Should I Eat Breakfast

When I started as a personal trainer 25 years ago, the conventional wisdom was very definite about not skipping meals. The most important meal of course was breakfast. If you follow the most current information, this is no longer a given. Many of the nutritional authorities have now put it out there that skipping breakfast many have other benefits.

The reason for this involves the concept of intermittent fasting. If you eat dinner at six or seven and skip breakfast, you add another four to six hours that the body is without food. After food is digested it is converted to glycogen which is easily converted to energy. Without a constant supply of this on hand fuel the body needs to convert fat into energy. Can you see where I'm going?

The old idea of six small meals made sense because something called the thermic effect of food. This means after you eat food the metabolism is boosted by 10% to convert that food to energy. If you eat 300 calories you burn 30 calories to digest it. We used to think if you ate all the time or grazed you would constantly be stimulating your metabolism. Look around,  we have more obese people now than ever.

If you eat 1000 calories you burn 100 calories. If you eat three meals of 333 calories you still burn the same amount but you continue to replenish your glycogen. The body never needs to burn fat reserves.

I don't recommend one meal a day but you may want to try eating a late breakfast and a early dinner or just skip breakfast and eat the same lunch and dinner. If you used to eat 21 meals a week and now you're eating 14, you will probably be eating less and losing weight. Try it, I did!