Is Breakfast Really the Most Important Meal of the Day?

There is so much contradictory nutrition advice available, it’s nearly impossible to know what to believe.

Breakfast has been touted as the most important meal of the day for some time now and there is some validity to this statement, however; if you are someone who doesn’t eat breakfast, there’s good news for you as well.

Breakfast is the label given to the first meal that you eat after waking up. It is labeled as such because you are literally breaking your fast from the time you stopped eating the night before to the time you begin eating again.

The number of hours between your last meal or snack and breakfast is going to range from person to person depending on the time you eat dinner, your nighttime snacking habits and when you get up in the morning and have your first meal.

Why Breakfast Is Important

When we are “fasting” (not eating for several hours in a row) our metabolism will slow down to conserve energy. This means that we will burn fewer calories. This was an important biological function for our bodies when food was scarce and it helped to ensure our survival.

For many of us today, food is so abundant that we eat even when we’re not hungry and have to find ways to limit our intake to maintain our weight and/or exercise more to take off those extra pounds, but that’s a post for another day!

When we eat a big meal after breaking our fast, whether that is first thing in the morning, late morning or at lunch time, we begin the process of fueling our bodies for the day. As we move about our day, those calories we took in can be metabolised (burned up) and give us energy for the activities we engage in.

If we’re sitting at a desk for much of the day or generally just not moving much, we need fewer calories and conversely, if we’re very active throughout our day, we will need more calories.

The idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day is simply based on the fact that you haven’t eaten for at least 8 hours (approximately, while you were sleeping) and now you need fuel for your body as you go about your day. If there’s not enough “fuel”, you are likely to have less energy and may be tired. Additionally, once you begin to put food (fuel) into your body regularly throughout the day, your metabolism will speed up because there is no longer a need for your body to conserve calories in case there are not enough.

Why it’s OK to Eat “Breakfast” When You’re Ready

Many of my clients tell me that they’re simply not hungry when they first get up in the morning and they don’t enjoy eating breakfast until later in the day, or they skip it altogether. Some have tried to force themselves to eat breakfast because they’ve been given so much information about how important it is and they end up feeling nauseous and uncomfortable.

If you are one of these people, allow yourself to let go of the idea that you have to eat first thing in the morning and listen to what your body needs, without feeling any guilt about what you “should” be doing differently!

This is NOT to say, skip breakfast and drink coffee all morning. Drinking nothing but coffee all morning is not a healthy alternative to skipping breakfast.

A cup of coffee is fine in the morning but it’s a very acidic beverage. If it’s the only thing going into your stomach all morning, it’s going to negatively impact the PH levels in your body (too much acidity and not enough alkalinity). You will be dumping too much acid into your stomach with no food to absorb it.

What you are doing by waiting to eat breakfast until later in the morning or even at lunch time is considered a form of intermittent fasting. This means that you’re only eating during certain hours of the day. This could be during a 12 hour period or more severely, you many eat for a period of only 8 hours during the day and fast (not eat) for 16 hours.

Again, there’s no right or wrong here and there are many proponents of fasting and not fasting. The general rule is to listen to what you body wants and needs in terms of the food you put into it and when you do so.

Proponents of intermittent fasting would argue that this method is far more healthy than the way most of us eat and many of the longevity studies of people living to be over 100 years of age also support a more limited intake of food.

The bottom line is, everyone is different and if you pay attention, you will have a pretty good sense of what your body needs. As a general rule, 8 - 12 hours without food (overnight) tends to create a healthy break for our digestive systems, but again, listen to your own body and decide for yourself.

Why Skipping Breakfast and Eating One Big Meal at the End of the Day is Not the Greatest Option

The last point that’s important to understand is related to the timing of your “big meal of the day”. If you don’t eat any one big meal, keep eating your smaller meals throughout the day and ignore the rest of this post. If you are someone who eats a large dinner every night, please read on.

When we eat any large meal, our bodies will need a significant amount of time to metabolize this food (meaning to burn these calories so they don’t just turn into fat in our bodies). Certainly some of this food will be stored in other ways and used as fuel later but as a general rule, if we eat too much food (protein, carbs and/or fats) it will inevitably be stored as fat in our bodies.

The earlier you eat your last meal of the day AND the more moderate you make the size of this last meal, the easier it will be for your body to metabolize these calories. Also, the earlier we eat our last meal, the more time we have to (theoretically) move around and use up these calories.

Even if you’re someone who doesn’t move a whole lot during the course of your day, if you eat a bigger meal at lunchtime and a smaller meal at dinner time, you are more likely to move between lunch and dinner time than between dinner time and bedtime. The more you move, the more calories you burn.

This is why numerous studies of people who have eaten the exact same food in the opposite order will NOT have the same results. The groups who eat big breakfast, medium lunch and small dinners always lose more weight than the groups that have small breakfast, medium lunch and large dinner. For the average person, those nighttime calories will simply not be burned up before you go to bed, which means extra fat in our bodies that we have to work on burning off the next day!

Action Step:

As you begin to think about and process this information, pay a bit more attention to your eating habits.

• When do you stop eating at night and when do you begin eating in the morning?

• How many hours have elapsed and how does your body feel?

• Are you hungry in the morning, eating out of habit, not sure?

• Are you eating food late at night that your body does not want or need? And if so, what can do differently to change this habit?*

*I confess that I am a late night snacker and have been working to break this habit for some time. When I am successful, it is because I am NOT watching TV at night or I am limiting that time to an hour or less. When I engage with other people, read, or simply do other things, the nighttime snacking easily stops.