One of best, and arguably the easiest areas of our diet to change is breakfast. Breakfast often seems to be built on eating really poor quality foods, that set the wrong dietary tone (and hormones) for the whole of the rest of the day, so let’s take a look at this in more detail. Do we need to eat breakfast? What are healthier breakfast options?

Do we need to eat breakfast?

The short answer to this important question is no! We really don’t need to eat breakfast for our health or energy levels.

Our body has evolved over millions of years to survive happily with periods of fasting, as food was never plentiful or constantly available. We have fat stores we can access for energy, assuming we have well balanced hormones. This is why we have body fat! Interestingly some hunter gatherer tribes have no word for breakfast and will typically go 14-16 hours without eating.

The word breakfast should actually give us a bit of a clue here – it comes from breaking our (overnight) fast and we should really be thinking more about when and what is our first meal in the day. Which is not necessarily eating something as soon as we wake up.

It was John Harvey Kellogg who invented breakfast cereals - a Seventh Day Adventist vegetarian who wanted to offer a vegetarian alternative to the meat based breakfasts popular at the time in his health spa. Kellogg’s cornflakes were the first packaged cereal product and immediately caught on being tasty, cheap and convenient. He went on to found the Kellogg’s cereal company and promoted the myth that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, with breakfast cereals a healthy start, that has been perpetuated to this day. To my mind all cereals really should be called breakfast candy and are essentially a sugar delivery system being based on refined carbohydrate….

Corn Flakes are a starchy product with minimal nutritional value – the ingredients apparently cost less than the packaging and marketing! Even more sugar, as well as minerals and vitamins, are added back in to fortify, giving cornflakes pseudo health claims e.g. providing 50% of your daily Vit D needs - which you can get by going outside for 15 minutes! These claims are a smoke screen for the underlying poor nutritional value of the product. Don’t be fooled.

The NHS dietary guidelines that champion breakfast are not based on facts and are heavily influenced by lobbying from food (especially cereal) manufacturers. The scientific evidence informs us that for most people there is absolutely no harm in skipping breakfast (or skipping any meal) and this can help reduce excess weight, the only cautionary note here being for people with certain eating disorders.

When you start your day with sugar, you kick off an insulin response that can lead to an addictive cycle of sugar and carb cravings lasting all day. Our bodies respond well to short periods of fasting, such as an overnight 12 hour fast, and delaying breakfast for a few hours is a good way to easily extend this fast even further, maximising the benefits.

There is also no evidence that breakfast kickstarts our metabolism or skipping it makes us eat more later in the day, which are arguments often put up by the ‘we need to eat breakfast’ brigade.

Some people do enjoy and are better eating a breakfast when they first get up, so please don’t get the idea from this that everyone should immediately stop eating it. As with all things to do with our bodies and diet we all have our own individual metabolic responses, preferences and circadian rhythms. A bit of self experimentation, especially utilising blood sugar responses through a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) or finger prick tests, can be really valuable to understand what might be the best approach for you.

To sum up, for many people, one of the easiest dietary changes we can make to improve insulin sensitivity, that will help with weight loss and prediabetes/diabetes, is to skip breakfast and extend the overnight fast from 12 to 16 hours.

Won’t we run out of energy if we skip breakfast?

Our bodies use two different types of fuel - glucose (aka sugar) and fat, with some organs such as the brain relying more on blood glucose. But the important fact is that we don’t need to actually consume sugar to provide the necessary blood glucose as our bodies can make what it needs from our fat stores. We have evolved to survive and thrive, even when we aren’t eating sugar, which would have been very scarce.

A wore a CGM device recently while skiing and here are three examples of what happens to my own blood sugar response under different breakfast/fasting scenarios.

I felt absolutely fine skiing all morning without any breakfast, ignoring a few tummy gurgles and rumblings when I first woke up. My body managed my energy needs very well by slowly releasing glucose into my blood stream, from my stored fat, through the morning… I also learnt that yoghurt is not the best breakfast for me – it is OK for me when eaten at the end of a meal, as a desert. Just not first thing when I get up! Eggs and ham on the other hand keep my blood sugar stable and are a favourite breakfast of mine.

I also learnt that 3 meals a day, even when skiing, is too much for me. Even though the food I am eating is low carb, it comes in too often for me to deal with very well – no doubt keeping my insulin levels too high, for too much of the day. I have now switched to 2 meals a day on most days after this CGM insight.

What is a healthy breakfast?

If you are thinking of making dietary changes to improve your health, or have a bit of extra weight to shift, changing your first meal of the day is probably the most important meal to change. As well as affecting your metabolism and hormones if you start the day right, it sets you up psychologically to stay on track the rest of the day.

Bran flakes (Kellogg’s again!), wholemeal toast and fruit juice is what I would have considered to be a healthy breakfast 15 years ago, when I was over weight and unknowingly prediabetic.

But this really isn’t a nutritious start to your day. It is the equivalent of over 17 teaspoons of sugar and that is based on a small serving of 30g of Bran Flakes that nobody actually ever has! These sugar equivalent infographics are from Dr Unwin and the PHC - you can find more of these on their website covering various different foods if you want check them out: www.phcuk.org

A truly healthy breakfast, or your first meal of the day, should be based on protein and healthy fats, with minimal or no processed/refined carbohydrates. Here are a few of my typical breakfasts for inspiration. See also the recipe section of this website for a low carb granola and breakfast muffins, that you can make a batch of and freeze.

Breakfast - my top tips

We often eat breakfast out of habit, or because we think it is the most important meal of the day. But try delaying your first meal, potentially dropping down to two meals a day which can be great to break a weight loss plateau, and see how you get on.

If you feel hungry when you wake up, consider getting outside for a short walk before eating anything, letting your body use its fat store for energy. If you do have breakfast skip the cereals, bread and juice and focus on getting some good quality protein in such as eggs, bacon, cold meats, cheese or fish. And finally breakfast is one of the easiest meals to make your own decisions on, away from the influence and pressure of friends and family, so do your own thing 😉

The other thing to do everyday is to drink a glass of water on waking - many of us are dehydrated, especially in the morning. And if you don’t need or feel like breakfast have a cup of coffee or tea (with minimal milk) and you are good to go!

DO you Want to discuss your breakfast approach with me?

I offer free of charge initial meetings to discuss your weight and health goals and how I may be able to support you with these. Most people find these useful calls to help them figure out a way forward, usually with a couple of tips you can implement right away, to help you on your weight loss / health journey... A short investment of time focused on you!