Breakfast. Is It the Most Important Meal of the Day?

Have you ever heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? I certainly have. But why? Who says so? I mean, besides our mothers? Well…maybe that’s enough…and maybe it’s not. After a simple question posed to me I found myself needing to know why breakfast is held in such high regard. I soon dove into the research to get the answer and bring them to you, so you don’t have to.

What Brought This Curiosity Around Breakfast?

In my Facebook group “Epic Living for Women in Midlife and Beyond” one of the members asked a question about breakfast timing in response to my post that we need to eat breakfast. I already knew that it could impact how much we ate later on. But what else? Why else is breakfast important? Is it important? Really?

As a woman in my middle years, sitting in that perimenopausal window, I’ve been looking at a lot of factors that influence my health and wellness and body composition, including what, when and how much we eat. You may also be a woman in midlife or older and trying to figure out how to combat the belly bulge, brain fog, and the seeming battle with your body you have probably played around with calorie restriction and meal skipping or intermittent fasting or other diet trends. I’ve done the breakfast skipping in the past thinking maybe it would help me burn up a few more calories I already had in store.

I’m hoping what I share here will put the question to rest for you so that you know what to do when you get out of bed. While this is not a review of the literature I went through several studies to find out what they found regarding the effects of breakfast on things like weight management, metabolism and eating behaviors.

Here’s the easy infographic with a summary of the main tips and takeaways from my research.

Research-based Tips and Takeaways for Breakfast Eating and Timing by Bernette

You can also download the PDF to read the full paper I wrote on this chrononutrition topic dealing with breakfast and meal timing. Now, this is not an official research paper but it is a paper with research. No one is paying me to use official AMA guidelines and I’m not submitting to any journals, so…

Curious about a wellness, lifestyle, health, or other topic to help you create that shero life? Join my Facebook group “Epic Living for Women in Midlife and Beyond” and ask.