New Study Finds that Eating a Big Breakfast Does NOT Help You Lose Weight

Because of their busy lifestyles, many people tend to eat most of their calories at night and the least in the morning, limiting their breakfast intake or even skipping the meal altogether!
As you may know, experts have thought for a long time that eating a lot for dinner can hinder weight loss or even lead to weight gain.
With that being said, they would advise making breakfast your biggest meal instead and dinner, the lightest!
The most common argument to support this idea would be that eating more calories early in the day “shifts metabolism” in a way that helps with weight loss, as per Dr. David Katz.
The founder of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center shared this and more via a CNN interview.
However, according to a new clinical trial, eating a big breakfast does not impact weight loss at all!
Katz, who wasn’t directly involved in the study, shared his educated opinion that “With calories either morning loaded or evening loaded, the researchers found almost identical weight loss.”
Furthermore, he pointed out that all “magical effects” of breakfast eating on metabolism were also debunked, praising the study as “extremely rigorous.”
“Thus, this research belies the contention that eating earlier alters metabolism in a way that favors greater weight loss,” he adds.
This new research was published in the Cell Metabolism journal on Friday.
As part of it, 30 overweight or obese but otherwise, healthy people, ate 45 percent of their daily calories in the morning for 4 weeks.
The rest of their assigned calories were consumed as follows: 35 percent at lunch and the rest of 20 percent, during dinner.
After this first full month, the same group switched the percentages, consuming 45 percent of their calories for dinner and 20 percent as breakfast.
Alexandra Johnstone, the study’s co-author, goes on to share that “Participants were provided with all of their meals for 8 weeks, and their energy expenditure and body composition were monitored for changes.”
Still, it’s worth mentioning that eating a bigger breakfast does come with some benefits, in particular for those who feel hungry a lot throughout the day.
The study found that eating more in the morning can help curb your appetite.
Johnstone explains that “appetite control is important in order to achieve weight loss, and the study suggests that people consuming the most calories in the morning felt less hungry, as opposed to when they consumed more calories in the evening period.”