The FastDay Forum

[wildmissus]

It is ingrained into me that you must eat breakfast which I do but I have always been aware that I don't wake up hungry. Certainly on fast days I don't eat breakfast or lunch with no detrimental effects.

I've had a look online to see if there is any science on this but can only really find conflicting opinions.

Anyone any thoughts on the subject?

varying science, some of which found that people who normally have breakfast will eat more in the day if they skip breakfast and similar things related to habit / preference. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/141/7/1381.long
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21729464

Naturally eggs are better than a bagel.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18346309 looked specifically at kids.

surely the premise is, that you should only eat when you are hungry, if you are waking up and you are not hungry, why the need to eat breakfast. I never eat when I get up, I don't feel the need to eat until I've been up and about for several hours. The only exception to this, is when I'm in a hotel/ guesthouse when I get up and eagerly head for the breakfast room and will then partake of a Full English. Which leads me to the conclusion that it's all relevant to what you are used to, ie: habit.

I'm like boaz and hardly ever eat breakfast unless I'm in a hotel and have paid for it.

[carorees]

The problem with all the studies on breakfast is that they have taken a group of people and asked them if they skip breakfast and related this to body mass index. They have generally found that skipping breakfast is associated with overweight. No study that I can find has examined the effect of skipping breakfast in the context of the rest of the diet. It is likely that people who skip breakfast and who are not used to fasting will make up for it by over eating on snacks mid morning. There is no data to show whether skipping breakfast is bad if you don't make up the calorie deficit in unhealthy mid morning snacks.

If you end up by eating fewer calories by skipping breakfast than if you eat it then it can't be bad. If you eat more calories after skipping breakfast well obviously it's not a good idea!

Best thing is to see how it affects you and not worry about the studies!

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day......this is one of the many food fallacies that I am rapidly revising on the 5:2. For more years than I care to remember I have made sure that I have eaten breakfast even though, quite often, I didn't really feel like it. Not any more.

I'm like boaz and hardly ever eat breakfast unless I'm in a hotel and have paid for it.

Same with me. The first thing I eat on fast days is a small cup of home made soup around 1pm and that does me just fine until early evening. I've now found I don't bother with breakfast very often when on non-fast days.

If you do the semantics you will see that the word 'breakfast' means just what it implies - breaking your fast. It's only in the traditional sense that we break our fast when we wake up which, for the majority of people, is in the morning. I rarely eat 'breakfast' on any day as I'm not hungry in the morning. I break my fast usually between midday and 2pm, which is when I am hungry, and I do this every day - 500 calories on my 'fast' day and whatever I feel like eating on my feed day. On the other hand, my son is always ravenous when he wakes up and wants to eat immediately but then is more than happy to go without food until supper when he's again ravenous.

I was like you before fasting.....I could not even have contemplated leaving the house without breakfast....felt sick etc......now I have been fasting for 6 months.....I have changed my fasting routines during this time...small breakfast .....big dinner etc.....but now I find it easier to fast till about 1600...and have a larger dinner......and now I regularly skip breakfast....particularly if I know I'm going out for a coffee or lunch etc....and I feel no ill effects.....why eat when your not hungry....but yes I know what you mean....when every programme book etc tells you how important breakfast is..you can help but worry that your doing something wrong....x

[wildmissus]

Thanks everyone, your comments have been very useful. I've had a look at the science links and even the history of the work 'breakfast'. I think from now on I will listen to my body which is something that I feel I am able to do since I started 5:2ing.

One quick note here -- a lot of these food myths stem from pretending that what is good for some must be good for all. For growing children, there are a lot of studies to support that breakfast is--quite easily--the most important meal of the day.

But remember, children are growing. They are in a much different metabolic reality than adults. New cell generation is quite important when you have another foot or two of height to grow. Once you are fully-grown, however, growth is bad. New cell generation is less-important for the mature adult than is cell repair.

So, skipping breakfast is not recommended for kids. It's (arguably) recommended for adults. But even that is too-generalized. Each person is different. You need to feel some of these things out for yourself.

The other paradigm that gets challenged with ADF is calories per day (similar to calories during the day, such as the predominantly-breakfast model that's favored by a lot of people). Tools like My Fitness Pal will yell at you both on your fast days and your feed days for eating too little and too much. When you go to ADF, you are better off not thinking in kcal/day but rather in kcal/week. A lot of questions clear up when you do this.

Feast or fast day, I don't break my fast until 1 pm. It stems from earlier phase of intermittent fasting where I did a 16 hour fast overnight every day.

I have always been a breakfast eater, until starting IF. I still eat breakfast on feast days, but I have started, on fast days, to fill up on fluids until mid afternoon. I find that it is much easier to control and quieten hunger pangs. It's like, when I eat breakfast I wake up my food-monster and she gets even hungrier, if I let her have a sleep in, I feel much better on fast days!

Sophie - I'm exactly the same, if I eat breakfast on a fast day it's hellish for the rest of the day up til dinner. I let the monster sleep too and she's much more submissive when fed on coffee and mint tea.

Good interesting obervations from all, it does seem very much an individual matter. For me as a relative newbie, I am finding my best pattern is a small breakfast before heading to the office, and then nothing until the evening meal. Lots of fluids - coffee, green tea, herbal tea, and water. Keeping busy is important too! Stops you thinking about food too much.