Metabolic and Mental Health
When I Skipped Breakfasts for Two Decades, I Gained Copious Benefits.
I explain how skipping breakfast and replacing it with three better routines made me healthier and fitter.
Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day, in my opinion.
Learned from parents, teachers, and friends, I used to naively believe that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.
There were better options. Discovering the idea of breakfast not being the most important meal of the day significantly impacted my health and fitness transformation.
Skipping breakfast was the beginning of my sustainable fat-loss journey, as I did not want to be diabetic, obese, or depressed.
Trusting we are what we eat, I decided to reduce the quantity of food while increasing the quality. Therefore, the most viable option for me was to skip breakfast which was the easiest option at the time.
As an empty stomach in the mornings provided numerous benefits to me, I haven’t consumed a single breakfast over the last 20 years by choice with no side effects and many great benefits.
Food is essential for the energy to survive and maintain our cells for our well-being. However, too much food puts the body under stress and causes undesirable health conditions like obesity and metabolic syndrome.
Interestingly, more people die from excessive food consumption than from starvation. Both are extreme situations and need different protocols to address.
My focus is on the effects of overeating in this article. Therefore, I pay attention to what we could do to reduce the impact of excess food with simple lifestyle changes.
Timing our eating in a fasting window is a lifestyle choice for many healthy and fit people.
First, I want to point out that time-restricted eating, also known as intermittent fasting, is not a fad diet. It is a lifestyle choice and a medical procedure practiced by qualified healthcare professionals to address some metabolic issues.
Skipping breakfast is a technique some people and practitioners use as a protocol.
After providing the compelling reasons I decided to skip breakfast and the results I obtained in the last 20 years, I will discuss three routines to replace it, which provided me with better outcomes.
Notable Reasons for Skipping Breakfast
There were numerous reasons for me to skip breakfast. Nonetheless, I had two compelling reasons to make my decision in the first place. The first one was to reduce excess glucose in the bloodstream and have a better insulin profile for metabolic health.
Besides, I also wanted to make my body more leptin sensitive to relieve my hunger pangs caused by emotional eating.
During that period, I was at the onset of diabetes and experiencing symptoms of metabolic syndrome. In addition, my waistline was growing due to frequent meals supplemented with multiple snacks between the main meals.
The second reason was to initiate autophagy for cellular cleansing. My primary health issue was chronic inflammation causing back and joint pains. In addition, some foods caused triggering autoimmune responses with arthritis symptoms.
I shared my experience in defeating arthritis and bloating in previous stories before. Skipping breakfast was one of the contributors to my success in addressing the symptoms of arthritis and bloating.
So, working on these two goals brought several benefits. Skipping breakfast became a catalyst for achieving these goals. Besides, some advantages were by-products of replacing breakfast with other habits that I explain under the three headings below.
What was the problem with eating a regular breakfast?
Firstly, when I used to eat breakfast, I spent almost an hour each day before going to work. After each breakfast, I used to feel lethargic for at least two hours until the digestion process was complete.
Then, since blood sugar started dropping, I felt hungry again even though my body had plenty of untapped energy.
Blood sugar fluctuations can cause physical and emotional hunger when the body only operates in glucose mode. Then after eating lunch, I spent another hour and felt lethargic for two more hours. Thus, my creativity and productivity diminished.
Lethargy at work compelled me to go home and prepare my dinner. After so much food with breakfast, lunch, and snacks, I added more calories to my body which were already abundant in stagnant energy. However, dinner naturally made me sluggish, which was good for my sleep.
Yet, I desired to go to bed on an empty stomach to sleep better. My poor stomach, gut, and liver were busy for 24 hours digesting food that they did not need in the first place.
Unfortunately, as cutting lunch and breakfast did not seem feasible at the time, I decided to cut breakfast. I am glad to have made this decision to skip breakfast instead of other meals that had additional benefits that I desired at the time.
Not eating in the morning increased my fasting window. This is because lack of food in the mornings puts the body in fat-burning mode after glycogen stores are consumed. In addition, after a 12-hour fast window, the body starts producing ketones increasing mental energy and reducing hunger. Autophagy was the bonus of this process.
Benefits of Replacing Breakfast with Other Routines
Removing a habit is very difficult unless with replaces it with better habits. As my body got addicted to breakfast for many years, I needed to address this addiction with a substitute.
First, I looked at the functional aspect of breakfast in my life. The primary function was energy and increasing feel-good neurochemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins.
I needed the physical and mental energy to start my day like everyone else. Then, I needed to increase energy to activate fat burning and sustain my energy throughout the day.
When I checked my daily schedule, I noticed that at least 45 minutes of my time was spent preparing and eating my breakfast in a rush preventing me from doing other activities before going to work.
I thought replacing this time with more enjoyable and productive habits could address my behavioral change by reducing the effects of the breakfast addiction.
During my studies, I learned the importance of fasting on the brain. Interestingly, the body starts the healing process by balancing hormones and biochemicals when we fast.
In addition, the body begins burning stored fat as the insulin hormone stays silent, making the body more insulin sensitive in the long run and allowing us to lose visceral fat effectively.
When we don’t eat for a while, growth hormone rises, making us feel better and contributing to muscle retention. Since the stomach, gut, and liver have a chance to relax and recover, inflammation drops and bloating goes away.
Moreover, ketones as signaling molecules might further reduce inflammation and make us feel more comfortable doing our job or daily chores.
So my point is fasting allowed me to undertake additional activities such as cold showers, joyful workouts, and meditation. These three activities serve different purposes for the body and mind, which I will explain briefly in subsequent sections.
1– Cold Showers (5 Minutes)
I know cold showers sound scary and horrible. It was the same for me when I started. Despite many years of experience, my body still reacts to it.
But this reaction brings numerous health and fitness benefits, as I explained in this article titled A Cold Shower a Day Might Keep the Doctor Away in My Experience.
After understanding the benefits of cold exposure for the body and brain from reviews and observations, I decided to try cold showers, which were easier and gentler than icebaths.
My goal was to create hormonal shifts and initiate essential neurochemicals. Thus, I decided to take the risk of initial discomfort to gain comfort in the long term.
The most significant and noticeable benefit of cold showers in the morning was to wake me up quickly, boost my mood, and increase energy. It made me forget breakfast and coffee by making better effects on the body and mind.
As I explained in the subsequent section, this first prong in my solution toolbox made me ready to move my body.
2–Joyful Workouts with Music (30 Minutes)
Movement is another tool that can make hormonal effects and activate some neurochemicals in the brain. In addition, music is an excellent tool to connect the body and mind.
As cold showers gave required energy, starting the workout sessions became very easy for me. I have an indoor gym with practical tools allowing me to do cardio and resistance training. However, my favorite workouts are calisthenics, such as pushups, which do not require training equipment.
First, I did five minutes of warming up using Yoga and Pilates workouts that stretched my muscles and prepared me for subsequent workouts. I love planking like Audrey, Who Eliminated Back Pain and Transformed Her Appearance by Dedicating to Six Minute Planks Daily.
Then 15 minutes of resistance and calisthenics activated the muscles. After that, 10 minutes of hopping on the indoor trampoline with uplifting music I boosted my mood quickly. As a result of these joyful movements, I was full of energy.
Since the exercise raised the cortisol, I needed to reduce this stress hormone to gain fat-burning benefits. In addition, when cortisol is high, we feel hungry. So my goal was to suppress hunger feelings by balancing my cortisol levels. The ideal solution was to undertake meditation to relax the body and mind.
3–Meditation (10 Minutes)
While meditating, we allow the body physically to rest as we either sit still or lie down. I usually sit in the lotus position, taking years to learn and acclimate to.
However, the most significant contributor of meditation is to clear the clutter in mind caused by unwanted thoughts. When meditating, I don’t reject thoughts or feelings. Instead, I observe and acknowledge each thought and sensation by labeling them. Then, I let them pass through and disappear.
The feeling of letting go might reduce cortisol and balance neurotransmitters. Furthermore, continuous meditation focusing on the breath and bodily sensations can increase focus and rewire the brain.
Just a ten-minute meditation session in the mornings calmed my body and mind. Due to benefits, later, I increased it to 20 minutes. After meditation sessions, I did not feel any hunger. Since the body was already exercised and relaxed, it put me in a balanced position from a hormonal perspective. As a result, I forgot about hunger and did not want to eat breakfast.
Conclusions and Takeaways
After initial observations, I noticed that breakfasts were just habits for me. My body did not need food in the mornings. It already had sufficient energy. However, the energy was in the stored format, so it needed to create new chemicals to tap into the body fat.
Consequently, skipping breakfast prepared me for creating this chemical composure preparing the body from using glucose to stored fat. After a few months, my body became fat-adapted, using fat in the absence of food.
I explained the mechanism and benefits of a fat-adapted state in this article titled Become Fat-Adapted and Trim Waistline in Three Steps.
Changing behavior, especially if it is an addiction, can be challenging for many people. For example, breakfast was an addiction for me as it created instant dopamine in the mornings. Regardless, I also needed hormonal balance using the three habits I used to replace breakfasts.
Eating food gives us pleasure. Nevertheless, we mainly need food for energy and the body’s nutritional requirements. Therefore, presenting it to the body in an adequate amount and quality is critical. Nonetheless, excessive food, especially empty calories, can cause serious health risks.
Breakfasts added unneeded calories to my body and made me feel hungrier for my next meals and snacks. Removing breakfast reduced the number of unnecessary sugar spikes and insulin releases. My digestive system had a chance to rest and recover, putting me in a metabolically advantaged position.
Skipping breakfast for over two decades did not cause any side effects for me. Instead, it brought me numerous metabolic and mental health benefits. In addition, it allowed my body to become fully fat-adapted and skip another meal.
Leveraging the background of this article, in another story, I want to discuss the mechanism and benefits of a one-meal-a-day (OMAD) lifestyle that transformed my health and fitness. My next goal after skipping breakfast was to skip lunch which also caused some issues at the time.
I understand that skipping meals is not for everyone. Some people need to eat multiple times due to underlying health conditions. However, many healthy people achieve this goal and reap benefits. I want to highlight that it is essential to discuss any time-restricted eating with qualified healthcare professionals before starting.
Intermittent fasting has become an excellent lifestyle choice for countless people, including professional athletes. In addition, some healthcare professionals use fasting as a tool to solve metabolic and mental health issues. Besides, reducing calories to an optimal state might significantly impact our longevity.
So, in conclusion, as a sensible biohacker, after skipping breakfast for over two decades, I gained the following seven benefits in summary.
I made my body more insulin sensitive and receptive to leptin signals.
I lost around 50 pounds of visceral fat.
I gained more muscles and maintained them.
I gained a defined belly and eliminated loose skin.
I reduced chronic inflammation defeating arthritis symptoms.
I healed my brain fog and mild depression.
I initiated autophagy and made my mitochondria denser.
As a bonus, the next meals tasted more delicious after skipping breakfast.
In short, apart from improving my energy and mood for creativity and productivity, skipping breakfast every day contributed to healing a dozen of debilitating health conditions over the last two decades. I am grateful to live with abundant energy and joy.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Here is a glimpse of my fat loss journey.
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