Is Breakfast Overrated? | Hacker News Reader

Is Breakfast Overrated?

well.blogs.nytimes.com

43 pointsdenzil_correa46 comments

I may have missed something, but it seems like this only deals with the potential effect or lack of effect of eating breakfast (or not) on weight loss. What about the effect of eating breakfast on mental alertness, productivity, etc? Are there studies on that?

You don't even really need a study because it's common sense. Hungry people are slower in all respects and much more prone to anxiety and aggression. Who hasn't experienced this?

Most heart attacks and strokes occur in the wee hours of the morning. This is because fasting and darkness both increase stress hormone levels. Stress is highest early in the morning. Eating a good breakfast such as with orange juice and cereal helps rapidly normalize stress and boost the metabolic rate.

As a weight loss strategy skipping breakfast is bunk, anyway. The data consistently shows people who eat breakfast are thinner. Kids who eat breakfast cereals are thinner.

>Most heart attacks and strokes occur in the wee hours . . . because fasting and darkness both increase stress hormone levels.

Not true. The wikipedia article on cortisol: "In humans, the amount of cortisol present in the blood undergoes diurnal variation; the level peaks in the early morning (approximately 8 am) and reaches its lowest level at about midnight-4 am, or three to five hours after the onset of sleep."

(Cortisol is by far the most important "molecular barometer" for stress in humans.)

What's not true? There you have it, stress levels are highest in the morning. It's a good reason to eat and lower them.

"The wee hours" mean the hours immediately after midnight, when cortisol levels are at their lowest.

I agree, this talked about none of the things I was hoping it would talk about.

I've always assumed that breakfast was said to be important because it improves various facets of functional performance, not because of weight loss. Maybe general body health from spreading out digestive load.

I've always wondered whether breakfast has an impact on performance throughout the day, or just the morning. It seems fairly obvious that you'll be more tired if you don't eat breakfast though.

I skip breakfast everyday for the last 6 months and these were my results. Combined with weight training, I got down to 12% bf and lost 15 lbs while still gaining additional muscle mass. Skipping breakfast, keeping my eating window within an 8 hour period each day, while maintaining a 2000-3000 calorie/day consumption seemed to do the trick for me. http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html

After waking up, when do you grab your first bite?

point is, would have there been any difference at all when you would not have skipped breakfast and instead maintained those amounts of calories by spreading them out more evenly during the day?

Read the link. Intermittent fasting is more than just skipping breakfatst.

My most successful period of weight loss crammed all my eating into 1-2 hours of each day. No particular reason for it, it was just a little quicker to eat one snack plus one big meal. And maybe easier to stay disciplined with stricter rules.

With keto + calorie counting, I never felt overly hungry.

That's 6.8 kg for anyone wondering.

There's something very spooky about breakfast that no one really talks about - it's very same-y.

Sure, you can find variety in brunches but typical breakfast food (in the West) is usually eggs, (ham/sausage/bacon) and/or cereal/bread.

As an example, if you go to an airport food court in the morning, you see Asian, Italian, French, Hamburger, Sandwich and Pizza restaurants all suspend their normal menu and offer eggs, a breakfast meat, and bread. No competitive differentiator.

Maybe this is cultural, but I think it really has something to do with people's tolerance for variety when they first wake up.

I think it has more to do with the monotony of 9-5 work. The routine of ramping up and getting ready for work without any risks that could upset our day.

I would rather sleep longer, and go to work, then around 11 or so have brunch, then dinner around 7. Have been doing this for a long time, seems to work well for me.

Over time I have become quite suspicious of many of these dieting trends and advice. Somehow I believe many are sponsored by food brands (cereal companies, bacon and egg producers and so on).

I would imagine thats how humanity survived for most of the time. I can't imagine human beings had their food available and ready to eat first thing in the morning until very recently.

Why wouldn't a farmer have food available in the morning?

In the long view, farming is a pretty recent invention.

So like he said then, very recently. Agriculture is ~9000 years, homo sapiens at least a million.

9000 years is like 400 generations. Russian Scientists turned wild foxes into domestic pets in only 20 generations. The problem with evolutionary biology is that fixating on pre-civilized man ignores how fast evolution can go.

Or hunter-gatherers, before there was much farming going on?

You have good reason to be suspicious: http://www.americantable.org/2012/07/how-bacon-and-eggs-beca...

Yes it is overrated. At least in my case.

I'm 26 and on workdays I wake up at 7:30. My first meal is lunch (13:00) or late lunch (16:00). It has been like this since I was 12. I don't feel any hunger in the mornings and I function just fine, be it sports or intellectual work.

However, I am tired of listening to popular "wisdom" from anyone who has 2 minutes of time to lecture me on how skipping breakfast is going to ruin my life because... blah blah blah

A lot of fitness gurus swear by cardio before breakfast. The theory is that you'll burn more stored fat before you eat the first meal of the day (or drink anything with carbs, like juice or coffee with milk and sugar).

Is it true? As with all diet and exercise talk, nobody seems to know.

This definitely depends on the person. An ectomorph has no business performing heavy cardio while being in a large caloric deficit. Endomorphs, however, could benefit from it. I myself have tried fasted cardio in the morning - it produced great results but my brain could not function as it normally does. I found myself making far more stupid mistakes throughout the day.

TL;DR - it depends on the person. That is why there is no and never will be a definite answer

As a dev I'm vulnerable to getting on weird schedules e.g. keep working later at night and waking up later in the morning until I'm going to bed an hour after sunrise - which I think we all agree sucks bigtime. The ambient light and extra noise leads to crappy sleep quality.

So I found the best way to have my sleep schedule resemble something that matches the rest of humanity is to have breakfast when I wake up as soon as possible after I've showered. Sounds silly, but once you've looped completely around to waking up at 7am again, start having breakfast asap. I've found it's the most effective way to stay on a mainstream schedule. It's been working for me now for a few years.

i am tracking calories to lose weight right now, and i absolutely love breakfast, so i try to eat it most of the time. it's my "me" time. usually i cook up a couple of eggs and some coffee.

however, if i go over the previous day's allotment of calories which happens sometimes if i go out for dinner with friends, skipping breakfast is a great way to get my body back into 'burn' mode. some people call it intermittent fasting - cause what your'e really doing is an 6PM - 12PM next-day fast. i can feel the effect of giving my body a break if i over-indulge.

This works only if you are an early riser. You can't create a breakfast delicious enough that I would trade for 15 minutes of sleep in the morning.

My experience with intermittent fasting has suggested to me me that the quality of your food and consistency in when you eat it is vastly more important than when and with what frequency you eat. I lost more weight and gained more strength eating all my food in a 4-hour window than I ever did trying to eat 6 meals a day or whatever.

Which is not to say there is anything magic about a 4/20 fasting split, just that it got me eating an appropriate amount of healthy food, which is really all that matters.

As a programmer and night owl, breakfast is usually the determining factor for whether I will do any productive work before lunch. I feel much better all day if I have something to eat, but the discipline required to get moving a few minutes early often evades me.

Most of the time I skip breakfast, but I'm not too religious on eating it or not - it's more of a time issue for me.

In the past month and a half, I've lost about 17 lbs. For me, the trick has been to eat less overall (usually 1-2 meals a day), and to exercise more consistently. I've still been eating some not-so-great foods like fried chicken, fries, ice cream, and pizza & garlic knots.

In the interim, I have also been getting healthier as well - this morning I finished a 15 mile run, which is an increase from my (then) limit of 7-8 miles before starting on this fitness crusade. Granted, I am a distance runner and have run several marathons, but it is an example of increased fitness.

Surprised no one has brought up bulletproof coffee yet.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3032635/most-creative-people/bull...

I've been experimenting with it for the last 2 weeks and have lost 3 pounds. I've also noticed reduced cravings during the time between breakfast and lunch and I don't feel an intense caffeine hit like I did when I would drink iced coffee.

I'm not sure how long I will continue experimenting with this nor do I know the long-term effects of having this drink every morning.

There is a lot of marketing fluff around this. "Brain Octane Oil"... ?

Meh, breakfast was never a magic meal. The point to it is just this: if you wake up hungry it means you didn't go to bed full. Most of the people I know who don't eat breakfast snack well into the night. Most of the people I know who don't snack at night (like myself) wake up very hungry. As to which is better for you I have no real idea, but I always suspected sleeping on a bellyful of food was not a great thing. In any case, I simple find it uncomfortable, which is why I don't do it.

> sleeping on a bellyful of food

This is supposed to be bad for you (according to those that grew up watching adverts for breakfast 'cereals'). You are supposed to go for a constitutional walk after a large meal, not pass out asleep.

I have observed what cats, dogs and animals on nature programmes do. Maybe they did not get the memo from the experts. As a rule with no exceptions I can think of, all of them go to sleep shortly after eating a large meal.

The athletes with the highest calorie requirements - Tour de France cyclists - they go to bed on a sizeable meal. It doesn't seem to be a problem for them.

Where did this idea come from that you should not sleep on a full stomach?

Most animals are not obligate bipeds. Their bodies are intended to be horizontal all the time.

I have a decent breakfast every morning (750 to 1500 cal). And I eat dinner every night (around a thousand cal). On nights when I have a particularly huge dinner, especially if I eat late, I wake up crazy hungry.

if you wake up hungry it means you didn't go to bed full

you is too general here. Maybe what you say is true for you, but nor for everyone. Not everybody's body works in the same way, and not everybody's stomach and digestive system works at the asame rate. I can eat all I want, I'll still be hungry in the morning (or more general, half a day or less later). There is one steady effect of eating too much before going to bed for me though: I get horrifying dreams. Really, horrifying. I also can't imagine it's super good for your sleep when your body still has a lot of digesting work to do.

Interesting. I (and others including Tim Ferris) was under the impression that eating protein for breakfast helps stimulate mental alertness and promotes weight loss. It seems that this small sample (still a RCT) does not support that hypothesis.

Studies have shown that smaller more frequent meals are important for general alertness and weight loss - the theory being that you're not maxing out your body's sugar or food load.

no paywall:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/is-breakfast-overra...

It read a bit like an article from The Onion :)

I once read you can answer all headlines that are yes/no questions with no. Seems to work here, because if you start hungry in the day you are grumpy (I am). If you are grumpy all day you can't concentrate (I can't).

It's called Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

After I started eating breakfast I lost 10kg

I love breakfast, not overrated IMO.

microwaved oatmeal at my desk for breakfast = no cravings for a big or unhealthy lunch. YMMV

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