Skipping Breakfast Hampers Weight Loss
There are some surprising facts about the whole weight loss thing, but one of those that constantly confounds many dieters is whether to eat a hearty breakfast or skip it altogether for the best results.
Well, the fact is that skipping the first meal of the day can actually hamper your weight loss progress and here's why.
Studies indicate that people who eat breakfast regularly are actually far less likely to get overweight or become obese than people who skip what is a very important meal. This may seem to fly in the face of surface logic, as every dieter knows that in order to lose fat, they must reduce their calorie intake.
Reducing Calorie Intake
It's only natural to follow that logic and look at means and ways to consume fewer calories. It might appear obvious that by cutting out one or more meals is a good idea. However, doing that could actually make the task of sticking to a calorie restrictive diet all the more more difficult.
Following a long night time sleep, your body needs something to wake it up. Caffeine laden coffee or tea is not enough. It's important to get the essential nutrients that your body needs to provide it with sufficient protein, complex carbohydrates along with all the other vitamins and minerals that are essential for good health.
You don't get those from coffee or tea! It is therefore highly important to eat a proper breakfast and is particularly important that you consume sufficient complex carbohydrates to help maintain stable blood sugar levels which provide you with energy.
Starved of Energy
Skipping breakfast starves you of the energy you need to do your daily tasks and even to concentrate properly and this can have a detrimental effect on your work and its quality. Also, you'll quickly become hungry and lethargic part way through the morning which will focus your thoughts on food, dominating them with eating.
When this level of temptation kicks in for high calorie snacks when you are weakened and feeling miserable because of your hunger, you are much more likely to give in. You only have to be in the vicinity of a cake or chocolate bar in this state and you will almost certainly grab for it and devour it with gusto!
The worst part of this is that once you are hungry and start snacking, it's hard to stop and this is when you find yourself overdoing it with calorie packed snacks and your diet goes out the window!
So eat a hearty, healthy breakfast every day and you will find you are much more able to last until lunch without snacking and your overall daily calorie intake is better accounted for, helping you to slim down more effectively.
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Posted on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 in News | 3 Comments
3 thoughts on "Skipping Breakfast Hampers Weight Loss"
Mike says:
Now this is a good new story, so I thought I would leave my first comment. You got it right that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I don't know what the statistics are, but you can bet if you skip breakfast, your gonna eat something fattening mid-morning! I enjoyed reading this, made me feel good knowing I had a great breakfast this morning!
Jules says:
I don't agree at all. I do intermittent fasting and never eat a "breakfast" as defined by the traditionalists, aka first thing in the morning. I wait until around midday before breaking my fast and I have to tell you I feel great at my perfect weight and never feel like snacking on junk before my first meal. It's all about personal discipline and choosing to live this way. It's healthy and forces the body to burn ketones when all the sugars are used up, which actually depletes fat volumes over time. Now isn't that what dieters are aiming to achieve?
Danny says:
I agree with Jules. The whole "breakfast is the best meal of the day" thing was invented by Kelloggs to sell their breakfast cereals to a gullible public through massive advertising. And it worked. Look how many people really believe that line like it was created by eminent dietitians or Harvard professors. The longer you force the body to stop the digestion process, the more fat it will burn naturally. I stop eating at 6pm and don't start again until around 11am the next day so my body gets 17 hours of rest when it can self heal and get into ketosis. No special diet needed, either!