Skipping breakfast - no difference in weight loss. But what about men with prostate cancer?

[JimJimJimJim]

Jim Marshall (not a doctor) said ...

Lower weight people more often have breakfast.

 

But which way does it work:

• Does having breakfast help to be lower weight? or
  
• Does being lower weight make breakfast more attractive?
  

 

We had better find out before we recommend that people should skip breakfast, or not skip breakfast.

 

In the study below, they found that in people trying to lose weight, it did not matter whether they skipped breakfast or not.

 

So, for weight loss, breakfast does not matter.

 

But wait ... there's more ... 

For men who have:

• diabetes,
  
• pre-diabetes, 
  
• high blood sugar levels sometimes,
  
• metabolic syndrome,
  
• significant hormone therapy which often leads to metabolic syndrome,
  

breakfast is probably important.

 

Regular, smaller meals help in these cases.

Skipping breakfast and making other meals larger puts more strain on your body making insulin.

 

In short

For men with advanced prostate cancer it probably is not wise to skip breakfast, even if you are hoping to lose weight. This study shows that you will not find losing weight any easier by skipping breakfast.

... end Jim

 

Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 Jun 4;100(2):507-513. [Epub ahead of print]

The effectiveness of breakfast recommendations on weight loss: a randomized controlled trial.

Dhurandhar EJ, Dawson J, Alcorn A, Larsen LH, Thomas EA, Cardel M, Bourland AC, Astrup A, St-Onge MP, Hill JO, Apovian CM, Shikany JM, Allison DB.

Author information

 

 

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Breakfast is associated with lower body weight in observational studies. Public health authorities commonly recommend breakfast consumption to reduce obesity, but the effectiveness of adopting these recommendations for reducing body weight is unknown.OBJECTIVE: We tested the relative effectiveness of a recommendation to eat or skip breakfast on weight loss in adults trying to lose weight in a free-living setting.

DESIGN:

We conducted a multisite, 16-wk, 3-parallel-arm randomized controlled trial in otherwise healthy overweight and obese adults [body mass index (in kg/m2) between 25 and 40] aged 20-65 y. Our primary outcome was weight change. We compared weight change in a control group with weight loss in experimental groups told to eat breakfast or to skip breakfast [no breakfast (NB)]. Randomization was stratified by prerandomization breakfast eating habits. A total of 309 participants were randomly assigned.RESULTS: A total of 283 of the 309 participants who were randomly assigned completed the intervention. Treatment assignment did not have a significant effect on weight loss, and there was no interaction between initial breakfast eating status and treatment. Among skippers, mean (±SD) baseline weight-, age-, sex-, site-, and race-adjusted weight changes were -0.71 ± 1.16, -0.76 ± 1.26, and -0.61 ± 1.18 kg for the control, breakfast, and NB groups, respectively. Among breakfast consumers, mean (±SD) baseline weight-, age-, sex-, site-, and race-adjusted weight changes were -0.53 ± 1.16, -0.59 ± 1.06, and -0.71 ± 1.17 kg for the control, breakfast, and NB groups, respectively. Self-reported compliance with the recommendation was 93.6% for the breakfast group and 92.4% for the NB group.Conclusions: A recommendation to eat or skip breakfast for weight loss was effective at changing self-reported breakfast eating habits, but contrary to widely espoused views this had no discernable effect on weight loss in free-living adults who were attempting to lose weight. This trial was registered at clinicaltrails.gov as NCT01781780.

© 2014 American Society for Nutrition.

PMID: 2489823

 

This extract can be found on http://PubMed.com, and is in the public domain.

On PubMed.com there will be a link to the full paper (often $30, sometimes free).

 

Any highlighting (except the title) is not by the author, but by Jim Marshall.

Jim is not a doctor.