One common perception amongst people embarking on a new kind of eating plan is they have to eat breakfast. That is, if they don’t eat breakfast, they will die.
Ok, maybe it’s not that extreme, but new dieters seem to have had, “You must eat breakfast in order to lose fat” beaten in to them so incessantly they believe there is no chance of achieving any success without it.
If you ask these dieters why they should each breakfast, most can’t offer an answer. However, every now and then someone will come back with, “So I don’t eat too much later in the day.”
To which I can now reply BOO-YAH:
–Diet: Bigger Breakfast, Bigger Daily Calorie Count
Anybody at all familiar with the cult-like movement of intermittent fasting probably won’t be too surprised with the above article, but to the average person and the average client I have, this is revelatory.
Typical new client scenario:
Client: I really need to start eating breakfast, but I just hate it.
Me: For right now don’t worry about that. I don’t care if you eat breakfast at all. Continue eating the way you have been. We’re just going to have you start eating a little bit less. [Conversation about importance of calories here.] Once you start doing that, then we’ll start talking about specific foods, what time of day you should eat, etc.
Client: Wait, what??? Don’t I have to eat breakfast?
So on and so forth.
If you’re a person who hasn’t eaten breakfast in years, then all of a sudden one day eating breakfast i.e. forcing yourself to eat breakfast because you have been told to do so, is going to be a pretty big change for you.
You’ll likely have to adjust your grocery shopping for breakfast food items, wake up earlier to cook, go to bed earlier. Not only are you changing your eating habits, but you are changing a lot of other habits as well. Some that are extremely hard to change. Think about how hard it is to wake up earlier.
Changing human behavior is hard enough one behavior at a time. Why change more behaviors than necessary to accomplish the same goal?
Furthermore, if you are someone who hates eating breakfast and your new diet plan entails starting a lifestyle change with something you hate, EVERY DAY, your long term success is not looking good. Point being big changes made overnight rarely work for very long.
When you have a new dieter the most important thing is getting them headed in the right direction. One baby step at a time. Eating breakfast does not automatically assure they are headed in the right direction.
Posted on April 6, 2018