Breakfast:
The LEAST Important Meal of the Day?

Do you think breakfast is the most important meal of the day?

If you answered yes, then it may be keeping you fat.

Sure, we’ve all heard that breakfast line so many times, from fitness magazines to internet articles to health classes at school.

But what’s it really based on? And is there any science behind it?

We’ll get to the science part in a second…

But I want to begin by assuring you that:

This breakfast thing is one of our biggest urban myths…

And changing your mind about it can be the key that unlocks effortless fat loss — even if you have a lot of weight to lose.

Don’t believe me?

You can’t get a much more dramatic example than my friend Jon.

Jon contacted me a while back to let me know that this very tip made all the difference for him. I was calling it “intermittent fasting” back then. But it’s basically just skipping breakfast. And this is what it did for Jon:

I thought you may find it interesting to see how intermittent fasting worked so well for the morbidly obese. The first photo was when I started at 340 pounds, and the second one is me at around the 230s when I learned about intermittent fasting and the various protocols associated with it. When I finished losing weight in April of this year, I was 150 pounds and in the 6% body fat range.

Pretty incredible, right?

Jon is living proof — lean and shredded living proof — that the optimum meal frequency pattern is the one that works best for you, and allows you to most consistently stick to your dietary plan.

If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to pick a system that would give you the best starting point, I would first crap my pants about the gun, and then I’d recommend “dieting” for half of each day.

In real world terms, that means…

Skipping breakfast and eating all
your calories at lunch and dinner…

Why the heck would you want to do this?

Well, I’ll tell you. And there are several excellent, scientifically-backed reasons.

First…

It’s Functional

Some people prefer — and do really well both from a functional and physique enhancing standpoint — not eating anything during the day. Or at least not during the morning hours.

You see, these people inherently hate eating breakfast.

They start their day on the run.

They don’t have time to prepare and clean up from a healthy breakfast. And the thought of eating caveman-style foods at 6am is completely unappealing.

The only way those busy types can eat breakfast is if it’s a sugar-loaded refined pastry, kids’ cereal, or other refined garbage.

They’ve always hated eating breakfast, but they have always force-fed themselves to the point of nausea because that’s what the fitness magazines said they had to do.

But eating that kind of breakfast just makes them hungrier an hour later.

If they had it their way, the breakfast haters would just skip breakfast entirely, or have a cup of coffee or tea instead.

In fact, this is what they and many people instinctively do. And as long as you make good food choices for the meals you do eat, you’ll be well on your way to fast, effective, easy fat loss.

As you’ll see below, this breakfast-skipping structure works quite well for both fat loss and muscle maintenance.

That’s because on the run or on the go, we usually have more time for — and control over — our lunch and dinner choices than breakfast.

But there’s one other really great reason for skipping breakfast — or “dieting for half the day”, as I like to call it.

And that’s because—

Skipping Breakfast Prolongs
Your Body’s Ability to Burn Fat…

Your body naturally wakes up in a fat-burning, energy-producing mode.

But eating food — and particularly sugar and refined carbohydrate-loaded breakfast foods — gives your body an immediate fuel source that shuts down those prime fat burning hours.

Eating starchy carbohydrates at breakfast can spike your blood sugar, spike your insulin levels, and blunt your fatty acid mobilization for 6 hours or more.

In other words, a sugary breakfast means no fat loss for you.

But when you do something as simple as skipping breakfast, you prolong the amount of time your body is burning stored energy reserves as its primary fuel source, and you optimize your ability to burn body fat.

Pretty cool, eh?

Fasting also increases your growth hormone levels (a hormone that helps repair you and your muscles) and the cellular factor cAMP (a type of messenger in your body), both of which increase the body’s fat burning mechanisms.

An additional benefit is that fasting increases BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which improves memory and cognitive functioning by helping support the central nervous system and facilitating the growth of new neurones and synapses — so you get leaner and smarter!

But don’t get hung up on the term “fasting”.

We’re not talking suffering, deprivation or misery here. We’re just talking about not eating anything until lunch time.

It won’t hurt.

And it won’t hurt your performance at work, either. In fact, most of my clients say it makes them more productive, not less.

Now I know some of you out there will take this to an extreme.

“If skipping breakfast is the best strategy, then
skipping more meals must be better, right?”

Well no, not exactly.

There does come a point of diminishing returns. And I recommend keeping the fasting length to 14-22 hours at most if you really want to test your limits.

This has to do with metabolic processes that happen when your liver glycogen stores (think of liver glycogen as stored glucose) become low.

You see, glucose is the primary fuel for your brain and central nervous system.

From a functional and cognitive standpoint, depleted liver glycogen leads to poor athletic performance, fatigue, and poor cognitive performance otherwise known as “brain fog.”

And none of us have time for that. We live in the real world, and we have real jobs and responsibilities.

It’s harmful from a cosmetic standpoint, too.

Chronically depleted liver glycogen leads to muscle loss.

Why?

Because your body starts breaking down amino acids and converting them to glucose at a higher rate (gluconeogenesis) in order to make up for the lack of glucose availability and to stabilize blood sugar levels.

If those amino acids are coming from protein you eat, that’s OK. If the amino acids are coming from your own muscle tissue, it results in muscle loss.

Your body’s primary metabolic goal is…

…to fuel your brain and CNS — not to look good in a bikini or board shorts — so in certain cases it’s willing to sacrifice muscle to keep your brain going.

That’s the reason I recommend a 14-22 hour fasting “limit” depending on your pre-fast meal.

When you near that limit, you should eat something to avoid some of the drawbacks of longer-term fasts.

But you don’t need to worry about any of this stuff if you follow my advice below.

I just wanted to include it in case you were thinking “more must be better”.

You don’t need to go to extremes or suffer to get sustainable fat loss. When you do it my way, it’s totally pain-free.

Are you convinced yet? Or are you still afraid that bad things will happen to you if you skip breakfast?

Let’s knock a couple of the biggest myths down so
you can get your physique goals back on track…

First up…

Myth #1: Skipping breakfast can lead to muscle loss, poor cognitive performance, metabolic decline, etc.

This myth is only true if your fasting period is too long.

None of these things will happen with short-term fasts, as long as you keep the fasting period to within reasonable limits.

That’s why I believe that simply skipping breakfast and eating a light, paleo-style lunch is superior to alternate-day fasting protocols, at least from a physique standpoint.

Myth #2: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

You’ll see poor cognitive performance and heightened muscle catabolism when your liver glycogen is low or depleted.

In other words, you’ll have brain fog and lose muscle mass when liver glycogen drops too low.

But if you eat the majority of your calories and carbohydrates at night, this process doesn’t happen until closer to lunch or dinner the next day.

It does NOT happen by breakfast time.

So you don’t need breakfast to boost your metabolism, to have energy for your morning tasks, or to perform well athletically or cognitively.

Your body can still use liver glycogen that was stored the night before to fuel your brain.

Eating your biggest meal in the evening doesn’t just restore your energy reserves from the current day’s activities. It’s also preparing your body for the following day too.

So are you ready to give this a try?

Great! Here’s what I want you to do.

1. Skip breakfast. Black coffee or tea with no additives is cool, and they can actually be beneficial for fat loss.

2. Eat a lighter, Paleo-style lunch — We’re talking a serving of relatively lean protein with vegetables or salad.

If you work out 3 times a week or more, you can add 1-2 pieces of whole fruit to this. But if you’re inactive, you’re better to take 1-2 servings of whole food fats instead.

3. Eat your biggest meal at dinner.

It really is as simple as that. And I hope you give it a try.

If you’re like my friend Jon, who you met at the beginning, you’ve probably failed repeatedly to lose fat and get the body you want.

This is the method that gave Jon his breakthrough and took him from morbid obesity to a normal, healthy bodyweight.

I know it can work for you too.

Don’t worry about your past failures.

There IS a diet approach that will help you
lose the fat and keep it off comfortably…

This “dieting for half the day” strategy is a great place to start — especially if you’ve been having problems losing fat, or if you simply hate how hard it is to maintain your beach physique.

Is there anything else you can do besides skip breakfast?

You bet there is!

There are several other ways to tweak this plan and accelerate your fat loss even more.

Meal timing is key. So is making the right food choices.

But the most important tweak of all has to do with making sure you’re getting exactly the right number of calories for yourbody and your goals.

The good news is that it’s not complicated.

I’ll tell you all about it on the Next Page…