Breakfast Skippers Beware. You Could Be Increasing Abdominal Fat Storage.
Summary : A lot of people skip breakfast for a variety of reasons. The most obvious reason being a lack of time. Most people would rather spend 30 minutes more in bed than spending that time preparing and consuming a healthy breakfast. But what does that do to someone who is trying to lose weight? A lot, apparently.
Until recently, most theories linking breakfast to weight loss have been meagerly theories and hypothesis. But now there seems to be some solid evidence linking weight loss to breakfast.
A study was published in the 2009 May edition of the Journal Obesity. The study compared the effects of fat storage for 3 groups of 93 Latino youth aged between 10 and 17. The study group was categorized as follows;
- Those who never eat breakfast
- Those who eat breakfast occasionally
- Those who eat breakfast every day
All 3 groups consumed the same amount of calories.
The authors summarized the findings of the study as follows;
“Breakfast skipping was related to increased intra-abdominal fat independent of age, gender, total fat, total lean tissue, and total energy intake.” Even occasional breakfast consumption appeared to result in lower abdominal fat storage.
Another large study followed the weight gain of 6,764 middle aged men and women in Norfolk (UK) over a 5 year period. This study was published in the Journal Obesity in 2007. These men and women were not placed on any particular weight loss regime. People went on doing what they were doing and the study was used to establish correlations where possible.
The authors concluded that those who ate larger breakfasts put on less weight as compared to those who consumed smaller breakfasts. All the participants gained weight as would be expected of most people who are not taking any specific measures to control their weight. However, the increased percentage of daily energy consumed at breakfast was associated with relatively lower weight gain.
Another study analysed 10 years of data from the Health Professionals Follow Up Study of 20,064 men aged between 46 and 81 years. The study was published in the Journal Obesity in 2007. Amongst others, the study attempted to establish a correlation between breakfast consumption and weight gain in these men.
“The authors concluded that eating breakfast may modestly lower the risk of weight gain over 10 years in middle-aged and older men. The association is stronger for men with normal weight at baseline”
In a five-year longitudinal study of nationally representative population of 9,919 adolescents, “fast food consumption and breakfast skipping increased during the transition to adulthood, and both dietary behaviors are associated with increased weight gain from adolescence to adulthood.” The findings of the was study published in 2006 in The Journal of Adolescent Health.
So it seems that there is enough research out there that warrants consuming breakfast for weight loss. A lot of people tell me that they have a coffee for breakfast. Coffee is not breakfast! Breakfast literally means breaking – fast after not eating anything since dinner the night before. Not consuming breakfast makes your metabolic rate sluggish.
Having a good breakfast is of paramount importance for getting in shape. A good breakfast is essential for Correct Weight Loss. Losing weight correctly is essentially losing fat while building or at least maintaining one’s muscle mass. This applies to men as well as women.
Tags: breakfast, breakfast and weight loss, breakfast skipping and weight loss, weight loss, Journal of Obesity, obesity, weight loss
Hi.. I KNOW your’e right. Skipping breakfeast is a very bad idea. But so many people are doing it anyway.
Many don’t feel hungry in the morning. How would you go about that?
Everything is a matter of conditioning! People just have to train themselves to eat in the morning and taper the calories as the day progresses. What do you think?
Oh my, Speaking for myself, I cannot begin my day without a hearty, satisfying breakfast!
So I think I have to agree with Paramjit, that it a matter of acquiring a good habit, until you can’t do without it!
Thanks for your comments Ibrahim. This is a habit that we could all benefit from. Once the habit is firmly ingrained, it becomes second nature as you have so rightfully pointed out.
You have just unleashed the beast with this report. Now fat people have another excuse to consume even MORE calories. There argument will be that they are eating huge breakfasts to “lose weight” I really dislike obese people. They are weak and have no self control. And like alcoholism, it is NOT a disease. a disease is something that invades your body with no control by you. There is nothing that you can do to prevent yourself from getting malaria if a mosquito bites you. If you don’t start consuming alchohol, you will never get the “disease” It’s all bullshit..
Thank you very much for your comment. You have a valid point that it may give some people an excuse to eat more calories. But when people skip breakfast, they go for a long period without food and the body thinks that it is in starvation mode. It does not take much calories to pile on fat. Also missing meals is not a sustainable long term solution. While I respect your view points, obesity could also be a result of information overload or misinformation. people have access to all this information and are paralyzed and don’t know what to do.
Found this post very useful, thanks
I HAVE to eat breakfast. I wake-up really hungry.
One of my concerns with breakfast is I don’t seem to eat any less through the rest of the day so it seems like I actually consume more calories when breakfast is added .If anything, breakfast triggers hunger pangs for lunch much earlier in the day! What do you say to that?
There is a difference. Breakfast literally means “breaking fast”. It is the meal that brings you out of the fasting state. This is important as a prolonged fasting state will activate the starvation response. So if your first proper meal in the day is lunch instead of breakfast, you would have probably gone between 12 to 15 hours without a meal. Your body is going to think that there is a shortage of food. Its going to try and reduce your metabolism to cope with the food shortage. As a result of this, more lunch calories will be stored as fat. Research has shown that eating small meals through out the day keeps the metabolism revving. So it is definitely beneficial to have breakfast. You could try instead to reduce your dinner portion.