Breakfast How? and what should I do?

Morning all, for years now I have not eaten breakfast not for any reason other than I don't really want to or feel hungry, I like a cup of coffee,a bit of piece and quite and that sets me up for the day.

Don't get me wrong I think it all started when I was in the Royal Air force, because you would eat as and when time permitted, so I never got into an established routine or timing of my meals.

Since I started my journey of weight loss there appears to be varying chains of thought, I have been told that for some people it can assist in weight loss, others say that not eating breakfast can cause the body to store fat, and thus not assist in weight loss. No matter where I look it seems to be non conclusive if there would be any benefit, but I want to make sure that with my weight loss plan I'm giving myself the best set up lose this two stone.

I came across this web site thehealthsciencesacademy.or...

Your thoughts would be appreciated, I did start eating various cereals, porridge ( for slow release) etc but the true and honest fact is I was having to force myself to do this, and that ain't any fun.

Thanks in anticipation, hope all is well with you all.

20 Replies

oldest • newest

TheAwfulToad

6 months ago

Completely agree with the comments from Rignold and Penel - if you don't want to eat breakfast then don't. Although people debate endlessly over the meaning of breakfast, I can't think of any obvious physiological reason why it would influence weight-loss progress one way or the other. At least not in any dramatic way. I would certainly say having a bowl of breakfast cereal or toast would be worse (from a weight-loss point of view) than just having coffee.

Like Penel, I prefer to have a big breakfast and have a very small lunch (or sometimes none at all). But that's just me.

What might be important, though, is that when you do feel hungry mid-morning you have something sensible (real food, as Hidden said). As opposed to, say, a Mars bar. You can't really go wrong with eggs.

NinjaW78

in reply to TheAwfulToad

Thanks for that, from what I was led to believe regarding not having breakfast was that! what you are doing is prolonging the fast from when you went to sleep the night before, the body then becomes used to not having food and therefore slows down its natural calorific burn rate holding onto body fat as reserves because its not sure when it will be nourished again, therefore when you do have lunch or other meals it takes longer to burn off the calories and exercise has to increase to compensate, but the other side of the argument is that if you eat sensibly and regularly three times a day, the metabolism increases as the body is now used to getting more regular intake of food and therefore burns the calories quicker as it knows that it does not need to store fat due to the frequent intake, it's all good stuff but I don't know what to believe.

in reply to NinjaW78

ehhh ... it's true that your body can reconfigure itself to hold onto bodyfat reserves, but it doesn't happen on that short timescale (and even if it did, logically, it would crank right up again as soon as you ate something). It happens with prolonged, consistent caloric restriction.

The most dramatic way to slow your metabolism (ie., to increase your metabolic efficiency) is to exercise. So if the theory about skipping breakfast were true, it would also imply that you shouldn't exercise. in fact exercising while imposing a calorie deficit DOES result in your body holding onto fat - it's the reason fat people get so frustrated when they follow their diet, crank away on the crosstrainer for an hour a day ... and stay fat.

Simplistically, your body stores fat when you digest carbohydrates at a rate faster than your body can burn them for energy. It releases stored fat when blood sugar falls (or rather when insulin levels fall). The aim, then, is to keep your blood sugar consistently low, and you can do that either by skipping meals or by not eating carbohydrates. Or both.

Exercise works not by "burning more calories" - you can't exercise and eat at the same time - but by increasing your general insulin sensitivity. Your muscles get better at either using or storing excess carbohydrates so they don't end up as fat, and your fat cells get better at releasing stored fat when required.

when you say keep myself fit, I have never been a fitness freak or visited the gym like my mate did on a regular basis ,I tried it once and found it sole destroying. However I constantly played all manor of ball related sports (football mainly) until my mid thirties until sadly knee injuries put pay to that in any competitive form, but I think the 'Air Force' bred into me that sitting around doesn't achieve anything (unless your an Author), so even though I left the Air Force in the late 80's I've always kept myself busy with all different type of 'diy' projects, most days I finish work and be in the garage or working on some mechanical or house related project until the the early hours of the morning, for instance yesterday evening I thought that I should cut back a few shrubs around my garden pond!!, that led from one thing to another around the garden, then at 10.30 pm I replaced a tyre and chain on my sons mountain bike; eventually sitting down at 11.30 pm. But I have to admit just to top of the self satisfaction of my efforts I am partial to a tin of larger to celebrate my efforts. Bad, Bad,Man

RignoldKeto star

I make a major distinction between what and how I eat and what and how I feed my children. Their nutritional needs are quite different to mine.

As regards the body hanging on to calories if it is not fed every few hours i have not seen anything that suggests that is the case. In fact studies I have seen looking at whether there is a difference between eating six or eight small meals spaced through the day or three at regular times or one large one (the kind of thing the bodybuilding communty debates ad nauseam) tend to the conclusion that it makes very little difference to gains or cutting (protein uptake aside). Certainly the legions of intermittent fasters do not seem to suffer any fat gains from their approach.

Toad: in my earlier post I almost wrote the only thing that matters is that you are in caloric deficit, then thought of you, and decided discretion was the better part of valour.

Aurora16

I am the same.

I rarely have breakfast. Only once in a while do I fancy it. I'm just not hungry.

In fact had an 'early lunch' as muesli.

I always argue -why eat when you're not hungry?

I do recognise that as we're trying to retrain our bodies to 'get it right' ought we change this. But once I hit adulthood I often missed breakfasts then it became more regular.

I think too people reckon we 'eat more later to compensate' but I don't.

In nearly all diets it states - don't eat when you're not hungry.

As you rightly say some state that not eating early helps the body 'recover' too!

There's also the thought of only eating within a 6hr window.

This I think could help, perhaps because you're less hungry within those 6hrs?!

Many others state periods of 'starving' helps the body & dieting.

Yet tell ppl you don't want breakfast & they're most put out.

So I say absolutely do what your body is comfortable with.

I know what you mean about doing your diet that's tuned to you !

There's a dna test you can do to tune a diet to you.

I see Lloyds Pharmacy are doing it for £59

lloydspharmacy.com/en/my-dn...