Is Breakfast The Most Important Meal of The Day?
Deep Dive
Takeaway: In one scenario, breakfast may be your most important meal. In another, it's irrelevant. This is the nuanced nature of nutrition. In this article we’ll discuss some ways to decipher what matters for you.
Is Breakfast The Most Important Meal of The Day?
One of the challenges of understanding good nutrition is undoing all the "facts" that we've learned from the diet industry.
Undoing the beliefs that going "low-fat" or "low-carb" will solve your weight loss problems.
It's no easy task, especially when this information sounds correct. It’s even possible for you to believe contradictory information, all at the same time.
“Fruit contains healthy nutrients, but it has too much sugar so it’s unhealthy for me.”
This is a good example of believing contradictory things. Fruit being both healthy and unhealthy at the same time. (To be clear, fruit is healthy and you need not worry about the sugar unless diabetic.)
The point being that nutrition as been so diluted with all these voices and opinions that it can feel impossible to decipher what’s real and what isn’t.
Today, let's take a closer look one piece of "common" nutrition wisdom to help provide more clarity in your own meal planning.
Is Breakfast The Most Important Meal of The Day?
I'm sure you've heard this before. You may have learned that eating breakfast is important to have enough energy for the day.
Later, you may have begun applying this to weight loss as a means to "stoke the metabolic fire."
The question is actually quite irrelevant. There is no such thing as a, "best meal."
It's all contextual.
To make things even more interesting, it's also largely preferential.
How do we make sense of this wisdom when “best meal” is a shapeshifter, changing based on the person?
Understanding The Foundational Principles of Nutrition
The first level of our Food Freedom Framework is calorie consumption. Nutrition science shows this is the most important variable in body composition changes.
If you eat more calories than your body needs you gain weight. Conversely, if you eat less you’ll lose weight.
The importance of calories doesn’t change. It’s not contextual or preferential. It exists like gravity, a law of truth unaffected by our individual desires, goals, or beliefs.
Meal planning is simply a tool to help us manage calories. If we know this, we can ask better questions:
Does eating breakfast help you prevent overeating later in the day?
If the answer is yes, then breakfast is an important meal for you because it helps you manage your calories.
Does eating breakfast stimulate your appetite so that you become a ravenous snack-monster for the rest of the day?
In this case, it may be in your best interest to skip breakfast and push your first meal to later in the day. This will give you fewer opportunities to overeat.
In the first scenario, breakfast may be your most important meal. In the second, it's irrelevant.
This is the nuanced nature of nutrition.
Other reasons breakfast might be useful for you:
Fuel early morning workouts
Busy workday with limited opportunities for midday meals
History of blood sugar issues
If you take medication that requires food
Making Sense of It All
Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day, unless it’s the most important meal of the day for you.
The universal nutrition laws can help you understand the nuance that exists in your food choices.
You’ll be better prepared to evaluate these decisions in a way that helps you make real progress and put your effort where it matters most.
You can effectively remove yourself from the hamster wheel of useless diet advice.
~ Coach Alex
P.S. Want to learn these universal nutrition laws that can guide your food decisions? I’m hosting a free webinar on Monday, May 20th at 7pm EST. Click the button below to register your free spot now.