Why skipping breakfast when you’re middle-aged can make you gain weight
Choosing to skip breakfast in your mid-50s instead of eating a healthy and hearty morning meal could cause you to gain weight, a study has found.
About 380 Spaniards with the ‘metabolic syndrome’ took part in a study over three years, collecting data on their health, weight and eating habits.
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk for heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
These include elevated blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels.
The study found that a hearty breakfast, which makes up 20 to 30 percent of a person’s daily calorie intake, was better than a small breakfast or no breakfast at all.
Choosing to skip breakfast instead of having a healthy and filling morning meal could cause you to gain weight, a study shows
NHS guidelines recommend 2,000 calories per day for women and 2,500 for men. A healthy breakfast should make up 20 to 25 percent of a person’s daily calorie intake and include a variety of foods.
People in the study who had a breakfast of about 400 calories had a lower BMI than those who skipped breakfast, The Telegraph reported. Their waists were also an inch smaller.
Those who had a large breakfast were unhealthier and taller than those who skipped breakfast, the study found.
The study’s author, Karla-Alejandra Pérez-Vega, from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona, told The Telegraph that they looked “exclusively” at analyzing breakfast and so cannot say whether it is the most important meal of the day.
However, she added, “It is undoubtedly an important meal as it performs the crucial role of breaking the extended fast from sleep.”
A healthy breakfast should make up 20 to 25 percent of a person’s daily calorie intake and include a variety of foods according to NHS guidelines
She added that those who skipped breakfast were also among the group that consumed less energy.
She said they “showed higher weight values” over time compared to those who had a hearty but healthy breakfast.
But she said a full English breakfast would not meet the criteria of a well-balanced breakfast as it could ‘exceed energy and saturated fat levels’.
MailOnline previously reported that eating breakfast before 7am could increase life expectancy.
Researchers from the City University of New York followed more than 34,000 Americans over the age of 40 for decades.
Volunteers recorded eating times and scientists compared these with mortality rates over the course of the study.
The results, published in the Journal of Nutrition, showed that those who eat breakfast between 6am and 7am are six percent less likely to die prematurely from serious diseases such as heart disease or cancer than those who regularly eat breakfast at 8am, and 12 percent less at 8am. risk of premature death than others who ate for the first time at 10 a.m.