“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
Breakfast is delicious, don’t get me wrong. My father makes the world’s best pancakes, especially when they’re topped with fresh maple syrup. Oatmeal is hearty and nutritious. Milk and cereal reminds me of being a kid. The issue with breakfast is that it sabotages our peak fat-burning window of the day, and that is simply unacceptable.
In most healthy individuals, cortisol levels rise in during sleep and peak in the morning when we wake up. Cortisol is the hormone that counteracts insulin (the hormone that causes our cells to uptake glucose from the blood stream), which is conversely at its lowest levels when we wake up. In the absence of insulin, cortisol triggers lipolysis, the breakdown of triglycerides into free-fatty acids and thus accelerates fat-burning.
There are other processes at work here as well. Also worth mentioning is the elevated level of ghrelin upon waking- this is our body’s main hunger control hormone. Although ghrelin is what causes us to be hungry in the morning, it is also a powerful stimulator for the release of growth hormone (GH). Increases in GH incite our bodies to release more fat to be burned and decreases the destruction of protein for use as fuel. If you don’t spike your insulin levels by eating breakfast, you can delay your peak levels of GH by up to two hours after waking, thus giving your body a nice long fat-burning window.
By consuming a meal first thing in the morning, especially a meal high in carbohydrates, you are effectively shutting off this powerful fat-burning engine. Science wins again. AMAZING.
People will argue that you need to eat breakfast to maintain proper cognitive function. People will argue that you need to eat a high-carbohydrate breakfast in order to perform physical activity during the day. These are myths. While I certainly won’t argue that eating breakfast might make people feel better, it’s a placebo effect at best. We’ve been programmed to eat breakfast our entire lives. It’s nice to feel full after 8 hours of fasting. The bottom line is that unless you’ve been starving yourself for a few days, your body will have plenty of energy stores to work with, rendering breakfast unnecessary.
My challenge to anyone trying to lose body fat is to skip breakfast. In the morning, wake up and have a cup of coffee, either black or with coconut oil if you’re feeling ambitious, and don’t eat your first meal until 2ish hours after waking up. You won’t be upset with the results.
For more information on fat-loss, or to argue vehemently about your need for breakfast, you know how to contact me!
Happy fat-burning!
- DW
