Skipping breakfast - absolute revelation!!

[MacarenaFerreiro]

Have really struggled to lose weight over the years. Had some success with MFP in hte past and sticking to 1200 calories a day but I was always so hungry, grumpy and downright miserable.

Have realised that for me, the mistake was spending 200 of the day's calories on breakfast. Eating at 8am or 9am meant I was starving again by noon, and that continued through the day. I now skip breakfast and don't eat at all until around 12.30 or 1pm. Then I have around 500 calories - which is a decent meal - same again for dinner at around 6pm and that leaves me 200 calories spare for a snack if I am getting peckish.

Splitting my 1200 calories into two decent meals is so much easier and I've lost 3kg in a fortnight. Delighted.

But your body has had no food for around 12 hours by the morning, it needs feeding
No, it doesn't. Most people have an evening meal of around 5-800 Kcal, and during the night, sleeping you don't burn all that energy. So when you wake up in the morning, there is still energy left over from whatever you ate the previous night.

I'm another one who feels better without a breakfast: if I have one, I'm hungry sooner. The "breakfast is the most important meal" and "Breakfast like a king... etc" are just marketing slogans.

This was a revelation to me a few years ago too. Not only does it save calories but time too.
Whether you are hungry or not when you wake may depend on when you eat the night before. DH and I often don't eat until 9pm by which time I will have done any exercise I am planning on doing that evening and I would need to eat breakfast before 7.15 if I am to have it before work.
A friend always eats with her DC at 6pm & will always take the dog for a walk or run after that and doesn't have to leave for work until 8.30am the next day.

Interesting as I've found the total opposite recently. I used to skip breakfast but ended up overeating at lunch. Now, I eat scrabbled eggs, mushrooms, beans, filling food, and often don't need lunch. Lost a stone without really trying. I guess we're all different when we need to eat.

I don't think I've ever woken up hungry. Even as a child. I've been awake for an hour already this morning and have had a coffee. I'm not feeling the need to eat.

Everyone's different - for everyone who is happy to go to 1pm without eating, there's someone else who has to eat before 9am or they pass out.

Interesting.

I am always ready for breakfast though. I feel genuinely hungry when I get up.

We have a 16:8 thread running if you're interested. Only eat 8 hrs a day. It's a revelation.

I was expecting to see lots of "oh no breakfast is the most important meal of the day" posts but no - this thread is refreshing. My DP is always nagging me to have breakfast, he is a great believer in it whereas I can sometimes go until past lunchtime before I feel like eating. I'm at work now and often leave the house before 7, and I just don't feel hungry at all then.

I'm the same with holidays though Elliboo - present me with a buffet and I descend like a one woman plague of locusts.

I did the LCHF diet last year and one of the things (well apart from BREAD manic gleam) that made me quit was the insistence and monotony of breakfast. I couldn't face another chuffing fry-up. I might check out the 16:8 thing Elspeth.

I've just started doing this as i have a bit of weight to lose. I'm planning on doing it Monday to Friday only at the moment as we're often off walking/cycling at the weekends so i figure i need more calories.

I've lost 1kg in the first week and finding it easy to go 16hrs without food. I've been very strict about not eating after 8pm as watching tv and nibbling had become a bit of a habit.

Yep, this is basically 16:8 intermittent fasting - there's currently a thread on it, and people are definitely losing weight. I think there's some evidence that the 16 hour fast has benefits (health and weight loss ones) even if you end up eating the same amount of calories. Something to do with insulin response and the body going into repair mode etc.
But the other good thing about skipping breakfast (for me and probably lots of people ) is that it tended to be my least healthy, most rushed and unappreciated meal of the day. Just more or less sugary carbs, no protein, no veg.

I find I'm a bit hungry shortly after I get up, but that actually subsides as I get on with my morning. And I don't end up any hungrier by lunch time than I would normally have been. It seems to generally reduce my appetite a bit too. Whereas a carby breakfast seems to sort of kick me into hungry mode for the rest of the day.

I am up at 6.30 - If I haven't eaten by 9.30 I get light headed and feel tired. Tend not to eat carbs in the evening

I do this too. This, combined with giving up gluten, melted the extra stone off me that hypothyroidism made me gain. Since then my weight has remained stable. I'm slim but not thin.

I have a coffee in the morning, with a dash of cream; no lunch, but once or twice a week will have a snack, olives or some cold meat or something; dinner about 5.30pm of meat, lots of vegetables and some sort of potato or rice or gluten-free pasta; snack about 8pm. Some would say this isn't enough, but I'm a healthy weight, my body looks amazing and my energy levels have returned to normal. I am a big fan of olive oils and coconut oil and add them to my veg every day. Works for me.

I'm 100% with you, OP. I've been dipping my toe into the 16:8 way of eating over the last couple of weeks and am finding it easier than I expected to give up breakfast. I've realised that most days I was eating breakfast out of habit rather than hunger! The nice knock on impact has been that I feel fuller quicker at lunchtime. I just have a cup of tea in the morning and maybe half a banana or a dozen almonds at about 11. Am going to keep on with 16:8 because I really believe that this is a sustainable way of eating (5:2 worked for a couple of years ago but chose to stop while I was ttc and pregnant, and I've never been able to get back into it).

Rosa I do 16:8 but I do it 9.30-5.30.

That's nothing to do with breakfast, it's more to do with the time I eat dinner. Anything after 5.30 is just snacks and shite so I don't eat after that.

So you can still do it and eat at 9.30.

Oh and you can have coffee and tea so it's not like it's water only in your 16 hrs so that helps.

liztaylor yep that just about sums me up at a breakfast buffet

I tried the 5:2 thing but it's not for me - the 2 days you eat practically nothing were very tough. Using a 16:8 method or even more like 18:6 in my case is probably the same length of fasting over the week, but in more manageable chunks.

My mother though is horrified - she is very much of the school of thought that you MUST eat breakfast or some horrible catastoprhe will befall you. It's been drummed into her all her life and she really thinks I'm doing something very dangerous by not having toast or cereal.

Totally agree. I fell into a natural 16;8 pattern and now am not hungry at all in the mornings. I also do a couple of HIIT sessions first thing in the morning and have plenty of energy. I generally have lunch around 1pm and dinner at 730pm.

If I have breakfast I want to eat all day long.

Me too! I haven't eaten breakfast since I was at Uni and don't miss it. I do MFP so I need to make sure I include every coffee and tea I have.

I don't get the fuss about breakfast. I'm actually hungrier later if I have it - especially toast- which seems to make me bloated and burpy.

I wish the Slimming industry would dump the 3 meals a day mantra.

Whatever works for you. If you still have enough fuel on board to do your job and not make life hell for those around you, go for it.

I was always brought up to eat breakfast before I left the house and I guess that has stayed with me. Sometimes I don't feel hungry but will have it anyway for fear of feeling faint if I don't! Maybe I will hold out and see how I feel.

However, I have noticed if I wake in the night, say 3am because of the baby, or any reason, if I struggle to fall back to sleep and have been laying awake for an hour I feel REALLY hungry. But then I wake the next day and I don't. Anyone else experienced this or can explain it?!

Maybe it's thirst.. although it is sickly hunger iyswim.

Not an issue as I do sleep through most nights and go straight back to sleep if I was disturbed, but I am curious.

I did the LCHF diet last year and one of the things (well apart from BREAD manic gleam) that made me quit was the insistence and monotony of breakfast.

I'm doing a LCHF diet and don't eat breakfast. I often have brunch instead. About to have bacon and eggs.

I think if you feel hungry when you wake up, forcing yourself to skip or delay breakfast isn't sensible! It obviously means your body needs food. Everyone's body works differently; it's stopping forcing a bowl of porridge down you when you're not hungry because that's what we've been taught to do that is the revelation.

Wouldn't it depend on your metabolism?

I can't eat when I first get up- I have to be awake a couple of hours but if I don't eat by 10am I feel nauseous and can't concentrate.

I eat breakfast about 9 ... Which means at work (I go out about 6.40 and am not hungry then).

I think a lot of it might be habit or psychological with many people though. You get used to eating at certain times, but that doesn't mean you can't get used to a different way. Until the last few weeks I had breakfast at 7.30 a.m. without fail. I was hungry at that time. But now I'm not really. Much of how people's bodies/metabolisms work differently is surely conditioning, not innate.

As a child, my running battles with my mum were her forcing me to eat breakfast.

I naturally fast between 7pm and 12.30-1pm - I just cannot eat before this, I feel ill if I do. I find this such an easy way of sustaining weight loss.

Poor eating habits and laziness saw me go up to 80kg. I'm now 69kg and finding it easy to sustain. I'm aiming to be at around 63kg by September which for my height (5ft 9), is spot on.