4 Reasons Why You Should Start Skipping Breakfast
Breakfast sucks!
There I said it. The cat is out of the bag.
For the past year, I’ve been skipping breakfast (much to my mother’s demise). But ever since I started skipping the “most important meal of the day,” I started to lose weight faster and started to have more energy than ever.
How is this possible?
Don’t you need to eat breakfast to lose weight? Don’t you need to eat breakfast to gain muscle? Don’t you need to eat breakfast to boost your metabolism and get the engine revving?
Well… I used to think so. I used to believe that breakfast was the holy grail of meals and that it was necessary for well… everything.
But then I learned that breakfast is incredibly overrated and that one of the big reasons it’s constantly promoted is because corporations rely on people to eat breakfast to make money. Just think about how much money food companies would lose if everyone started to skip breakfast. Companies would literally go bankrupt if everyone believed that it was okay to skip breakfast.
4 Reasons Why You Should Start Skipping Breakfast:
1) Because eating breakfast does not boost your metabolism
Eating breakfast to boost your metabolism is a complete lie.
Okay that’s not completely true.
Every time you eat any amount of food, your body will expend a small amount of calories to help digest the food. This is called the thermic effect of food (TEF). However, TEF can happen during anytime of the day. So if you eat lunch or dinner, you’re technically boosting your metabolism as well.
I just want to make it clear that your metabolic rate will increase anytime you eat something, but there’s really nothing special about eating in the morning.
2) Because eating breakfast will not prevent muscle breakdown
Many fitness gurus argue that you should eat breakfast because your body has gone without food for 7-9 hours and that eating breakfast will help prevent muscle tissue breakdown.
This is another big myth about eating breakfast.
Muscle loss will only occur with long-term fasting (greater than 72 hours). But as long perform some form heavy resistance training and don’t go on any extreme fasting diets, then skipping breakfast will not make you lose muscle mass.
3) Because skipping breakfast will not make you fat
I know that there are studies out there showing a correlation between breakfast skipping and higher weight gain, but this doesn’t prove that skipping breakfast will make you fat.
The reason that most people who skip breakfast tend to be more overweight is simply because breakfast skippers care less about their health. Also, people who skip breakfast tend to be people who are dieting and try to lose weight by going crazy low-calorie crash diets.
But skipping breakfast doesn’t have to mean you’ll gain weight. If you’re able to strategically skip breakfast every day and incorporate it into a lifestyle, like in The Warrior Diet or the popular Leangains, then you’ll be able to skip breakfast and lose fat every day.
4) Because you don’t even like eating breakfast
I never really like breakfast. The feeling of having food in my stomach during the early hours of the day was just never that appealing to me.
But don’t get me wrong, I love eating breakfast type foods like eggs, bacon, pancakes, and cereal. I just don’t really like eating in the morning.
And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. These days, most people don’t even like eating breakfast. They only eat it because they believe that it’s absolutely necessary to be healthy.
But don’t be fooled. Breakfast is a lie, promoted to keep food companies afloat.
Join the revolution. Start skipping breakfast today!
@Joe Best I subscribe to a 5-6 meals/day policy. It is better to eat many smaller meals across the day, rather than bloating up on 2-3 huge meals. Provides a more stable and dependable nutrient release.
As for breakfast I also hate food in the morning. Drinks are okay, though. As such, I mix up an all-in-one smoothie/milkshake which counts as a liquid meal and provides all the benefits of breakfast with none of the fuss.
It might sound disgusting but the inclusion of a banana, some oats, and/or some peanut butter and oat/rice milk provides a solid platform of calories, carbs, fibre and protein to give an energy kick, with very low amounts of saturated fat and reasonable amounts of healthy fats.
This author is just talking about his experience. The fact is this: if you take breakfast it is the first food that should carry you along the day because your physical activity all day will require full usage of this food. However, you must tailor your lunch and dinner to moderation to keep the energy balance normal. Everything depends on moderation. If the author skips breakfast and eats normal meal at lunch and moderate at dinner, all well and good. The rule of the thumb is one normal meal plus one or two more moderate meal. So it is no groundbreaking science to say one skipped breakfast!
Sorry dont fully agree with this. The right type of breakfast will give you plenty of energy for the day ahead. Missing it can make you feel hungry and allows you to eat junk food you would not normally have on the way to work.
However on the positive side, if you are trying to lose weight then it is a good idea to exercise before breakfast as it burns more FAT. There is evidence on this as well…
If skipping breakfast is going to cause my mother’s demise then I better keep eating it.
I’m not sure I should trust the advice of someone who doesn’t know the difference between dismay and demise. One means to upset, the other means to kill.
I can agree with some of what you say, however lack of any references gives you no credibility. I still like the article and 90% of the twitter posts. (Where I was linked to the article)
In my opinion, it depends on the person.
I must eat breakfast because it makes me more wary, my ADD is less showing and I don’t need coffee after that!
The breakfast is just eating one slice of whole grain bread with cooked vegetables salad on it, Â and after 2 hours I eat granola with milk (thank god I can do that at work!). The rest of the day I eat at small amounts: home-cooked meals only, no deep-fried food. I bring veggies to work, so I won’t eat snacks. Every 4 hours I usually eat a little bit (my friend says I am like a baby in that way:) )
I don’t find I have the stomach for breakfast either, however on the odd occasions I have missed it out I have always eaten way more then normal throughout the rest of the day, so much more its in the hundreds of calories! Breakfast for me is normally 100kcals, I eat 1350-1600kcals per day depending on what I’m doing that day. On the times I have missed out breakfast I’ve never eaten anywhere near 1600kcals more like 2000 and for me to do that every day, I’d gain weight- not really want I want to happen right now!
I also notice I get a huge wave of fatigue- I don’t exercise until the end of the day sort of around 5pm but even then I feel I have some sort of muscular fatigue and end up on coffee, there have been times I’ve not even thought why and then clicked afterwards: I didn’t eat any breakfast and this is a common pattern for me.
Everyone has their own bodies but for me at least I know that if I do not eat breakfast I suffer, my exercise suffers and my weight maintainance or loss suffers.