If you're the kind of person that rushes out the door every morning with just a cup of coffee or a bagel, you might want to reconsider your morning eating habits. A study from Virginia Commonwealth University has shown that a big breakfast may be a key component in the fight to lose weight. In fact, according to the study, a big breakfast that's rich in carbs, protein, and fat will help you lose far more weight than you would if you stuck to a low-calorie, low-carb breakfast.
The research focused on 94 obese, inactive women. Those in the low-carb breakfast group ate 290 calories for breakfast, including seven grams of carbs and 12 grams of protein. The big-breakfast group consumed 610 calories for breakfast, including a whopping 58 grams of carbs, 22 grams of fat, and 47 grams of protein. After eight months, the big-breakfast women lost five times as much weight as the strict dieters. Even more significant--the strict dieters had regained an average of 18 of the pounds they initially lost and were on their way back up the scale, while the big-breakfast subjects continued to lose weight.
Amazingly, the big-breakfast group lost that weight eating breakfasts that by traditional diet standards seem almost risqué. The morning menu typically contained three ounces of meat, two slices of cheese, two whole-grain servings, a serving of milk, one fat serving and one ounce of chocolate or candy.
It's hard to even imagine jamming all that food into your mouth before noon. But according to research director Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz, that's precisely the point. First thing in the morning, the brain chemical serotonin is at its peak. When serotonin levels are high, we don't feel hunger, but when serotonin levels dip - as they do as the day wears on - the brain craves energy food such as cookies and candy in order to drive the levels back up. If you give in and eat the sweets, your serotonin levels spike, your brain feels happy, and that triggers an addictive cycle where you associate sweets with the serotonin high and constantly crave them. To break the cycle, Jakubowicz suggests eating sweets when you don't have a desire for them, such as first thing in the morning. That way the sweets won't supply a serotonin boost and you break the addictive association.
Now that's an interesting concept, and it seemed to work for the big-breakfast club, who balanced out the morning overload by having a small lunch and tiny dinner. They also reported reduced hunger throughout the day, unlike the low-carb dieters. Jakubowicz explains, "[A low carbohydrate diet] exacerbates the craving for carbohydrates and slows metabolism. As a result, after a short period of weight loss, there is a quick return to obesity."
Does this mean that you should stuff your face with pasta or donuts at 7am? No! In fact, the diet consumed by the morning big-eaters, while effective for weight loss, leaves a lot to be desired. Notice that the diet that led to weight loss contained no fruit or vegetables in the morning, and also contained lots of dairy. There are better ways to get a well-balanced morning meal without loading up on allergy-inducing, hormone-laden milk, cheese, nitrate-spiked breakfast meats, and buttered toast.
The big-breakfast group might have benefited more in terms of overall health had they substituted some of the dairy with hypoallergenic, enzyme-, antioxidant-, and amino-rich proteins from sources such as brown rice, spirulina, and yellow-pea protein, and had they substituted fruits and vegetables for some of the carbs. While the research team got right the idea of front-loading the day with the highest-caloric intake, they might do well to consider alternative, healthier sources of protein, carbohydrates, and fats for the morning meal.
