Why I Never Eat Breakfast

I know, I know: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day… So, I’ve duly spent years of my life worrying about what type of breakfast to eat. What had enough protein to get me through the morning, but not too many calories to throw off the rest of the day. What could I buy and not get sick of eating, and what wouldn’t be too sugar-y or too carb-y or too cholesterol-y or whatever the current buzzword may be. I read all the articles about studies showing that people who ate a healthy breakfast lost weight faster and avoided overeating later in the day, dutifully followed those recommendations… and continued to put on a few more pounds each year.

Breakfast is NOT the most important meal of my day!

You know what? I’m not actually hungry in the morning.

When I started the whole avoiding refined sugar thing at the beginning of this year, I also started trying to listen to what my body was telling me. Here’s what it’s saying:

• I’m not hungry when I get up, especially on school days when I get up too early with the kids.
• I don’t eat any less later on days when I eat breakfast, and in fact it seems that I often eat more.
• I just want coffee when I get up. Black coffee, and plenty of it.

And no, it doesn’t seem to matter if I eat Greek yogurt or eggs or a bowl of cereal: I don’t really want it at the time, and I’m just as hungry during the day. Sooo…. how is it beneficial to add in an extra meal that I don’t really seem to want?

So here’s the plan now

Since I work from home I can make my own schedule, and I usually eat lunch around 11-11:30. Sometimes this is brunch-y (avocado toast & eggs for the win! Usually not so much bacon in there, but it’s such a pretty photo, lol…). Sometimes, it’s lunch-y. Sometimes, it’s snack-y. But that’s when I get hungry, so that’s when I eat. An early lunch puts me in position to have a protein-filled snack around 3 hours later when Mr. 10 gets home from school, and then to eat dinner 3-4 hours after that.

Now that I’ve started skipping breakfast and avoiding refined sugar, I’m also not as hungry at night — where I used to snack every single evening after dinner, I’m now only having something like a sliced apple with cinnamon or a clementine a couple of times a week when I feel like something sweet.

Newer research is more divided

More recent articles talk about a split of opinion in the scientific community, with some now saying that it’s fine to skip breakfast. Some proponents of intermittent fasting talk about the idea of getting all your meals in during an 8 hour period — say between something like noon and 8PM, which is very close to what I have (completely accidentally!) been doing here.

I’m going to read more about this because I just ran across the concept recently. I just put The 8 Hour Diet on hold at the library, for starters, and if the book’s any good, watch for a future review. 😉

What works for you?

So I’m curious: What works for you that seems to be contrary to established opinion? We’re all different, and I find this all so fascinating.