Advances in the field of chronobiology (the study of our circadian rhythms) help solve the mystery of missing morning calories in breakfast studies.
Where did Where does this whole “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” concept come from? “The father of public relations”, Edward Bernays, famous for his “Torches of Liberty” campaign for get Women started smoking back in the 1920s, it was paid by a bacon company to popularize the iconic bacon and eggs breakfast. The role of public relations, he wrote in his book Propaganda, is the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses…”. Public relations specialists “thus constitute an invisible government, which is the true governing power of our country…”.
Breakfast is big business. Powerful corporate interests, such as the cereal lobby, are blamed for “perpetuating myths such as the value of eating breakfast.” a publishing house in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition urged nutrition scientists to speak truth to power and challenge conventional wisdom when necessary “even when it seems like we are taking away motherhood and apple pie.” “Actually,” the editorial concludes, “reducing the serving size of apple pie wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”
So should we “break the feast” and skip breakfast to lose weight? As I analyze it in my video. Is it better to skip breakfast to lose weight?although “the advice for eliminate breakfast will surely pit…nutritional scientists…against the very strong and powerful food industry,” skipping breakfast has been described as “a simple and feasible strategy to reduce total daily energy.” [caloric] consumption.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work.
Most randomized controlled studies on skipping breakfast found There is no weight loss benefit to skipping breakfast. How is that possible if skipping breakfast means skipping calories? The Bath Breakfast Project, a famous series of experiments that took place not in a bathtub, but at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. discovered a key to the mystery. Men and women were randomly assigned to eat breakfast (defined as eating at least 700 calories before 11:00 a.m.) or fast until noon each day. As you can see in the graph below and at 2:15 in my videoAs in other similar trials, the group that had breakfast ate a little less for the rest of the day, but they still ended up with hundreds of excess daily calories compared to those who skipped breakfast.
Those who ate breakfast consumed more than 500 more calories a day. In six weeks, that would add up to more than 20,000 extra calories. However, after six weeks, both groups ended up with the same change in body fat, as you can see below and at 2:36 in my video. How could tens of thousands of calories disappear?
If there were more calories going with no change in weight, then there must have been more calories burned. And in fact, as you can see in the chart below at 2:52 and in my videothe breakfast group was found spontaneously perform more light-intensity physical activity in the mornings than the group that skipped breakfast. Light-intensity activities include things like casual walking or light housecleaning—not structured exercise per se, but apparently enough additional activity to consume most of the excess calories from breakfast. There is a misconception that our body goes into energy conservation mode when we skip breakfast, which reduces our metabolic rate. However, that doesn’t seem to be true. But maybe our body does it intuitively. slow tear us down in other ways. When we skip breakfast, our body just doesn’t seem to want to move as much.
The extra activity didn’t completely work. do However, it makes up for the extra calories consumed by the breakfast group. It appears we’re still about a hundred calories a day short, suggesting there may be another factor explaining the MIA morning calorie mystery. Recent advances in the field of chronobiology (the study of our body’s natural rhythms) have unstable an even more sacred nutritional dogma of the cow: the concept that a calorie is a calorie. It’s not just about what we eat, but also when we eat. Same amount of calories, different weight loss, depending on meal times.
Just to give you an idea: as you can see in the graph below and at 4:11 in my video, exactly the same amount of calories consumed at breakfast is significantly less fattening than the same amount of calories consumed at dinner. Amazing!
A diet with a more abundant breakfast Causes more weight loss than the same diet with a larger dinner, as shown below and at 4:23 in my video. Because of our circadian rhythms, morning calories don’t seem to count as much as afternoon calories. So maybe breakfast should be the most important meal of the day after all.
If you missed my last video, catch up Flashback Friday: Is breakfast the most important meal for weight loss or should it be skipped?.
Did I spark your interest in chronobiology? If so, you’re in luck. See more in the related posts below.
For breakfast inspiration, take a look A better breakfast and my recipe videos for a vegetable smoothie and a grain bowl of The How Not to Die Cookbook.
