Does eating breakfast help with weight loss? Research provides definitive answer

For many pseudo-informed health gurus, the diet is a mysterious realm of half truths and confusion. Instead of doing research, they’ll spout off popular “facts” they’ve picked up without knowing the truth behind these urban legends.

Such is how it is in the case of breakfast.

One of the most debated topics among fitness enthusiasts, some vehemently stand behind breakfast as an essential requirement. Others demand it be skipped.

Science, however, says it doesn’t matter.

The results of a study that took 309 obese or overweight individuals for a 16-week trial showed that it’s more important what you put in your body than when you put it there. The participants were split into three different groups and given three different informational pamphlets. The control group was given no advice on breakfast, whereas the other two were directed to either eat before 10 AM or abstain from eating until after 11 AM.

While 26 participants dropped out for various reasons, the remaining 283 provided evidence that breakfast doesn’t matter. All lost weight, but the differences in weight loss between groups was negligible.

Though it didn’t account for body composition or metabolic values on top of being a bit too short to provide a definitive answer for long-term weight loss, the evidence is clear enough to put to rest the prevailing theory that changing breakfast habits alone can lead to weight loss.

Instead of wasting time arguing about breakfast, time is much better spent figuring out healthier foods to eat throughout the course of a day.

Once again, the conclusion per The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

A recommendation to eat or skip breakfast for weight loss was effective at changing self-reported breakfast eating habits, but contrary to widely espoused views this had no discernable [sic] effect on weight loss in free-living adults who were attempting to lose weight.

Source:

AJCN.Nutrition.org