Best Time to Eat Breakfast | Breakfast Timings for Weight Loss

Break Fast As A Weight Loss Tool

July 17, 2024 By Dr Sanam Arora Category : Weight Loss 5 min Read

Disclaimer: This post and website is for information purposes only. By providing the information contained herein I am not diagnosing, treating, curing, mitigating, any type of disease or medical condition. Before beginning any type of natural, integrative or conventional treatment regimen, please seek the advice of a licensed healthcare professional.

For thousands of years, Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners have believed that meal timing matters. TCM emphasizes eating a large breakfast between the hours of 7am and 11am as they believe that our stomach’s functioning is optimal during these hours. TCM recommends finishing eating your daily calories around 7pm because beyond that, our stomach has a difficult time digesting and utilizing nutrients. As the day goes on, TCM advocates recommend eating less and less. To summarize, TCM practitioners believe it’s important to eat a heavy breakfast, a moderate lunch and small dinner.

Ayurvedic Practitioners also recommend for breakfast to be the largest and heaviest meal of the day, followed by lunch then dinner. The advice is outlined perfectly in the proverb: “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”. However, in many countries around the world, it’s common for dinner to be the largest meal of the day, while breakfast is often the smallest, or skipped altogether.

Modern science defines the above style of food consumption as caloric front loading and it falls under the study of chrononutrition; meaning, you eat more of your daily calories earlier in the day. Most of the research with early food consumption revolves around obesity and weight loss, but there may be other benefits too.

Nutrition research is very confusing, mostly because there’s so much conflicting data. Now, is it better to have a larger breakfast and smaller dinner or smaller breakfast and larger dinner? Does it matter? Are these traditional systems of medicine gibberish or is there legitimacy behind their claims?

Background: Timing of meals is different from culture to culture and person to person. It’s a behaviour we can modify and it may influence how our bodies utilize energy and may be a risk factor for obesity. Some animal studies have shown that eating meals at irregular times leads to weight gain.

Is it also true for humans? It seems like it. Researchers put it to the test in a 12 week study and the results were interesting. Two groups (overweight and obese females) were assigned a low calorie mediterranean diet with the same foods, and same calories but one group ate a larger breakfast while the other ate a larger dinner. Because the diet was low in calories, it’s logical to assume both groups lost weight, which they did. But, there were still differences between groups! The group that ate a heavier breakfast lost more weight and inches around their waist. Group 1 (larger breakfast) lost 8.2 kg and 7cm around their waist and group 2 (larger dinner) lost 6.5kg and 5cm. The study only had 36 participants in total but the difference in weight loss between the two groups was statistically significant. Body composition measurements were done via DEXA scans; the gold standard for measuring body fat . In addition, both groups had an improvement in blood pressure, lipid profiles and blood sugar. However, the heavy breakfast group saw greater improvements in blood sugar levels.

A similar study was done over a 12 week period (different researchers) in obese women. In this study, the diets were isocaloric (same) at 1400 calories. Again, the calorie distribution was different. Group 1 ate a 700 calorie breakfast, 500 calorie lunch and 200 calorie dinner. Group 2 at a 200 calorie breakfast, 500 calorie lunch and 700 calorie dinner. Group 1 had greater weight loss, greater waist circumference reduction, greater reductions in fasting blood sugar, insulin and ghrelin (hunger hormone) in comparison to group 2. Interestingly, group 1 reported to be more satisfied than group 2. The researchers concluded, a high caloric breakfast with reduced food intake at dinner is beneficial and may be a useful alternative for the management of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

Mechanism: In this section, I’ll outline a couple different theories as to how caloric front loading may lead to greater weight loss.

Circadian rhythms are influenced by the supra chiasmatic nuclei (in the brain) which is synchronized by the light and dark cycle. This is why we wake up feeling energized in the morning and get tired and sleepy at night. Recently, other clocks have been discovered in the body, called peripheral clocks and they’ve been found in adipose tissue, the liver and the gut. It seems that meal timing and feeding exert strong effects on peripheral clocks and are implicated in appetite, blood pressure, blood sugar and fat metabolism. Eating heavier in the morning seems to better control appetite during the day leading to less food consumption throughout the day, hence weight loss.
It seems that dietary induced thermogenesis (DIT) (the energy it takes to process, and use food) varies throughout the day. DIT is highest in the morning, followed by the afternoon and evening. This extra energy expenditure during the morning may be contributing to more weight loss.

It’s important to know that there is evidence that shows that caloric front loading may not lead to greater weight loss. A systematic review and meta analysis done in 2017 concluded that caloric frontloading did not cause significant weight change. However, the article did say that there was a significant amount of heterogeneity among the trials (differences in how the studies were done and quality of the studies). In short, current research shows that caloric front loading may or may not be a useful clinical strategy to lose weight but more research is needed.

Conclusion: Many small clinical trials are showing many benefits of caloric front loading; greater weight loss, greater fat loss, smaller waist circumference, better blood sugar control, increased satiety, improved triglyceride levels. Other studies show that there may be little to no benefit but more research is needed. In North American culture, it may be difficult to implement front loading because it’s much more common to backload calories (eating more calories later on in the day) and it may make it difficult to enjoy family dinners and outings. However, if you’re looking to try something new that doesn’t require any extra money, you should consider front loading your calories.

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