Should You Skip Breakfast?

You live a busy life. Some days, you might find yourself rushing out the door to get to work or start your day -- you simply don't have time to eat breakfast. Lack of hunger and pursuit of weight loss are some reasons why people may also bypass breakfast.

Consistently missing breakfast without any plan for what and how you’ll eat during the rest of the day might drive you away from your health goals instead of toward them. Skipping breakfast may lead to many short- and long-term effects, and here we’ve outlined some that can affect your physical and mental health and overall well-being.

1. You May Harm Your Heart Health
Missing meals may be dangerous in the long term, even to the point of harming your heart, and multiple studies back this up. A 2019 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Cardiology found that skipping breakfast was associated with an increased risk of heart disease. This may be related to the metabolic effects breakfast skipping has on blood sugar levels, overeating later in the day and the connection between breakfast skipping and other poor lifestyle habits that may promote heart disease.

2. You Might Slow Your Metabolism
Some people regularly avoid breakfast in hopes of losing weight, but it may instead hinder weight loss by affecting healthy metabolism. Without breakfast, the body goes looking for energy elsewhere, pulling reserves from our fat and muscle tissue. This requires energy to do! As a result, other processes slow down to conserve energy and allow it to route toward survival.

3. You Could Throw Off Your Hormones
Going too long without eating can drop your blood sugar levels and may also throw your hormone levels off course, according to the Endocrine Society. It starts with cortisol, a stress hormone. Cortisol greatly impacts your mood, your stress response and how you respond to daily tasks and situations. When persistently high, cortisol levels are associated with anxiety and depression. Eating a morning breakfast can help manage these levels and stress, giving you a mental boost to take on the day. Over time, a disruption in your hormone balance may also impact reproductive health and menstruation.

4. You Could Have More Cravings
Everyone gets cravings, but skipping meals can put you in a desperate position where you’re so hungry you’ll eat anything that’s around, even if it’s not consistent with your health goals. Your body may seek quick energy sources, which may appear as cravings for chips or baked goods, which can perk you up but leave you hungry shortly after.


Source(s): eating well, cnet/health