A team of researchers from Cornell University suggests that skipping breakfast could actually be a healthy way to lose weight.
For years now health experts have emphasized the importance of not skipping breakfast. In fact, a recent study published in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation, revealed that skipping breakfast can increase the risk of heart attack or death from coronary heart disease. The findings were more evident in men than women.
However, in a new study, researchers from Cornell University found that skipping breakfast can actually prove to be beneficial for women looking to lose weight. A popular belief is that people who skip breakfast tend to eat more and consume more calories later in the day. This new study states that this theory may not be true.
"There's a fundamental belief that if you don't eat breakfast, you will compensate for the lost calories at lunch or later in the day. We've found that there is no caloric compensation in a normal group of eaters," said study senior author David Levitsky, Cornell professor of nutritional sciences and psychology, in a press release. "If you skip breakfast, you may be hungrier, but you won't eat enough calories to make up for the lost breakfast." As a result, your total daily caloric intake will decrease.
For the study, researcher looked into how much two groups of volunteers ate throughout the day. One group consisted of participants who regularly ate breakfast, while the other group skipped the meal two to three times a week. Researchers found that though the breakfast skippers were hungrier during lunch, they didn't consume more food - at lunch or any other time during the day. In fact, such people consumed an average of 408 fewer calories.
With obesity rates rising in the U.S. and young adults gaining an average of one pound weight per year, researchers of the study urge people to analyze for themselves when it's important not to skip breakfast and when skipping the meal can actually be beneficial.
"I realize that skipping breakfast runs counter to common belief - that breakfast is an important meal for weight control, but the data do not support this view. Of course, these results apply to healthy adults - if you're diabetic or hypoglycemic, for example, you need to eat breakfast to maintain glucose levels," Levitsky said. "But generally, we must learn to eat less and occasionally skipping breakfast may be a reasonable way to accomplish this."
The study was published in the journal Physiology and Behavior.
