Diet and Exercise Myth #19: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day

This myth has been around for years. You might even have been told this by a well-meaning grandparent.

Let’s bust this myth right up front: Recent Australian research has confirmed that eating breakfast does not help with weight loss or have any special effect on hunger. The meta-analysis found no evidence to support the idea that eating (or indeed skipping) breakfast is important for weight loss or gain.

Nor is breakfast special in terms of preventing afternoon hunger, or otherwise “setting you up for the day”.

The recent popularity of intermittent fasting strongly backs this point. A common IF regime known as 16:8 involves fasting for 16 hours, followed by an 8-hour feeding window. A huge number of people have had great success with this style of fasting, and most find it easiest to begin their 16-hour fast at bedtime, to take full advantage of everybody’s natural overnight fasting period. Typically, this regime has the participant eating their last food at around 8am at night, then fasting for the next 16 hours until about midday the next day.

Setting aside all the math and science, that is basically the same as simply skipping breakfast.

Interestingly, while the various studies to date are somewhat conflicting, it’s possible that if breakfast is important, it is important in this way: If you usually eat breakfast, you might help yourself to lose weight by skipping it. On the other hand, if you typically skip breakfast, you might help yourself to lose weight by eating breakfast instead.

The key point here though, is that it’s not the timing or frequency of your meals that makes the difference for weight loss or body composition. It’s mostly about how much food you eat; it’s a little bit about what type of food you eat; but it’s really not at all about when you eat it.

Whichever way you cut it, breakfast has given up its stronghold as the most important meal of the day.