I start most of my days with a coffee. 2 sugars and 1 cream. Most times I don’t have anything with it, just the plain ole’ coffee on its own. It’s quite rare for me to actually eat a full on ‘breakfast’. In fact I think breakfast and the concept of the necessity for breakfast could be the single biggest fallacy and mistake that will ruin your ability to get lean and stay lean. It’s pretty well established that most of us have more ‘will power’ in the earlier hours of the day. As our day progresses and we face various issues and challenges our reserver of will power gets tested and becomes depleted, the science term for this is called ‘ego depletion’.
In other words, we all seem to have more ‘will power’ in the mornings and have less in the evenings. Logically it would follow that we can do a better job of resisting the temptation to overeat in the mornings vs the evenings. I think this concept of daily ego depletion is why diets that promote fasting in the morning and eating in the evening work so well. It fits nicely with our will power reserve. It would be far more difficult to diet and lose weight if you were instructed to eat most of your calories in the morning and attempt to skip dinner every evening. That just doesn’t sound right at all.
I’m not sure if anyone even believes that breakfast is an ‘important meal’ or not anymore, but based on what we know about will power and how much we tend to eat after we have breakfast I would say that eating a traditional breakfast is likely the worst things you can do for weight loss. The bigger the breakfast the more total calories you will end up consuming for the entire day (this last point is actually well documented in a number of research papers).
Instead of fighting your natural will power curve I suggest going with it. Exert will power over your appetite when you have a surplus of it (mornings). Then in the evening when you really want to eat and don’t really have any will to avoid food dig in and enjoy dinner! Incidentally this pattern is basically how I eat for weight loss.
Bottom line with breakfast:
Skip it, or push it as far back into the day as possible (essentially make some form of a small lunch/snack your first meal if you can’t wait till ‘dinner’ to eat). “Backloading” the majority of your daily calories around dinner will fit better with your daily will power pattern and likely be the best strategy for keeping calories in control while still having a fun eating event to look forward to on a daily basis.
Breakfast itself is a sham, it might MIGHT be of some importance to children but as an adult it loses all importance unless your goal is weight gain..you simply don’t need it!
John
