What comes to your mind when you think of Breakfast? Syrup dripping Pancakes? Donuts? Or Butter laden Paratha? Poori-sabji? May be Poha? For me the image is always Pancakes or Poha :D. If you think about it, there is a huge discrepancy between what we associate this word Breakfast to, and what it actually means. When we think of Breakfast, our brain automatically bypasses its simple meaning and shows us images of all these high carb foods that we can eat in the morning without feeling guilty.
But, did you ever stop and think what does this word Breakfast actually mean?
Simple common sense suggests that the word Breakfast means Break - Fast. Simply put, it signifies the meal you break your fast with. It does not specify the time you should eat it or what type of food you should eat in it. So why do we associate this word to our morning meal? That my friend is the biggest myth and conspiracy of the century but it is a story for another day.
So let me rephrase my question more accurately now: Is the morning meal really important? And the answer is absolutely NOT! We don't need to eat in the morning and we should not. And this is coming from me, the one who physically could not skip a meal 2 years back. My limbs used to tremble and shiver if I did not eat every 3 hours. I used to somehow manage to reach office and the 1st thing I did once there was eat my breakfast. Today, I eat 1 meal a day which is dinner and I feel more energetic than before.
So what has changed? I will state a fact and I am sure you may have noticed it too in life. The fact that we are creatures of habit and our body loves habit. You think you are hungry in the morning but the fact is that your body is expecting food in the morning just because you have been eating at that same time everyday for so long. Same goes with sleep, you will automatically be sleepy at a certain time because that is when you slept for the past few days. You will stop feeling hungry at a certain time if you break the habit and don't eat that time for 5-10 days because that will become your new habit. But, we have been told that our body has been starving whole night while we slept. We need to eat in the morning to replenish our glucose reserve so that our body can function properly. That is simply not true. First of all, it can take days to use up your glucose reserve and even if you run out of it, why do you think are you carrying all this fat around in your body? Did you think it was just there for looks? Or were you saving it for special occasions :D?
Do you think that the ancient humans had morning meal as their breakfast? No, infact to get their meal they had to work hard, walk, run, hunt which took hours before they could get few bites and they did not faint while hunting :-P. The morning meal is the most unimportant meal of the day. I mean what do you need it for? You will get up in the morning, sit in the bus or your car on the way to office, sit again for 8 hours in office, sit further on the way home, come back home and again sit while the cooks and maids work for you. We barely use the energy we gained in one meal through the day but we somehow manage eating up to 6 times a day!
Our body has its own mechanisms to provide you with ample energy without the intake of food. It is a simple concept, your body will use the stored body fat as fuel in the absence of food. And especially in the morning your body releases a hormone called Cortisol which jump starts your body, pumps glucose into your blood and gets you pumped to start the day. So frankly, you do not "need" to eat in the morning. Infact by eating in the morning you are unnecessarily increasing your blood glucose even more and now your body has far more fuel than it needs which will get stored as fat. Rather than using the previously stored fat you are now adding to it. Skipping meal in the morning gives you the perfect opportunity to access and utilize your stored body fat reserve. But because of eating unnecessary meals, we are becoming increasingly efficient at storing fat and increasingly inefficient at burning that stored fat. So let your body work for you and it will love you for that!
