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Sorry, There's Nothing Magical About Breakfast (nytimes.com)
Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? Plenty of people certainly believe that, but according to a new report, that notion is based on "misinterpreted research and biased studies." The New York Times has run a piece authored by Aaron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, who looked into numerous studies -- and found flaws in them -- to conclude that breakfast isn't as important after all. (Could be paywalled; alternate source) He writes: The [reports] improperly used causal language to describe their results. They misleadingly cited others' results. And they also improperly used causal language in citing others' results. People believe, and want you to believe, that skipping breakfast is bad. Carroll also points out a conflict in many of such studies: most of them have been funded by the food industry. He concludes: The bottom line is that the evidence for the importance of breakfast is something of a mess. If you're hungry, eat it. But don't feel bad if you'd rather skip it, and don't listen to those who lecture you. Breakfast has no mystical powers.
I've experimented with intermittent fasting. One of the benefits (besides weight loss) is that you feel sharper, more perceptive when you're a bit hungry. It's mind-altering, like taking a nootropic drug that actually works. Once you've tried it it makes extreme calorie restriction seem a bit more attractive.
The medical advice we've had I think overstates the evidence by equating any hunger with starvation, which are two different things. Starvation is your body cannibalizing itself to avoid death. Intermittent hunger is a normal and benign state; it's nature's signal to get off your ass and find something to eat.
The problem, as I like to say, is that evolution has gifted each one of us with an awesome mammoth killing machine, which we use sitting at a desk all day a few steps away from a refrigerator stockpiled with calorie-dense foods. And since we're not accustomed to normal hunger, we jump up and shove our face full of thousands of calories (surprisingly easy to do) because we think we're starving. So the grain of truth in the "never go hungry" philosophy is that if you aren't prepared for an occasional hunger pang, if you aren't going to be able to behave reasonably in the presence of unnatural quantities of unnatural foods, then you'd better avoid ever feeling hungry.
Hunger is stress -- like exercise. When you first start a strength training regime, you probably can't imagine you're doing this to your body. But you adapt, and you can take levels of stress that would have been impossible to tolerate at the beginning like they're nothing.
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So, you spend pretty much 5 hours (2.5 hours each way) a day just traveling back and forth to work?!?!?
Nope. I get up at 4:30AM, I'm at the bus stop at 5:45AM, I'm at the cafeteria at 6:45AM, and I'm at my desk at 7:00AM. Going home can take 60 to 90 minutes to get home, depending on traffic conditions. I'm usually home by 5PM at the latest.
That's a LOT of life you're giving up there man.
I'm paying an extra $70 per month for the express bus to have someone else drive me through hell and back on the freeways. Meanwhile, I'm reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook in the afternoon.
To get up that early...what time do you crash at? 8pm?
I usually fall asleep between 8:30PM and 10:30PM to get eight to six hours of sleep.
I have never been a breakfast guy. I am just not hungry in the morning unless (somewhat ironically) I eat a lot just before bed.
As a matter of fact, if I do eat breakfast, I find it much harder to wait until lunch because I get very hungry around mid-morning.
Other that what I stated above, I have never experienced any difference between eating breakfast and skipping it. I perform the same either way.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
My grandfather told me to watch out for those so called, "free cholesterol test". He said, "That test cost me my bacon!"
Side note, he lived to be 91 years old. ~ 30 years after the test.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling