Linda Gardner's Blog: Skipping Breakfast Does Not Lead to Eating More

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For decades we’ve heard the same refrain. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you skip it you may get hungry (the horror!) and end up eating more.

This breakfast-eating advice has only been based on the flimsiest of statistical data. To my knowledge no study has ever shown that people will eat more if they skip a meal, and logic certainly points in the opposite direction.

Now a new study shows that people who are instructed to skip breakfast end up eating about the same amount of food for lunch anyway. This means that the total food intake during the day end up being way smaller.

Pub Med: Effect of Extended Morning Fasting upon Ad Libitum Lunch Intake and Associated Metabolic and Hormonal Responses in Obese Adults

Eat breakfast if you like, but don’t expect to lose any weight from doing it. If you want to lose weight then no breakfast may be the best – and fastest – start of the day.

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