In a recent article by the New York Times, some bright light was finally shone upon the prodigal meal. In short, it turns out breakfast ain’t all that special.
(Source: allthetropes.wikia.com)
In case you’ve just awoken from a coma, the world doesn’t take kindly to breakfast skippers.
I don’t mean folks who are so skilled at eating breakfast, they are like the skipper of a breakfast boat. We’re talking about the truants of meal one. If you don’t like to nosh in the AM, you’ve been pretty much citizen zero for the last two decades. That time has come to an end.
To celebrate the end of breakfast shaming, here are three other breakfast truths that may change the way you approach your first meal, even your first meal is normally elevensies.
(Source: verywell.com)
Truth #1: To lose weight, skip breakfast
Well, this appears to make sense; Skip a meal to cut out calories. Done.
Understand that this tactic does not work for everybody, but we have examples of people who have lost weight by simply stopping their usual routine of eating breakfast. The obvious reason is breakfast accounts for hundreds of calories, into the thousands if your favorite wake-up meal is a breakfast burrito or donuts.
Here’s why it may work:
If you’re the sort of person who enjoys a dos manos breakfast burrito, by skipping this meal you’re dropping 5-7,000 calories of your weekly intake. That’s potentially two pounds of stored energy a week [read: body fat].
Here’s why it may not work:
Most people’s bodies will kick in a number of systems to retain the bodyweight. While at first this may work, over time you may find these calories through other means during the day. Also, you may feel sluggish skipping your breakfast. Sticking to this plan, in the long run, might be tough.
What you could try instead:
Intermittent fasting is a compromised version of this plan, whereby you intermittently fast for 16 hours a day. Half of those fasting hours are while you sleep.
Truth #2: To lose weight, eat breakfast.
There’s a ton of logic baked into the idea of eating breakfast to lose weight, even though it goes against everything we know about calories. The question is won’t you just eat more of them, then gain weight?
Here’s why it may work:
By eating a good breakfast you should be energized for your day. You should also kickstart your metabolism, which happens every time you eat, by the way. It follows, that you would be less likely to snack in the late morning. You would be less famished for lunch so you would eat more sensibly.
Here’s why it may not work:
There are so many reasons this may not work. For one, some people aren’t hungry. Forcing someone to eat against their will is not only cruel, it doesn’t guarantee anything about their eating the rest of the day. You may snack anyway, then eat a caloric lunch, adding to your net intake.
What you could try instead:
Instead of forcing the issue, eat breakfast when it . In fact, if you hate breakfast food (weirdo) then eat lunch or dinner food. Manage your calorie intake for your goals. Stop letting people shame you for not following their bureaucratic eating schedule.
(Source: from18tolife.co.uk)
Truth #3: What you eat for breakfast doesn’t really matter much.
This one is going to raise some paleo hackles, but you can eat what you want for breakfast. If you want to eat your entire lot of calories for the day at breakfast, so be it.
Here’s why it may work:
The human body is adaptive. We can eat any bioavailable food unless we have an allergy. No matter how many times we identify foods as “bad for us,” we always retract those assertions.
Here’s why it may not work:
I would eat pastries every day. There’s nothing especially wrong with pastries, but I would sugar-crash if I didn’t add protein. Then I would be really high on my intake. Over time, I would gain mass.
While you can technically eat what you want and change your body, you may not feel very happy doing it. Here are some folks who did just that.
What you could try instead:
Experiment with different food combinations. As mentioned, I like something cakes in the morning, so I make protein pancakes. It works for me.
(Source: lifebookaz.blogspot.com)
Whatever you do, eat the breakfast that works for you, even if it’s no breakfast. Stop stressing silly rules about eating. Everything that people eat, somewhere, someone is eating it all the time, staying in shape. A better goal than trying to cram ourselves into silly diet trends is to find ways to eat what we want, when we want, staying healthy.