We’ve been told our whole lives that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I’m here to tell you that skipping breakfast is not only acceptable, but clinically proven to drive fat-burning into high gear.
“You’ll eat more the rest of the day.” “You need breakfast to jump-start your metabolism.” “Skipping breakfast makes you fat.” In reality, there is little research to support these widely held convictions, especially for adults. Many highly credentialed, well-respected nutritionists and scientists agree that our infatuation with breakfast is unfounded. Rather than being the health-enhancing habit it’s hyped up to be, breakfast is actually a significant contributor to our epidemic of obesity.
So how do weight loss and fat-burning occur if you skip breakfast?
Mini-Fast with Exercise
Even if you’re of normal weight, your body has significant amounts of stored fat—it’s nature’s way of stockpiling fuel. Carbohydrates, on the other hand, have a limited storage capacity and are rapidly depleted. When you wake up in the morning, you’ve been “fasting” for an average of 10–12 hours. Since your body taps into carbohydrates during sleep, your fasting state, your carbohydrate stores are low when you wake up in the morning. Here’s the kicker: Once carbohydrates are used up, your body resorts to burning fat for energy.
Eating, especially typical high-carbohydrate breakfast foods like orange juice, cereal, toast, and fruit, shuts down this fat-burning process. The body then goes back to using carbohydrates for energy. However, skipping breakfast and exercising, such as going for a walk, rapidly depletes your remaining carbohydrate stores. At this point, your body shifts to burning fat. And you’ll continue in this mode until you eat at lunchtime.
This is the idea behind the weight loss program we use at the Whitaker Wellness Institute. It promotes habits that will lead to a lifetime of health while eliminating restrictive diets, calorie counting, and food cravings that are the bane of most regimens. Complete details about this program are in my latest book, The Mini-Fast Diet, which tells you how to rev up fat-burning and explains the science behind this program – including an entire chapter focused on debunking the common myths about breakfast.
Diabetes, Hypertension, and Beyond
All sorts of magical things happen with the exercise-enhanced mini-fast. You lose fat instead of lean muscle mass. Abdominal obesity, the most dangerous type of fat distribution, declines. Insulin sensitivity improves, and blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides fall as well.
If you want to lose weight or are dealing with any of the many health concerns associated with unwanted weight gain or obesity, I urge you to give this regimen a try. By maximizing the substantial benefits of exercise and calorie restriction, the mini-fast with exercise can be your ticket to weight loss, lower blood sugar and blood pressure, better health, and a longer life.
To learn more about how we help our patients with weight loss, click here, or call (866) 944-8253 to schedule an appointment with one of our licensed physicians.
