Skip Breakfast and Lose Weight?

Skipping breakfast is one strategy sumo wrestlers adopt to gain weight. Do you want to end up looking like a sumo wrestler?

But, WHY do you GAIN weight if you miss breakfast, surely you should LOSE weight?

The reasons why you are more likely to be fatter if you constantly miss breakfast  include:

• Your metabolism is highest first thing in the morning and slows down after 6pm. It is best for fat burning to have most of your daily calorie intake before 6pm and to never skip breakfast.

• You can start to burn your lean muscle rather than fat if you dont eat before lunchtime, reducing your metabolism. If you don’t make any other changes to your lifestyle, and have lower muscle mass, you will become fatter!

• The 2 main meal approach can overwhelm your body’s existing fat cells. Your body can then produce new fat cells. You get even fatter!

• Eating 2 larger meals over 3 smaller ones means your body has to release more INSULIN after each meal.  Higher insulin levels  stimulate the release of the most powerful fat storage hormone LIPOPROTEIN LIPASE (LPL)

• If you eat 3 smaller meals, your body burns more energy through THERMOGENISIS (heat) than with 2  meals

• When you skip breakfast your stomach secretes GHRELIN which is a hormone to stimulate appetite. In turn, this slows down the production of LEPTIN which puts the body into FAT CONSERVATION MODE. LEPTIN is a hormone produced by your white or yellow fat cells that lets your body know when to stop eating.

• Lower LEPTIN levels leads to a higher appetite by supressing MELANOCORTIN, a hormone which decreases appetite, and increasing AGOUTI, a hormone which increases  appetite. This means that you will eat more by skipping breakfast.

Ideal breakfasts include protein, complex carbohydrates, and essential fats. Breakfasts could include:

• wild salmon on wholemeal toast or spelt crackers
• organic free range scrambled eggs with tomatoes and mushrooms
• organic wheat free muesli with live greek yoghurt

These are simply examples of some breakfasts, everyone needs different proportions of macronutrients (protein carbohydrate and fat) depending upon their individual metabolic type. But everyone needs all 3 macronutrients at breakfast. If you are eating the right proportion of all 3 macronutrients for your body, you should have good energy levels in-between meals.