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Skipping Breakfast?


awbrig

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During the week I always skip breakfast. I just dont have the appetite for it and am not hungry, at all. On the weekends, however, I am hungry for breakfast...

Is breakfast still the most imortant meal of the day or this a myth?

Edited by awbrig (log)
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It's not a myth at all, but for nutritional reasons. The only way to keep your metabolism working is to keep eating. Since your body has taken a break from eating while you are sleeping, you "should" eat when you get up. Helps keep the system in tune.

Me personally, I'm lucky if I eat at 5pm for the first time. If not, I eat dinner at midnight when I get home from work.

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Breakfast would not be a "first thing in the a.m. upon arising" thing in our house. Probably stems from the days when I worked outside the home and the kids got breakfast at day care or at school.

I love breakfast. But not until I've been up for a couple of hours. Same with the kids.

If I don't eat breakfast, I have munchies all day long, even if I eat a decent lunch. If I eat breakfast, I eat far healthier throughout the rest of the day.

Our favorite breakfast is eggs and toast (bread, English muffins, bagels). Eggs poached, scrambled, over easy, whatever. Or oatmeal; steel cut; with 1/2 and 1/2 or cream. Or blueberry pancakes (wild blueberries hand picked and frozen; we pick every late July/early August in far northern MN on recently logged granite hills). Always fruit as a side.

Cold cereral is not in our vocabulary. I think it's in aisle 12 at Cub, and I can't recall the last time I trod down that aisle.

Edited by snowangel (log)
Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"
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I am like snowangel,

If I don't eat breakfast I find I am hungrier through out the day.

I can't eat anything heavy, normally just some bread and fruit and BIG glass of iced coffee! :biggrin:

Occasionally I will forget :blink: to eat breakfast(like today) and then am ravenous at lunch, had a big mac, large fries, large iced tea and am still hungry!

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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I eat breakfast about half the time. I'm not even sure my hunger dictates whether or not I eat it. I think it has to do more with my level of laziness. :unsure:

If I do eat breakfast on a weekday, it is usually something light and "healthy" that apparently will give me some energy for the morning. This usually consists of a big glass of fresh orange juice, maybe a couple boiled eggs and a slice of toast. A bagel with peanut butter is rare, but happens. I don't like eating baked goods in the morning (muffins, pastries, etc..).

We do have "special" breakfasts sometimes as well (usually on the weekend) where we'll go do omelettes/pancakes/french toast/other labor-intensive morning meals.

Shamefully, I do enjoy an Egg McMuffin™ if I can get one.

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When I go through periods where I skip breakfast regularly I find that I gain weight. I think its because I eat more at lunch and my body stores those calories as fat because I have not eaten anything in 18 hours. When I do eat breakfast each day I generally lose 10 lbs. or so over the course of a few weeks, even if I am not working out regularly.

Of course, I am not talking about some full-blown meal, but some toast with preserves, a bagel, or some cereal.

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during the week, if i don't have breakfast, i'm super hungry by noon. and i hate being super hungry. breakfast during the week is just a box of dry cheerios and a coffee. although, if any hangovers are introduce to the equation, a sausage mcmuffin with egg is thrown in.

on the weekends, i don't generally eat breakfast. i suppose the difference is that i'm up at 6.30 during the week, and 9.30 on the weekends, so i can easy wait til lunch on the weekend.

that was very cathartic. thank you all.

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When I go through periods where I skip breakfast regularly I find that I gain weight.  I think its because I eat more at lunch and my body stores those calories as fat because I have not eaten anything in 18 hours.  When I do eat breakfast each day I generally lose 10 lbs. or so over the course of a few weeks, even if I am not working out regularly.

Weight-loss diets often tell you not to skip breakfast for just that reason. Sounds a bit paradoxical but it's true.

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When I go through periods where I skip breakfast regularly I find that I gain weight.  I think its because I eat more at lunch and my body stores those calories as fat because I have not eaten anything in 18 hours.  When I do eat breakfast each day I generally lose 10 lbs. or so over the course of a few weeks, even if I am not working out regularly. 

Of course, I am not talking about some full-blown meal, but some toast with preserves, a bagel, or some cereal.

I have generally found this to be true also. It's one of the basic tenets of Weight Watchers. I never ate breakfast and sometimes not even lunch until I joined. However, I still have to force myself to eat in the morning. It just doesn't come naturally to me. :hmmm:

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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My theory is that people who aren't hungry for breakfast have eaten plenty of calories the night before.

While I NEVER skip breakfast, I tend to be much more hungry for it on days when I haven't had a big dinner. I just makes sense.

I don't necessarily believe there's anything wrong with skipping breakfast if you've eaten a big dinner the night before and you're not hungry when you wake up. So you eat at 11:30 rather than 8:00. Big deal.

If you were to eat a big evening meal, skip breakfast and eat lunch at 3:00 or even skip it, you might throw your body into some feast of famine mode and slow down your metabolism, but skipping breakfast and eating an early lunch shouldn't cause problems.

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My theory is that people who aren't hungry for breakfast have eaten plenty of calories the night before.

while the logic seems obvious, i'm thinking it might have more to do with the intake of carbs and protein the night before. then again, i'm also thinking that it doesn't work this way anyway (going back to the apparent paradox of every diet suggesting 3 meals a day rather than 2).

Edited by tommy (log)
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My theory is that people who aren't hungry for breakfast have eaten plenty of calories the night before.

While I NEVER skip breakfast, I tend to be much more hungry for it on days when I haven't had a big dinner.  I just makes sense. 

I don't necessarily believe there's anything wrong with skipping breakfast if you've eaten a big dinner the night before and you're not hungry when you wake up.  So you eat at 11:30 rather than 8:00.  Big deal. 

If you were to eat a big evening meal, skip breakfast and eat lunch at 3:00 or even skip it, you might throw your body into some feast of famine mode and slow down your metabolism, but skipping breakfast and eating an early lunch shouldn't cause problems.

The basic theory seems to be that your metabolism goes to "sleep" at night just as you are sleeping. In order to "wake it up" and get it working, it needs to be fed. Otherwise, it thinks it's not going to get any food and starts storing calories (those that you ate the night before) as fat.

I don't know why, but this works. I can only say that once I started eating breakfast or at least something in the morning, I started to lose weight steadily. I also notice, when I don't eat breakfast, no matter how much I work out, I tend to gain weight, or at least can't lose it. Speaking of which, I'm off to the gym. After having breakfast of course :smile:

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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I have lost 120 pounds on Weight Watchers over the last year and a half (not easy when you love good food as we all do).

Eating as little as an apple (along with a small vat of water) in the car on the way to work contributed to that.

Of course, I have hit a bit of a lull in my weight loss in the last few months, coinciding (?) with my discovery of e-Gullet.

Its all your fault.

Bill Russell

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I have lost 120 pounds on Weight Watchers over the last year and a half (not easy when you love good food as we all do). 

Eating as little as an apple (along with a small vat of water) in the car on the way to work contributed to that.

Of course, I have hit a bit of a lull in my weight loss in the last few months, coinciding (?) with my discovery of e-Gullet. 

Its all your fault.

Of course not! you've just hit the famous plateau. You go! WW did it for me. I've been lifetime for 6 years now. The water is crucial :biggrin:

Edited by Marlene (log)

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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Shouldn't it just be a function of how many calories you take in versus how many you burn? Does not matter *when* you take them?

For example if I take a packed lunch to work, what I eat for lunch typically does not change whether I eat breakfast or not - on some days I'm just hungrier for it and my stomach rumbles in meetings ... but that is a different issue.

I understand what WW is saying - they're talking about creating most-likely-to-succeed eating habits, but medically it makes no difference, right?

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No, I am pretty sure I am not diabetic.  I just sort of get kinda shaky if I dont eat for a while.  I am sure it is because of a drop in blood sugar, but not a result of eating sugar.

Ben

Obviously, Ben, you're an alcoholic. :raz:

I only eat breakfast if:

1. It's the weekend and Fritz is making it. In which case, it's more like brunch.

2. The Friday-night crowd wants to go to a restaurant on Saturday morning.

3. Someone forces me.

Unless coffee or Bloody Mary's (on the weekends) count as breakfast.

I usually don't eat lunch either. I'm just not hungry in the morning or early afternoon.

Noise is music. All else is food.

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