“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! Wake up, eat a lot of fruit and cereal to kickstart your metabolism and give yourself energy!” How many times have you heard this from nutritionists and fitness gurus? I call it the breakfast myth. Here’s why.

What’s for Breakfast?

Actually, they’re right. Breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day, as it determines our metabolic state for the rest of the day, as well as the next. However, it doesn’t mean we should be having it, or at least eating what you’re being told to.

Eating first thing in the morning doesn’t have any beneficial effects. After an overnight fast, we’re in an advantageous state of increased fat oxidation. Our liver glycogen stores have been depleted and we’re in mild ketosis.

Within a few hours, other hormonal activities will speed up and the body will go through a series of hormetic adaptations that actually make it stronger.

Growth hormone gets released and our insulin sensitivity improves. Also, testosterone increases and our cells go through the repair mechanisms of autophagy. The reason is that the body is in a semi-catabolic state and will become more efficient with nutrient partitioning and shifts into a higher gear of fat burning.

The Worst Thing You Could Do

Having breakfast with a lot of sugary cereal, fruit, or a whole grain bagel will put a harsh stop to all of these adaptations. Tony the Tiger is wrong. It’s not grrrreat!

Eating a lot of carbohydrates will raise your blood sugar levels and causes an insulin response. This not only kicks you out of ketosis but prevents you from re-establishing it for several days.

Of course, you won’t get as much of an insulin response from eating low glycemic “slow carbs” vs processed and refined grains that make you hypoglycemic before you can even swallow them. Fiber slows down the rate at which glucose enters the bloodstream, which controls the insulin response, but, at the end of the day, sugar is sugar. If there are excess carbs around, then your body won’t even consider burning fat.

Why You Would Want to Be a Fat Burner

Being a sugar burner creates a co-dependent relationship with your biology. You’ll be eating food, i.e. whole grains, fruit, oatmeal, that gives you some form of energy and store most of it in your adipose tissue. After a while, you’ll have completely run out of that fuel and will bonk both physically and mentally. Then you’ll need more food to maintain your energy levels. The perpetual cycle of having to refeed continues.

Eat carbohydrates

Blood sugar and insulin do their work

Glycogen runs out

Brain runs out of energy and starts screaming for more food

The rationale of a sugar burning metabolism: if there are no carbs inside the body, we’ll take it from the muscle cells

Get some glucose but still remain hungry

And so it continues

Because you’re on a sugar burning metabolism, your body lacks the ability to convert its own fat cells into energy. Instead, it begins to cannibalize its own muscles and organs to create glucose. You may have a lot of stored calories but you won’t be able to access them.

Why Skip Breakfast

The stress hormone cortisol is also the highest. It rises at about 6-8 AM so that we could become more alert for the coming day. This inner wake you’re a*s up mechanism increases our adrenaline and fat oxidation even further. Why not take advantage of this short boost?

When you go to bed at night, you release the most growth hormone (HGH). Having fasted in the morning, you condition your body to do it more than 1300-2000%[i].

Skip Breakfast and Skyrocket HGH

HGH gets released as a defense mechanism against physiological stressors. It gets elevated in response to caloric deprivation or other hormetic stimuli so that we would preserve lean muscle mass and mobilize our fat stores. Eating calories creates the opposite reaction to that because the body recognizes that there’s enough energy around for survival, thus it doesn’t need to go beast mode.

It would be a shame to pass out on all of these adaptations that happen naturally. The stage is set, we just have to get out of our own way.

Time to Eat

Hunger also follows circadian rhythms that are biological cycles that cause certain processes inside our body. They’re driven by our inner circadian clock and are adjusted to our environment.

A study found that despite the extended overnight fast, paradoxically, people aren’t as ravenous in the morning and they tend to not want much breakfast.

You’d think that the longer they’ve spent fasting the hungrier they’d get, but the opposite happened. No matter how long their fast had lasted, the participants still reported less desire to eat after waking up. Instead, the internal clock increased appetite in the evening, independent of food intake and other factors. Hunger ditches at 8 AM and peaks at 8 PM [ii].

This makes perfect sense, as after an overnight fast we’re in mild ketosis and utilizing fat for fuel. It also means that no matter how much whole grain cereal you stuff down your throat once you open your eyes, you’ll still get hungry by the evening. The difference is that you’ll have skipped all of the hormonal adaptations and have already consumed a lot of calories during the day.

The Habit of Hunger

This I’ve noticed in my own hunger signaling as well. In the morning I don’t have a lot of desire to eat immediately. Only after taking the first mouthful does the desire arise. Before that, I’m actually very satisfied and don’t even notice any difference.

The idea of having to eat breakfast is probably taken so seriously because we’ve been conditioned by our society to start feeding right away. The workhorse has to be just nourished enough to do its job. If it gets too strong and powerful though it may become a problem…

Meal Timing Debunked

Where did the idea that small, frequent meals boost your metabolism come from?

TEF (the Thermic Effect of Food) is the process by which your body burns calories through digesting food. Every time you eat, your body burns calories to break down and digest what you’re eating. About 65% of your immediate energy will be allocated to the digestion process.

Therefore, it seems obvious that the more often you eat, the more calories you’ll burn by increasing TEF. But it’s easy to make false presumptions based on that. TEF doesn’t have a lot to do with how often you eat but is relative to the caloric content of a meal.

Eating More Often or Less

On a standard western diet (high carb, low protein, low fat), about 10% of the calories in a meal will be burnt off as energy

TEF of protein is 25-30%

Carbs 6-8%

Fat 2-3%[iii]

If your daily caloric intake is 2500, then you’ll still have a TEF of 250 no matter how many meals you have.

2500 calories in total. 6 meals of 420 calories each= 42 calories burned per meal (42×6=252 daily TEF). 4 meals of 625 calories each= 62 calories burned per meal (62×4=248 daily TEF). 2 meals of 1250 calories each= 125 calories burned per meal (125×2=250 daily TEF).



No matter what meal frequency you choose, you’ll still be burning the same amount of calories from TEF. Meal timing is not significant when it comes to body composition, which is shown by studies as well[iv]. At least amongst the majority of people.

How many calories you burn while eating a meal depends on the macronutrient ratios of the food consumed.

The Breakfast Myth Continued

Why is it thought that you would gain weight if you eat in the evening? It’s probably based on past experiences. But that knowledge has nothing to do with meal timing.

Instead, people gain weight when they have big dinners because they’ve already spent the majority of the day feasting. Having breakfast, lunch and multiple snacks in between will have already made them consume a lot of calories. Now, they’ve already reached their caloric maintenance and can easily go over to a surplus.

Many studies have also shown that people who skip breakfast tend to eat junk food later in the day. But that again is irrelevant with objective knowledge but depends solely on the individual’s habits and self-control. They simply don’t have a nutritional plan and are winging it.

If you have no idea how many calories and in what amounts you’ve consumed per day, it’s easy to blame skipping breakfast, your genes, slow metabolism, the society or your neighbor’s cat.

That’s why I would always recommend not having breakfast. Actually, we can never really skip it as the first thing we put into our mouths, despite the time, will shift our metabolism from being fasted into a fed state. We’re simply having it later in the day and still getting our nutrients.

The Underlying Issue

If you think that you have to eat first thing in the morning, then riddle me this: “Why do you think you need to have breakfast?”

The reason can’t be to prevent yourself from starving to death. Nor can it be to “kickstart your metabolism” or prevent gaining fat.

The reason why you think that you may break down your own muscle is that your body doesn’t know how to use its own stored fuel. Our adipose tissue can deposit almost an infinite amount of energy. Even the leanest of individuals with less than 5% body fat carry around more than 20 000 calories with them at all times. What about those who are overweight then.

You get hungry because you can’t access that infinite supply source. This is the result of contemporary eating habits, such as snacking and having 6 small meals a day. Frequent eating will never lead to complete satiety. Even when you have one big meal at lunch, you will still continue to crave food because you’re used to having it very often. Remember, the body adapts to exactly the conditions it gets exposed to.

You Won’t Gain Weight

It’s true that your basal metabolic rate will slightly decrease with less frequent eating. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing nor will it equal fat gain. You begin to need fewer calories not because your body is starving but because your metabolism gets more efficient.

Occasional intermittent fasting will initially speed up your metabolism by 3-14%[v]. A kickstart is needed only when there’s a necessity for it.

The desire to have breakfast is therefore not caused by physiological necessity but by psychological hunger.

Are You Afraid of Hunger?

This almost phobic fear of going hungry is completely irrational. Our society is already teaching us that we should eat frequently and an empty stomach is a dangerous sign of starvation. In reality, it activates our primal instinct and puts us into hunger mode, in which we’re more alert, stronger and sharper. Fasting makes us hungrier for life. If you’re controlled by it and give in too easily, then you’re falling victim to your urges.

First, you should realize that it’s not going to harm you. It’s mainly a brief sensation that occurs according to your habitual eating schedule. Your body is simply asking you, whether or not you still remember that previously it has received food at this exact moment. If you skip this urge, then you’re conditioning yourself to not be influenced by it.

Fasting allows you to re-conceptualize hunger. Instead of linking it with panic, lethargy, and desire[vi], it can be associated with success, self-mastery, pride, or simply ignored. You’ll actually become more mindful of your urges and realize that most of the time you’re following your habitual eating patterns.

Excruciating hunger with pain involved is a different story. It probably won’t happen during fasting, but only when your body is chronically depleted of essential nutrients. Self-mastery is about controlling not torturing yourself. You should listen to your urges and understand them correctly. Learn how to differentiate between physiological hunger and psychological cravings.

Why I Thrive on the Breakfast Myth

For me, skipping breakfast is incredibly enjoyable and easy. During my morning hours, I get the most of my creative work done. In fact, it’s 9 AM as I’m writing this. My mind is extra sharp and I’m able to formulate epic content, sans food.

Think how much more productive we can be by eating less often. Food is like a civilization’s obsession. Don’t get me wrong again. I love eating as well as cooking. But it’s just that – a significant event that picks up its value only because of its low frequency. If I were to do it 3 times a day I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much.

With intermittent fasting, you don’t have to think about meal prepping either. Who would want to eat out of Tupperware? Of course, you can heat it up but when you’re on the run you would have to consume it cold.

I’m not trying to judge people for eating breakfast either. It’s just that it doesn’t have many advantages and you shouldn’t feel obligated to have it. Definitely don’t be afraid of skipping meals.

Is Skipping Breakfast for Everyone?

Physiologically, everyone can thrive on intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet as well because they will cause similar adaptations. People go awry with skipping breakfast when they lack the knowledge about nutrition or when they don’t have any plan at all.

Mistakes like gorging, eating junk, getting hangry or becoming stressed are all subjective. They’re habitual responses that depend on the conditioning your body has received, the state of your mind and what you’re used to doing on the subconscious level. But those things are just that – subjective and can be deliberately changed. The idea behind your current self is just based on past knowledge, which isn’t necessarily the objective truth. You’ll be able to experience the benefits of the future you only after going through the shift.

Ultimately, you have to come to terms with what relationship you want to have with food. Intermittent fasting can improve your health, productivity, body composition and eating habits. At the same time, it enables you to still enjoy delicious meals. Actually, the quality and taste of them gets better. As the saying goes:

“You never know what a good meal tastes like, until you haven’t had it for a long time.”

Tweet the World About the Breakfast Myth

If you want to take it to the next level, then get my KETO // IF program that combines intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet.

References

[i] Williams RH (Ed): Textbook of Endocrinology-5th Ed. Philadelphia, WB Saunders, 1974

[ii] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23456944?dopt=Abstract

[iii] “A calorie is a calorie” violates the second law of thermodynamics

[iv] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19943985

[v] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2405717

[vi] Ganley, R M. 1989. “Emotion and Eating in Obesity: A Review of the Literature.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 8 (3): 343–361.