Big breakfast might prevent obesity
- Agnes Ogugua
- Mar 27, 2020
- 2 min read
We are always looking for new ways to improve our health. Studies have shown that eating heavier breakfasts as opposed to heavier dinners may help in weight loss in healthy and overweight individuals. Big breakfasts may also prevent metabolic diseases.
How do big breakfasts promote weight loss and prevent metabolic disease?
The exact physiological mechanism is unknown, but what we do know is that digestion and metabolism keep up with the body’s internal clockwork. If we aren’t consuming enough earlier in the day, we will be hungrier throughout the day. As a result, we tend to overeat or crave the wrong foods throughout the day, especially sweets. The studies below show that more calories are burned in the morning. Diet-induced thermogenesis, the amount of energy required to process a meal, has been proven to be higher in the morning. What happens when we eat more when calorie burning is at its peak?
Research published by the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in February 2020 may help answer this question. The study consisted of 16 men: 8 men ate low calorie breakfasts and high calorie dinners and the other 8 men ate the opposite. The men were asked to keep fixed sleep schedules as a control in the study. The results showed that no matter how heavy or light, diet-induced thermogenesis after breakfast meals was 2.5 times higher than it was for the same meal eaten at dinner time, and those who had lighter breakfasts reported being hungrier throughout the day and craving sweets.
Limitations to this study are that the number of participants was relatively small, consisting only of young healthy men (average age 24 years old) with normal body mass index (BMI), which is the ratio of weight to height. It may have been more helpful if selection of participants was more complex and diverse. The study was also done over a very short time frame of only 3 days. With a longitudinal study we may have been able to see the long term physiological effects of this diet.
Note to remember: The study is not suggesting that we overeat in the morning. Listen to your body signals!
Interested in reading more about this topic? Here’s where:
