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Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#21

Post by Axsuul »

eastbayjake wrote: post #20
flountown wrote: post #17

At the end of the day it will always be calories in vs. calories out. My personal experience is that I try to only eat 1 meal per day. Intermittent fasting is nothing new, and when I combine it with a low carb diet, it is extremely effective for me. I went from ~300 down to 225 in a matter of 4-5 months. As long as I am busy, I hardly notice any hunger during the day now that I am used to the schedule and the 1 meal…

What do you eat and when do you eat it?

It doesn't matter if you're not doing a calorie deficit.

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#22

Post by dasil003 »

zaroth wrote: post #7
gaius wrote: post #5

But no-one really cares about weight - they care about body composition. That is key to understanding all of this, and it's missing from these results. Who cares if you lose weight if it's muscle wasting away? Who cares if your weight stays the same but you're losing fat and gaining heavier muscle?

But certainly they collected body composition data in the course of the study, it just doesn't make the headlines?

Yes, but I think it points out the major problem with health articles in general is that culturally many people have reduced improved health in the general sense to the mantra of "losing weight". Pretty soon people have internalized it, and reading a sensational attempt at summarizing legitimate scientific studies becomes just a token discarded atop of a huge pile of ideas that people used to temporary assuage the regret of being a slave to the hedonistic garden of delights manufactured for them by the food and entertainment industries.

Okay, maybe I'm laying it on a bit thick, but seriously I think every single person in America can come up with 5 no-brainer ways to improve their health that would move the needle more than trying to eke out some mass effect of eating breakfast or not, it's just that people want the easy fix, and frankly there really is none. We just don't have the genetics or the instincts to cope with the sedentary lifestyles we've created for ourselves, and the only way out of it is get serious and develop healthy habits one bit at a time.

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#23

Post by DanBC »

clessg wrote: post #6

This is why it's hard to take the field of nutrition seriously. "New study finds peach fuzz makes you lose weight" 5 years later "New study finds peach fuzz makes you gain weight"

Did you read the study? Or did you just read the report about the study?

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#24

Post by lmartel »

Axsuul wrote: post #21
eastbayjake wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you eat and when do you eat it?

It doesn't matter if you're not doing a calorie deficit.

It doesn't matter for weight loss but it matters a lot for managing hunger, which for many people is a critical part of losing weight sustainably.

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#25

Post by hngiszmo »

Axsuul wrote: post #19

Losing weight comes down to a pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid is a calorie deficit. It's simple science and fact that eating less calories than your maintenance calories (basal metabolic rate) will cause you to lose weight. Once you tackle that, you can move up the pyramid and fine tune to maximize the weight loss by incorporating tactics such as meal timing, quality of ingredients, types of food eaten, or differe…

I guess it's trivial what you say about calorie deficit but the trick is how to not devour that tasty something that you know is there in your fridge when your plan to eat less for a few seconds is only your second priority.

Humans get hungry after 4h of not eating with exception of when we sleep. So less sleep results in more craving for food but eating a ton, minutes after waking up results in hunger 4h later.

I wake up … with an appetite but usually don't crave for food for some hours, so that's a good chance to if not skip then at least delay a meal, so hopefully that day you go to bed with just two meals.

The opposite worst thing you can do is to stay up just a little longer to eat on your way to bed.

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#26

Post by clessg »

DanBC wrote: post #23
clessg wrote: post #6

This is why it's hard to take the field of nutrition seriously. "New study finds peach fuzz makes you lose weight" 5 years later "New study finds peach fuzz makes you gain weight"

Did you read the study? Or did you just read the report about the study?

I'm not criticizing the study, but rather lamenting the constantly-shifting landscape that is the field of nutrition. Every few weeks or months, a new study comes out claiming that everything we knew about nutrition before was wrong.

It is profoundly discouraging for a lot of people.

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#27

Post by jsmthrowaway »

flountown wrote: post #17

At the end of the day it will always be calories in vs. calories out. My personal experience is that I try to only eat 1 meal per day. Intermittent fasting is nothing new, and when I combine it with a low carb diet, it is extremely effective for me. I went from ~300 down to 225 in a matter of 4-5 months. As long as I am busy, I hardly notice any hunger during the day now that I am used to the schedule and the 1 meal…

I do something similar, two meals targeting 1,000 apiece. That means each meal can be a huge variety of things, even eating out where you wouldn't normally consider eating while pursuing weight loss, such as Chipotle. It's been very successful and my family thinks I'm on drugs with how quickly I've been losing weight.

Like you, hunger sucked at the beginning, but now I never even notice it.

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#28

Post by kbutler »

hliyan wrote: post #4

There's a 'natural/evolutionary' argument to be made in favor of skipping breakfast too: most animals do not store food and need to hunt or forage as and when hunger arises. This requires a certain amount of time and activity. So it's unlikely that animals have evolved a need to eat first thing in the morning.

You can find a natural/evolutionary argument (justification) for just about anything:

Animals don't store food and need to hunt or forage..., so the metabolism is reduced until the first meal to prevent excess consumption of stored fat resources.

Isn't starvation a more plausible danger in nature than dying of overconsumption?

Re: Skipping breakfast might help you lose weight

#30

Post by flountown »

eastbayjake wrote: post #20
flountown wrote: post #17

At the end of the day it will always be calories in vs. calories out. My personal experience is that I try to only eat 1 meal per day. Intermittent fasting is nothing new, and when I combine it with a low carb diet, it is extremely effective for me. I went from ~300 down to 225 in a matter of 4-5 months. As long as I am busy, I hardly notice any hunger during the day now that I am used to the schedule and the 1 meal…

What do you eat and when do you eat it?

So most of my meals are very bachelor-like. Cook some sort of protein(chicken/steak/fish) or eggs/meat/cheese in a pan on the stove and then an entire steamable bag of frozen veggies of some sort. If I want to get really fancy I will do either a stir fry or beef/turkey chili with some veggies/beans mixed in. Depending on how busy I am during the day this can be anywhere from 4-8 pm.

If I have hunger issues later on I will drink cold water or unsweetened vanilla almond milk (It's crazy, IIRC, an entire half gallon is only 200 calories).

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