We’ve all been taught since childhood that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. Every day, our parents told us that if we wanted to be strong and healthy we’d need to eat our breakfast, even though most of the time we wouldn’t want to. And they were right, breakfast is vital to your overall health and if you eat the right foods it will set up you up for a productive day and make you feel more energized.
Besides your body will thank you for nourishing it so early during the day. That’s because when you get out of bed, you’ve already been fasting for 8 or more hours. Provided that you intend to lose some extra fat if you eat breakfast first thing in the morning, doesn’t it actually break the fast (hence the name), and keeps you further away from your fat loss goals?
Breakfast has always been a regular part of people’s lives so it’s only natural that it’s one of the first things we do when we get out of bed. It’s almost subconscious. We always hurry to eat it before going to school, work, training at the gym or whatever else we plan to do.
Why is that?
That’s because we’ve been told over and over again that breakfast was the “most important meal of the day” and if you dare to skip it your metabolism would crash, your blood sugar levels would also crash, the body would start cannibalizing itself, it would start starving which would have a negative impact on your thyroid gland.
Are any of these things true? Will skipping your breakfast make you more sluggish, less energized and less motivated for your daily chores?
The answer is a resounding NO!
So, what should you do?
The actual truth is that there’s no need to eat anything as soon as you wake up. On the contrary, it is much better that you postpone eating.
Looking at modern people’s physiques it’s safe to say we’re battling an obesity epidemic. You don’t have to be an expert to see that. Just walking down the street in any major city can prove that. There are lots of factors that cause this, and eating your breakfast contributes a great deal.
As we mentioned earlier when you look at the word itself it literally means breaking your fast. That means that you were fasting while you were sleeping and did not ingest any extra calories except for maybe a small amount of glucose converted from the glycogen in the liver and triglycerides coming from fat deposits. These two compounds were used by your body as energy sources for basic life functions such as breathing, heart pumping, as well as dreaming.
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What does breakfast have anything to do with this?
When you wake up, the body is in a fasting mode. Provided that you want to decrease fat levels, eating so early in the morning would put a stop to fat loss and would break the fasting period.
When you restrict your caloric intake for longer periods or when you start skipping your breakfast, the enzyme known as lipase start metabolizing your fat in great quantities. This is actually the time when you can achieve a real fat loss in the absence of food and ingested calories in your blood stream.
Let’s use a simple example. Let’s say you’ve been sleeping for 8 hours straight. You went to bed at 11 pm and you woke up at 7 am. Full 8 hours of quality sleep and real fat loss. When you wake up, you can do two things. Either prepare yourself a meal with some oats and yogurt and break your fast or don’t eat anything for another 3-5 hours and prolong the fasting time.
And if we take into account that you want to lose fat, what do you think would be the most rational option given the situation? You guessed it, you skip breakfast.
Does this mean that everyone should skip their breakfast ?
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