Most overweight people tend to skip meals. Breakfast is the easiest meal to be skipped. Everyone is in a hurry. We do not have time in the rushing hours of morning to listen to demands of our body. Hunger can be easily suppressed at this time of the day. This is a simple fact- you eat less, you weigh less but is it that simple? Do you really lose weight by not having breakfast, leave alone a healthy breakfast? Let us find out why mom used to say- Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

What Does Breakfast Do?

Just try to take out the average time of your meal gap everyday. Suppose you eat between 8 to 9 pm every night and then wake up between 6-7 am in the morning, you have already not eaten anything for about 10 hours. Your body needs to recover from this brief period of starvation (thus the name breakfast) but then you skip your breakfast and have your lunch between 12-2 pm (depending upon the work load at your office). Now the meal gap has gone up to 16-17 hours. Till now you have not supplied the fuel to your body that keeps you running throughout the day. This might backfire on you because skipping meals almost always leads us to overeating. Now try to remember, did you had anything in between- not having breakfast and lunch? May be a handful of peanuts or popcorn, shared sandwich with colleagues, a number of tea or coffee (with all those teaspoons of sugar)? These things that seem to be little in amount, contain lots of calories and fat.

• Breakfast, in the first place stops us from having junk food in between. It provides us with glucose- the fuel that keeps our motors running. Our brain and nervous system need glucose to work- for walking, speaking, stretching and for all activities.
• When we eat early in the morning and gather the fuel right at the start of the day, we ensure that we use it up all. It speeds up our metabolism You will work for the whole day long and burn up your calories. Just imagine, not having a breakfast but having a rich dinner after which you will go to sleep. How will you burn up all those calories gained from delicious dinner? It will all be stored as fat in your body.
• Breakfast ensures that we do not consume lots of calories during the day. If you will not feel hungry, chances are you will not eat those popcorn, chocolates, and in between snacks and avoid those calories.
• An early meal also increases the leptin output of our body. Leptin is a hormone that suppresses appetite. Eating a wholesome meal early in the day ensures leptin production in our body. Researchers at the University of Texas, El Paso, studied the food diaries of 586 men and women and determined that the more food people ate in the morning, the fewer calories they consumed in an entire day.