I skip breakfast...so what?

I know this will provoke several responses about the necessity of breakfast, but I'm just going to say it: I lose weight when I skip breakfast. And I lose it at a healthy rate, one to two lbs per week, one that I have NOT been able to achieve on weeks when I eat breakfast.

Among other things, breakfast kickstarts my appetite. On days when I have my bowl of GoLean crunch and half a cup of milk, I'm craving a snack at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, and so on through midnight. When I skip breakfast, I have no cravings until noon, maybe even 1 PM.

I'm sorry, but it's the truth! I am three lbs away from my goal weight.

Great that this works for you!!!  YOu may try instead of carb breakfast do a protein only- like an egg.  I know sometimes if I have a high carb breakfast I want to eat all day too.

When you reach your goal, I hope you'll post so we can have a cyber celebration for you!  I agree - do what has worked for you.  If you find you don't lose when you start the day with breakfast, the do what works. 

I hope you don't exercise on an empty stomach!  But chubchub, you did ask, soooo..

From MSN Health & Fitness - The Skinny on Fat a quote:

>"Part 1: Energy Balance Is The Key To Weight Control

If you want to understand energy balance in an instant, think of your body as a car that operates 24 hours a day, says Dan Benardot, Ph.D., R.D., a nutrition researcher at Georgia State University in Atlanta. You would never expect your car to get you from one place to the next without systematic refueling, just as you know there's no point in putting more gas in the tank than it's designed to hold. But that's how many of us operate our bodies.

We try to run on empty for hours, then dump in more fuel than we can handle. Benardot's research shows how self-destructive this strategy is.

Let's say you really want to lose fat, and decide to jog first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach. "The easiest way to get energy is to break down muscle mass," Benardot says. Your body can convert specific amino acids the building blocks of muscle to glucose, the sugar that powers human activity. "Someone running before eating may actually be breaking down the very tissue he's trying to improve. Sounds counterproductive to me."

Call it the "muscle loss" diet."<

Read through this site:

www.hungerhormones.com

Apparently, when you skip breakfast (which I've had a long history of doing so myself - in fact, it's now 10 AM and I have totally forgotten I should eat until you reminded me!!), your body burns muscle, not fat. So if you have lost weight by skipping breakfast, it's muscle you have lost.

Meanwhile, the site explains that if you feel hungry after a meal, it means you didn't take in enough calories at that meal. Read through the "rules" - it's quite interesting and based on new science about ghrelin and leptin.

The only problem with two of the major rules is that they basically go against everything that this site and people on this site say.  It says that you should only eat three meals a day with NO snacking.  It also says that you shouldn't eat back your exercise calories even if you are only eating three 400 calorie meals which would put someone below 1200 calories. 

Edit:  While I can understand and even agree with the science of the site, I don't think that the rules about eating and exercise are very good advice.  Although I think the sleeping 8 hours and getting help for depression, stress, etc is pretty good advice for everyone, not just people who are losing weight.

Also, the Discovery Health BMR calculator said I only burn 1780 calories and the CC site said I burn 2150.  Kind of a big difference.

I agree with you - I thought I was doing the right thing, breakfast, snack, lunch, dinner, then maybe a light snack, all healthy stuff and I gained a lot of weight. I also found out my "healthy eating" was logging in at 2,000 calories a day <gasp>!

I dropped breakfast, since I was hungry at 10 regardless of if I had eaten earlier or not, had oatmeal at 10 if I was hungry, and haven't given it a second thought since. On the occational morning I"m feeling like I'd like breakfast, I try to figure out if i'm really hungry or if it's a "comfort food" thing, if I'm not really hungry, I pass on it, head out the door for work, grab my normal coffee on the way, and I'm fine ;)

I could easily skip breakfast..I'm not a morning person. But I don't want to burn away my muscle and call it weight loss. I want to kick start my metabolism and eat every  3 -31/2 hours to keep it going...I've learned how it works and I've learned how to keep my body filled and satisfied while in my calorie limit. It's just one of those situations where you have to decide whether health is more important...or just flat out weight loss, whereever it comes from. I choose health.

Aebeckert, BMR is just the calculation of what your body uses for functioning - ie., total bedrest without any movement added in. So it's not really different from CC- CC just adds in an allowance for daily living whether you are sitting at a computer all day or wait tables or whatever.

As for the no snacking rule, for me it seems to work better that way  (though I admit I still eat a bedtime snack). I do far better if I eat enough cals at each meal, and I can then go for 5-6 hours without needing a snack. And I'm on a 1200-1400 calorie plan.

I just met with a dietician and I asked her if you should eat breakfast to get your metabolism going, like a lot of people and articles say.  She said no, do not eat until you are hungry!

if you're not hungry in the morning, something is wrong.  assuming that you're not getting up in the middle of the night, you haven't fed your body for 8 or 10 hours.  you ought to be hungry.

Thanks for the clarification jenmcc.  I always wondered why different sites would give me such different numbers.

There are philosophy's of diet out there that say 'only eat when you are hungry' I won't say which, not sure I can remember anyway, but this makes sense to me. Eating when you aren't hungry (maybe breakfast) could put weight on, and the philosophy states to only eat until you aren't hungry any longer, but not weak either, just not full feeling. We are so used to having our bellies full.

However, if you go to work and don't have time for meals before lunch it would make allot of sense to train your body to get hungry for something light first thing, like miso soup (sound yucky, tastes yummy, very nutritious) or maki roll. (I'm not Japanese, just love the food, macrobiotic food rocks)

 I've never been a ' breakfast person ' either.  Forget Breakfast. If you aren't hungry, don't eat. That's the best advice someone could ever give you. The fact is that people get into a routine of getting up, and grabbing that food. It's not that we're so hungry or we can't live without that bowl of cereal. If skipping one breakfast is causing you to loss weight at a healthy pace, that's fantastic. You should be proud of your new found knowledge and forget what anyone else has to say about it. To each their own. ( At least your own is working. Lol )

I have to agree with Mariamck.  You should be hungry in the morning, it would make me wonder what is wrong with me if I didn't want to eat first thing.  I am usually starving after about an hour of getting up so I just eat right away to avoid that whole "I am so hungry I want to puke feeling"

I think the science is intriguing, but I'm also not 100% convinced. However, I do know that survey after survey shows that those who eat breakfast are more successful at weight loss - and keeping it off. The last part to me is most important.

I was a notorious breakfast skipper until this past year. It's still a struggle to remember to eat breakfast, I don't eat a lot (definetly not the 1/3rd of daily allowance that site advocates, more like 200-250 cals), but I can say that when I don't skip, I am far more apt to eat less the rest of the day, and have an easier time doing so.

I do notice that I'm not hungry upon waking if I had a late and big dinner. That makes sense to me.

But then there are also those nutritionists who say you should eat the majority of calories in the earlier parts of the day since you've been starved for how many hours you've been sleeping (and usually more since most people don't go to bed right after dinner).

But I always liked that explanation just because I love breakfast, lol.

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Where are these "rules" you refer to on calorie-count?  I find plenty of educated information, well documented facts, lots of information about nutrition, and free, really great tools.  What you do with all this is up to you.  Information in the forums is the opinions of members.  There are guidelines that we all agreed to when we joined.  One of these is, don't promote starvation diets.  There's a good reason - it's been deemed harmful and dangerous by every reputable medical authority in the world.  If calorie-count allowed us to promote these unhealthy practices it would be unethical.

So please, express your opinion, engage in civil discussions, but don't tell people to undereat.

Thank you
clairelaine
volunteer moderator

When I was actively losing weight, the first thing I did was eliminate breakfast...Now that I am in maintenance mode, I can't imagine a day without breakfast.

Abeckert, the only accurate way to get your BMR is professionally.  Google BMR and you'll get several different BMRs depending on the formula you use.  I know that occasionally they will have people come to the gym who have a thing you blow into to figure it out.
May 30 2007 10:46

hmm...I suppose if it works, then that's fine...just be sure you're not losing muscle and water instead of fat. Also, if you eat proteins plus some high fiber fruit or veggies for breakfast, you won't get hungry as fast as if you eat cereal or breads.

As for snacks...I think snacks are good, just make sure you're counting each and every calorie you take in, and make snacks small (like 1/3 cup tuna or a small apple or some celery) One of my favorite snacks is diced, fresh pineapple. A cup has about 74 cals (don't pack it down in the cup though)