Can Skipping Breakfast Make You Lose Fat Faster?

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.

You might like : Is Breakfast Really The Most Important Meal ? Here are 5 Reasons to SKIP Breakfast

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 that mean that everyone should skip their breakfast?

Not at all. We don’t intend to prove that skipping your breakfast can be the only option to lose the extra fast since it’s obvious that there’s a multitude of diets and nutrition plans which have been proven repeatedly to be very effective. We are merely trying to give a different perspective to the issue.

It could also be said that skipping your breakfast is a lot more reasonable from a metabolic perspective. Losing the excess fat is not the only benefit that skipping breakfast brings. It brings a lot of other benefits to your health like:

You give the pancreas and the stomach a much-needed rest from the constant secretion of digestive fluids like bicarbonate and HCL (Hydrochloric acid). Both compounds help with the extermination of dangerous bacteria, neutralizing your stomach’s pH levels and mixing different food nutrients. This results is improved digestion and food movement in your intestines.

You allow the pancreas to recover from the constant secretion of hormones and digestive enzymes. This will, in turn, optimize the secretion of enzymes, improve the breakdown of food and improve the regulation of blood sugar levels.

Skipping your breakfast will also re-sensitize your cells to glucose and make them utilize more optimally. Basically, you make them a lot more efficient when it comes to utilizing glucose coming from ingested carbs and transforming it into usable energy.

And last but not least, when you skip breakfast you can better control your hunger. The majority of people start eating immediately if they hear the stomach making sounds. When you skip breakfast you will significantly reduce and better control hunger. That way you recalibrate your body to eat only when it really needs nutrients.

You might like : Intermittent Fasting: How Eating Less Can Lead to Massive Gains And A Shredded Physique

Does skipping breakfast really aid with losing fat faster?

If what you’ve read so far still hasn’t convinced you of the benefits of skipping breakfast or at least postponing it, then the best way to get convinced is to do an experiment on yourself and see if you get any results.

You should always take into consideration that the body has lots of glycogen reserves in your liver, around 70-100 grams, which would provide you with around 350-400 calories coming from the stored glucose should your body really need it. And that’s beside the excess amount of fat you already have and will be burning, no matter your body fat levels. So, you needn’t worry. If you choose to skip your breakfast, there are lots of energy reserves in your body to keep it running smoothly.

It needs to be stressed that the purpose of this article is not to convince you to always skip breakfast. It is to use it as one of the many strategies which will help you burn fat faster. As we already know, the majority of people nowadays carry too much fat and eating breakfast every day is most certainly not helping them get rid of it, especially if it is comprised of processed sugars, which it most commonly is.

You don’t need to eliminate breakfast at once, nor should you eliminate it altogether. Skip it twice, maybe thrice a week or you could try 5 days of the week. It’ll control your hunger, keep you healthy and shed the excess fat.


For the latest news and updates join our 1 Million fans on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.


Leave a Reply