The Early Eating Effect

by Caroline J. Cederquist, M.D.

People in a rush often skip breakfast and then later rationalize it’s okay, telling themselves they didn’t need those calories anyway. But not so fast! If you’re among those who think you can escape your calories by running out on them, think again. New research shows that not only will those breakfast calories be waiting for you at dinner time, they’ll have reinforcements! A new study out of the University of Texas shows that people who skipped breakfast actually ended up eating more overall throughout the course of a day. 

Breakfast tends to be a meal where it’s easy to eat healthy because of all the nutritious and convenient foods that are traditional for this first of our daily meals. There are many good choices—dairy foods like milk and yogurt, whole grain cereals, breads and muffins, eggs and fruit.

Often we skimp on our morning intake—simply grabbing whatever we can hold in one hand while steering with the other. That leads to a lot of low-nutrition breakfasts of coffee and donuts or pastry that get wolfed down in the car. 

Or worse, we skip breakfast altogether. Maybe it’s because of the morning rush, but many of us skip breakfast on purpose, even if we’re hungry, subscribing to the notion that if we can just hold out for a few hours, we can leave those breakfast calories behind, move onto lunch, and reduce our daily intake by one meal. We couldn’t be more wrong. 

The University of Texas researchers tracked a weeks’ worth of intake for nearly 1,000 people. What they found was that when the participants ate a healthy, reasonable-sized, breakfast of about 400-500 calories, they consistently ate less throughout the rest of the day! When they ate a breakfast of just a couple hundred calories, they tended to load up later, even without meaning to.

Aside from the temptation to binge after depriving themselves, there’s apparently something more at play. 

It seems any given number of calories eaten earlier in the day tends to provide a more lasting satiety than the same calories eaten later in the day. The researchers speculated that the body’s mechanism for feeling satiety is functioning more fully in the morning hours. 

That would be consistent with the diurnal sleep/wake cycle that has governed our species since time immemorial. 

Just think, even 100 years ago, most people didn’t have any kind of light other than firelight once the sun went down, and that pretty well put an end to the day’s activities. There was none of this staying up for the late-night comedy with a quart of ice cream or a bag of popcorn. 

Generally speaking, we didn’t have much need to keep our bodies going into the night. It makes sense that the body’s mechanism for sending messages of, “Thanks, I’ve had enough,” wouldn’t need to function as well late in the day. 

Of course, the advent of electricity has pretty well messed up that cycle. We can now munch well into the night, and we do.

The researchers also noted that as the day wears on into night, our meals and snacks get closer and closer together, time-wise. They saw that it was an average of four and a half hours between breakfast and the usual lunch break at noon, but then it’s usually only a couple hours from the afternoon snack that we go for dinner. After dinner, it’s as little as an hour and a half before we’re having that nighttime snack, so any late day eating is more likely to be followed by more eating. 

And then add to that all the social and environmental distractions that come at us later in the day. We may be eating as part of some activity, perhaps a party, or even just when refreshments are served at meetings or classes. It could be we’re watching television while we dine or snack, and other research has shown that if we’re distracted from what we’re eating while we’re eating, we’ll eat more of it. 

Whatever the reason for the early-eating effect, our response to it should be pretty obvious—have a good breakfast. Previous studies have shown that people who eat good cereals tend to be at a lower weight, and that breakfast eaters have a lower rate of obesity overall. 

The key here is a good breakfast…no sugary, 400-calorie Danish and a swig of juice! That sort of thing will only cause a spike in our blood sugar and leave us ravenous in an hour and a half. 

That doesn’t mean we need to whip up a big fluffy omelet. Instead, have some good dairy protein from milk or yogurt, a nice whole-grain muffin or toast, and a piece of fruit. If you have the time to sit and eat some cereal, remember breakfast cereals are notorious sources of added dietary sugar, so choose a good, whole-grain selection without the extra sugar. 

We must not settle for just drinking a glass of juice, which can cause a spike in our blood sugar. It is better to have a piece of whole fruit instead. 

The most important breakfast change we make may just be committing to having breakfast in the first place. And while that’s easier said than done, it might just be one of those essential lifestyle changes we have to make if we really want to reach and keep a healthy weight. 

If we start the day right, we can end it up lighter overall. With an ever-growing body of evidence that eating breakfast helps keep our weight down, isn’t it worth a couple minutes to prepare ourselves for a win/win situation?

Remember, to have the lasting effect of satiety, our breakfast should be about 400-500 calories and include protein and fiber. 

Caroline J. Cederquist, M.D. author of, Helping Your Overweight Child; A Family Guide, is a board certified family and Bariatric physician (the medical specialty of weight management). Visit www.DietToYourDoor.com  DrCederquist.com, or call toll-free 1-800-431-1579.  

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