soda with water, or take an antacid.
Question 3: Without breakfast, I get so hungry during the morning. What should I do?
Again, don’t change your meal timing too drastically. Push your first meal back by an hour every 2-3 days, until you reach your preferred first-meal timing.
But understand that when you’re trying to adjust your meal timing, it’s not going to be 100% comfortable. So feeling a bit hungry is normal. But usually this process takes 2-3 weeks of getting used to, after that you’ll feel fine.
Last tip I’d like to share is the use of caffeine. Caffeine in moderate amounts is healthy for you. It’s an antioxidant. It increases focus. It reduces your chance of cardiovascular diseases. And best of all, it suppresses hunger. So during your fast, you may want to enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, with a moderate amount of caffeine content that’s suitable for you.
On the topic of caffeine, you can check out my article here.
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