A doctor has debunked the theory that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Famed for his weight loss advice, Dr Michael Mosley frequently dispels what he considers to be diet myths.
He recently turned his attention to the old saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that it must be eaten as part of a diet plan, reports Coventry Live.
Posting on the Fast 800 Instagram account, Dr Mosley said: “We are often told that eating a good breakfast is a simple way to control your weight.
“If you skip breakfast, then you will get hungry later in the day and snack on high calorie junk food.
“Eating breakfast revs up your metabolism, preparing you for the day. It seems a plausible suggestion but is it true?”
Explaining further in a blog post, he wrote: “To test this idea researchers got 300 overweight volunteers and asked those who normally skip breakfast to eat breakfast, while those who routinely ate breakfast were asked to skip it.
“They weighed the volunteers beforehand and 16 weeks later.”
“So what actually happened?
“Well, the breakfast skippers who had made themselves eat breakfast lost an average of 0.76kgs.
“While the breakfast eaters, who had spent 16 weeks skipping breakfast, lost an almost identical amount, an average of 0.71kgs.”
Researchers concluded that the recommendation to eat breakfast “had no discernible effect on weight loss in free-living adults who were attempting to lose weight.”
However, if you find that eating a healthy breakfast makes you less likely to have food cravings throughout the day, it is still recommended you eat breakfast.
Dr Mosley eats breakfast every day, but it comes with a caveat that can maximise weight loss.
Talking to the Daily Mail last year, he said: “When you get up in the morning, you may be in a rush to tuck into your breakfast and get out of the door.
“Or you may be happy to hold off eating for a while (a lot of people find they don’t get hungry until later in the day).
“One reason why you might want to delay breakfast if you’re not ravenous is that, by doing so, you will be extending your overnight fast (i.e. how long it has been since your last meal).”
Dr Mosley suggests to go with whatever works for you and not to feel guilty if you do not have breakfast.
However, this does not mean you can indulge later in the day.
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