If you skip breakfast intending to cut down on calories, you may want to reconsider this strategy. Breakfast is no doubt the most important meal of the day and literally breaks the fast after a long night. Think of it this way, you have had nothing for the last 9-12 hours since dinner last night. Your body has low energy and needs refueling.
You not only need enough carbohydrates to have a successful workout but to also perform physically. This has a profound effect on your cognitive functions as well. Your brain needs energy just like your muscles do.
Experts believe that breakfast-eaters reach for less food throughout the day and have reduced rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Skipping meals is never the solution to a long term weight loss plan, instead it poses great threat to your overall health.
Here are a few reasons why skipping breakfast can prove to be major downside to your health:
Drops Blood Sugar
When you wake up in the morning after a good night sleep, your body is low on blood sugar and craving for a healthy breakfast.
A research published in the Journal of Frontiers of Human Neuroscience shows that eating breakfast restores glycogen and balances the level of insulin but if you don’t recharge your glucose stores in the morning you end up starting your day with low blood sugar, feeling weak, cranky and exhausted.
Moreover, if you are used to having a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, you are increasing the intensity of all these symptoms even more, in addition to dehydrating yourself also.
Stress Hormones Spike
Breakfast has a profound effect on the level of stress hormone Cortisol.
According to a research from the University of Texas, breakfast affects cortisol positively. Cortisol has many functions like influencing blood sugar for energy, sleep cycles and stress. Cortisol level keeps changing throughout the day. It is highest in the morning and lowest at night. Cortisol is also affected by your eating patterns, your stress levels and your activity throughout the day.
On average, cortisol levels are highest at about 7 in the morning, so this is the time when it’s important to eat something to bring it back down because if cortisol levels remain raised, it not only disrupts the mechanism of blood sugar but also increases stress and you are likely to feel anxious or jittery.
Eating the early meal not only prevents your adrenals from pumping out extra cortisol but also brings down cortisol back to its healthy level.
Bad for Heart
A study from Harvard University showed that people who skip breakfast had a 27 percent increased risk of heart disease than those who always have it. Although a direct cause isn’t known, researchers deduced that staying in a fasting state for longer is stressful for the body leading to drastic metabolic changes.
People who avoid breakfast are known to be at greater risk of hypertension(high blood pressure). This can lead to plaque buildup in the arteries, further increasing your chances of heart problems.
If you continue to skip meals, low blood sugar levels cause your body to release hormones that raise your blood pressure. As a result, you may undergo symptoms like headache, fatigue, nausea and constipation.
Slows down Metabolism
When you wake up, your body’s metabolism is already slow and then when you skip a meal, your body slows further down to save energy. The metabolic rate is reduced to compensate for lesser intake.
A research also showed that when participants ate breakfast, more calories were burned during morning exercise and they had more stable blood sugar later in the day.
According to the International Journal of Obesity, breakfast can actually boost your metabolism and encourage your body to burn more calories throughout the day.
Weight Gain
Numerous studies reveal the negative impacts of skipping breakfast, and people who miss the morning meal infact have a higher chance of gaining weight.
You miss the early meal to reduce your caloric intake but what you don’t realize is that skipping breakfast perks up cravings for sugary and fatty foods and since you have been hungry for quite a while, you end up gorging down whatever you come across during the day, eventually exceeding way past your recommended daily calorie intake. Skipping breakfast on a daily basis will finally lead to weight gain and not weight loss.
The healthiest breakfast would be a protein-packed meal to control your appetite throughout the day. Studies show that eating a breakfast with a significant amount of protein (around 20 grams) has a positive effect on nutritional choices the rest of the day. Because dietary protein decreases appetite and makes you feel full sooner and longer. So people who eat protein rich breakfast tend to consume lesser calories overall throughout the day.
Amanda Bentley has 5 years’ experience in the food and beverage industry and currently works as a Content writer at Qavashop (www.qavashop.com). Qavashop.com is an online store for all the “coffee aficionados” located in the GCC. Apart from providing its customers with quality coffee machines and consumables, it also provides them with skilled, knowledgeable advice on how to make their own restaurant quality espresso at home.
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