The FastDay Forum

[carorees]

One of the few properly designed studies to look at whether breakfast eating is associated with BMI.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25563734

The researchers conclude

There is little evidence from this study for a metabolic-based mechanism to explain lower BMIs in breakfast eaters.

Sigh...another example of something "everybody knows" that has little or no evidence in reality. I was a breakfast eater most of my life, tried to force my son to eat in the morning even though he had no appetite...thought that if he got hungry mid-morning it would be really bad (hunger is so awful, right?).

Well I haven't read the article but I am not surprised. I'm sure there are plenty of people of people who like to load up on coo pops, cherios (yeah now i know what they are Bean lol), nutrigrain etc etc. My next observation is that I'm not sure we can rightly call meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner any longer. We get up at different times, we eat at different times and we eat foods that would seem to belong to a particular meal at different times. Eg if I'm on a work day, I fet up about 5.30, leave at 6.05am fir train and if I eat a meal, I'm not hungry but know I will be in 2 hours and will be in a situation that means high cal bought food. If I'm home, I get up, have a coffee or 2, sloth about, eat 2 to 3 hours after getting up, then eat another meal about 6 hours later, perhaps with a snack inbetween. Different scenario. I could go on but sice I need to get up in 7 hours, bed beckons me

This is NOT a well designed study. It involved only 37 individuals, and you don't know what their characteristics were. The study only put them on the diet regimen for 7 days before switching over for 7 days.

No study of any dietary intervention I've ever read comes up with results at 1 week that map the results at 6 months or 1 year. According to studies of low carb diets that last 1 or 2 weeks, people become depressed and unable to think while eating low carb diets (even ones with 150 g a day!). This is of course not the case if they keep eating and adjust, as prolonged studies later proved.

Plus, for people with prediabetes or diabetes, not eating breakfast will often lead to a steep increase in blood sugar as part of the "dawn phenomenon." (Google it for more details.) The only thing that knocks down that blood sugar is eating. I have seen convincing data showing that people who don't eat breakfast are more likely to overeat after dinner, and that is certainly what I've found to be the case for myself.

Once again, this is likely to be something that depends entirely on a person's unique physiological makeup and their psychology and patterns of daily life.

The biggest problem, to my mind, about all dietary research is the inability of researchers to grasp that there is that huge individual variation. They are always trying to come up with ONE oversimplified dietary recommendation for everyone. There just isn't such a solution.

I think Dr. Varady's finding that there was no difference between people doing IF and eating breakfast and dinner and and people waiting to eat all their calories at dinner was more relevant to us here, as was the finding that eating lunch seemed to be the most problematic.

I have seen convincing data showing that people who don't eat breakfast are more likely to overeat after dinner, and that is certainly what I've found to be the case for myself.

Once again, this is likely to be something that depends entirely on a person's unique physiological makeup and their psychology and patterns of daily life.

The biggest problem, to my mind, about all dietary research is the inability of researchers to grasp that there is that huge individual variation. They are always trying to come up with ONE oversimplified dietary recommendation for everyone. There just isn't such a solution.

Didn't read the study but I agree with what @Peebles said here because my personal experience is just the opposite. I'm not big on eating breakfast although I've gone thru periods when I did. At my healthiest, I didn't eat breakfast on days I worked and ate a very small lunch if any. Not for diet reasons but because I was doing a physical job and food in my stomach made me feel sick. I saved my eating for after work. And since I went to bed early for work, that left me a small eating window. I realized recently I was doing something like 16:8 due to circumstance. If I overate at or after dinner, I don't remember. At any rate it wasn't effecting my weight which was low at the time. But someone else doing a similar job might need to eat to keep their energy up. That wasn't a problem for me.

I think these studies become a problem when someone follows the study rather than what their body is telling them or has told them in the past.