Is breakfast an essential meal of the day? It is a hotly contested question in the health and nutrition world. Taking breakfast is all about how hungry a person is in the morning. Some people skip their breakfast while for others it is an essential meal of the day. Some say breakfast tends to “break the fast” from all the hours one spends sleeping.
In the nutrition world, some health experts say that people who take their breakfast are less likely to overeat during the day. That suggestion relates breakfast to lose or gain weight. However, from recent pieces of research, there is no difference in weight between people who skip their breakfast and those who don’t.
Skipping meals and especially breakfast has become an increasingly popular part of modern life. It’s because most people in the modern world are obsessed about their weight; therefore, they link skipping meals as a way of managing their weight. Surprisingly, some claims suggest breakfast helps us to lose weight and that skipping raises the chances of being obese. However, there are new high-quality studies that question this universal advice that breakfast is a must for everyone.
Below are facts that take a detailed look at breakfast, and whether there is the harm in skipping breakfast.
Breakfast does not boost your metabolism
People claim that breakfast kick-starts the body metabolism. Well, this is a myth. The people who say this, base their claim on the thermic effect of food. The effect causes an increase in the calories burned after you eat.
What matters for your body to undergo metabolism, is the total amount of food consumed throughout the day. Therefore, your body metabolism is not affected by the times or how often you eat.
Skipping breakfast does not cause you to gain weight
Surprisingly, people who skip breakfast weigh more than people who eat breakfast. It is paradoxical because how can you skip a meal, and yet you gain weight.
The basis of this is that skipping breakfast causes you to become starving causing you to overeat later in the day. Well, this may seem to make sense; however, it’s not supported by evidence.
Yes, you might overeat during the day, but that is not enough to cover up for the breakfast that you skipped. There are pieces of research showing that skipping breakfast reduces the total calorie intake by more than 400 calories per day.
The bottom line of the skip or eat breakfast dilemma is that there is no difference in weight between people who eat breakfast and those who skip.
Benefits of skipping breakfast
Of course, skipping breakfast may have some health benefits. Skipping breakfast makes part of the many intermittent fasting methods such as the 16/8 method. Intermittent fasting has effectively provided some health benefits. They include effectively reducing calorie intake, improving metabolic health, and increasing weight loss.
Bottom line
Is it healthy to skip breakfast? The answer to this is breakfast is optional. The answer is from an open mind. As stated earlier, skipping breakfast is part of intermittent fasting. Well, apart from the benefits it offers, some people can experience adverse effects such as headaches and drop in blood sugar.
On a general note, there is nothing special about breakfast. Skipping it or not skipping it does not affect your health as long as you eat healthy for the rest of the day. Myths about gaining or losing weight are all observational, and all have been proved wrong as they show no causation of gaining or losing weight.
Breakfast is optional, and it’s all about personal preference.