Eating breakfast will help you burn 5 to 20 percent more calories throughout the day.

Eating breakfast will help you burn 5 to 20 percent more calories throughout the day.

Lose Weight: Eat Breakfast

Studies show making breakfast a daily habit can help you lose weight - and keep it off.

By Jeanie Lerche Davis

WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

What's for breakfast - coffee? Most mornings, we barely glance at the kitchen. Fixing breakfast takes up precious time that's in short supply. But there's ample evidence that the simple act of eating breakfast -- every day -- is a big part of losing weight, lots of weight.

"People skip breakfast thinking they're cutting calories, but by mid-morning and lunch, that person is starved," says Milton Stokes, RD, MPH, chief dietitian for St. Barnabas Hospital in New York City. "Breakfast skippers replace calories during the day with mindless nibbling, bingeing at lunch and dinner. They set themselves up for failure."

 

The Benefits of Breakfast

Eating breakfast is a daily habit for the "successful losers" who belong to The National Weight Control Registry. These people have maintained a 30-pound (or more) weight loss for at least a year, and some as long as six years.

"Most -- 78% -- reported eating breakfast every day, and almost 90% reported eating breakfast at least five days a week - which suggests that starting the day with breakfast is an important strategy to lose weight and keep it off," says James O. Hill, PhD, the Registry's co-founder and director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Two studies in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association backed up this finding. Though they were funded by cereal companies, dietitians say they underscore the message - breakfast is important to weight loss.

A group of researchers analyzed data from a government-funded study that followed more than 2,000 young girls from ages 9 to 19. They found that regular cereal eaters had fewer weight problems than infrequent cereal eaters. Those who ate cereal occasionally had a 13% higher risk of being overweight compared to the regular cereal eaters.

Another research group analyzed government data on 4,200 adults. They found that regular breakfast eaters were more likely to exercise regularly. And women who ate breakfast regularly tended to eat fewer calories overall during the day. Those men and women who ate breakfast cereal had lower overall fat intake -- compared to those who ate other breakfast foods.

It makes sense: Eating early in the day keeps us from "starvation eating" later on. But it also jump-starts your metabolism, says Elisabetta Politi, RD, MPH, nutrition manager for the Duke Diet & Fitness Center at Duke University Medical School. "When you don't eat breakfast, you're actually fasting for 15 to 20 hours, so you're not producing the enzymes needed to metabolize fat to lose weight."

Among the people she counsels, breakfast eaters are usually those who have lost a significant amount of weight. They also exercise. "They say that before having breakfast regularly, they would eat most of their calories after 5 p.m.," Politi tells WebMD. "Now, they try to distribute calories throughout the day. It makes sense that the body wants to be fueled."

Source of Info: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/lose-weight-eat-breakfast

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Eating breakfast can be a wonderful cornerstone to your diet or it can ruin it, depending on the type of breakfast you eat. Here are some facts about how eating your breakfast can help your weight loss plan.

 

Eating Breakfast Gives Your Metabolism a Boost

Maintaining a good metabolism is an important part of long term weight loss. After a night without eating, your body is in a mild fasting state, as it would be if no food was available. If you don't eat until lunch time, that can be up to 18 hours without food. For the entire morning, instead of working at peak rates and burning off more calories, your body will be trying to conserve everything it can. Eating a healthy breakfast will speed up your metabolism and make it work harder. You would be better off cutting calories by eating smaller lunch and dinner meals than by cutting out breakfast. In fact, studies following people who have lost weight and kept it off for more than a year show that 80 percent of them include breakfast in their eating plans.

 

Eating Breakfast Increases Energy Levels

Studies have shown that children who eat breakfast in the morning are less tired and irritable during the day, perform better on tests and have longer attention spans. The same holds true for adults. Eating breakfast will allow you to be more active during the day, increase your energy levels and give you more chances to burn calories. You're more likely to go for a run if you don't feel exhausted all day.

 

The Type of Breakfast is Important

The foods you eat at breakfast are very important for weight loss. The right kind can keep you satiated and energized for the whole morning, and make it less likely that you'll splurge on treats later on. The wrong kind can leave you feeling hungry sooner and cause peaks in blood sugar, or add unnecessary fat to your diet.

Lean protein is the best food choice for breakfast, particularly eggs. Low fat yogurt, ricotta cheese or lean ham are other good options. Fruit and whole grain toast or cereal, or oats are excellent food choices as well. Preferably your breakfast will be a combination of lean protein and complex carbohydrates, like boiled eggs on whole grain toast. This is a low fat, low GI (glycemic index) meal that will slowly release energy during the morning, rather than all at once, leaving you hungry again. Sugary cereals or white flour pancakes may leave you hungry again quickly, and high fat meals like fried eggs and bacon may cause you to gain weight from too many calories.

Eating a healthy, low fat and low GI breakfast is the best option when it comes to losing weight. Eating breakfast will help you to lose weight and is a much better choice than skipping the meal, which will leave you tired, and may cause you to overcompensate with forbidden foods later in the day.

Source of Info: http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/weight-loss/fact-or-fiction-eating-breakfast-can-help-you-lose-weight.html