Is Breakfast The Most Important Meal of The Day?

We have all heard it before.  I have probably said it at some point.  Your mom probably told you when you were a kid.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  We have heard this for years.  There seemed to be tons of reason why you needed to eat a good breakfast to get your day going.  Is this 100% true though?  It may not be as clear as you think.

When it comes to nutrition it seems that we are always changing what we "know."  However, there is so many things to consider it is probably impossible to know the entire truth.  But I have recently come across a few studies that show an interesting perspective, that may question what we thought we knew about eating breakfast.

I'm sure you have heard that you need to eat breakfast in order to lose weight because it will give your metabolism a kick start.  A brand new study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that this really isn't the case.  In this study they measured metabolic rate with and without breakfast.  They found that there was no significant increase in metabolism when breakfast was consumed.  One note we should make is this study was performed on already lean individuals.

The next study looked that those who were obese and how breakfast consumption helped with weight loss.  They divided individuals up into breakfast eaters and breakfast skippers.  After the duration of the study there was no difference in weight loss between groups.

So that's two studies showing that maybe it isn't so important.  But if we look at the National Weight Control Registry studies we see some interesting numbers.  The NWCR is composed of individuals who have lost on average 66lbs and kept it off for 5.5 years.  So these individuals are having successful weight loss and keeping it off.  Studying this group might give us insight to what works and what doesn't.  Out of this group 78% eat breakfast regularly.  While some do lose weight without eating breakfast they are in the minority here.

And yet a final study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at what if you just change your breakfast behavior.  For this they divided participants into four groups.  One group was those that normally ate breakfast and continued to eat breakfast, the next normally ate breakfast and stopped, the third did not normally eat breakfast and continued to skip it, and finally a group that normally did not eat breakfast and did eat it during the study.  Here they found the two groups that lost the most weight were the ones that changed their behavior.  So the group that usually ate breakfast and stopped lost more weight and the group that didn't normally eat breakfast and started lost more weight.

So I'm sure I completely confused you with these findings.  But the truth is the answer to weight loss probably isn't as simple as just eating breakfast.  This might be one small change that might help some and may not have much of an effect on others.  I personally would recommend eating breakfast, especially if you exercise in the morning, but for some people this will not necessarily mean more weight loss.  The key is though that eating breakfast won't make you gain weight with all else being equal.  So if you feel better when you eat breakfast keep doing it.  If you don't like eating right away and can't seem to eat breakfast, you can still have a successful weight loss program.

You Stay Healthy San Diego,

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS
San Diego Premier Training