Episode 20. Do You Really Need Breakfast? Here's What You Need to Know

To eat breakfast or not to eat breakfast?  That is the question! 

There's so much conflicting information about whether to eat breakfast out there. Let's chat about:

• How Intermittent Fasting plays a role in your decision
• Listening to your hunger cues
• How eating or not eating breakfast can affect the rest of your day, for better or worse
• How struggling with food cravings in the evening may be related to breakfast
• And more!

Thank you for listening! We love you latte!

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-Ashley & Carrie
This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice.

Transcript

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hey it's Carrie and Ashley we welcome you to the self-care Cafe we are both

health professionals and moms and nature lovers and food lovers and love helping

women get over dieting and just start living we think that talking about

bodies and perfect bodies and dieting is just

boring did we put you to sleep there Carrie yes so if you are ready to ditch

dieting and get to living and talk about more important things then you are in the right place we don't put shame and

guilt on the menu here you don't even have to tip us nope come hang with us the advice is

free we want to have a bunch of girlfriends to just hang out with and get real with and it's time to start

living

ladies hello Carrie hello Ashley how are

you I'm okay fighting a cold or something so if I cough

or any of that good stuff please forgive me yep I think that we can do

that so what's on the menu for today so I think that we want to talk about

whether we should eat breakfast or not and all the conversations we can have

about that yeah this is such a great topic because if you do there's so much

different information on this um an advice you know Dr Google right that um

yeah this is such a confusing topic for so many people

definitely so I guess we are gonna talk

about a couple different pieces of it because like Carrie said there's a lot of information out there and there's a

lot of um different information out there or conflicting information so

we're going to kind of go through some of the different pieces of that and figure out should you or shouldn't you

um and yeah so I think one of the biggest pieces right now is um intermittent

fasting is kind of a big deal at this current what is that yeah so

intermittent fasting is basically you're not eating for a set

amount of hours during the day or I guess you are eating only a certain amount of hours per day so basically

you're fasting for a certain period of time so some people do it where um they

fast until like noon or 2 o'clock and then their eating window is only from 2

o'l in the afternoon until they go to bed for example yeah or yeah and it and that's

different right like depending on what you're reading um Whose advice you're taking some of them are like from noon

to 5 or it it just depends remember we're all fasting basically through the

night right quote unquote fasting that's where the word breakfast comes from because you're breaking your

fast um and yeah intermittent fasting um

again there's all there's different ways to do it there's not one way to do that either but we're going to talk a little

bit about um what the research shows about it and more definitely so intermittent

fasting is again a form of dieting like we've talked about in the past because

it's having you rely on external cues for your hunger and fullness and how

that works with intermittent fasting is again because you're relying on the clock basically to tell you when you're

supposed to be eating that's that external cue it's not coming from your own body so that's one thing that I

don't love about intermittent fasting because Carrie and I talk a lot about the intuitive eating aspect which is

relying more on your own cues than relying on outside cues for eating for

fullness for preferences right right and and in

intermittent fasting basically you're not eating breakfast right which brings

us back to that topic is well is breakfast necessary um should you be eating breakfast we I'm sure you know if

you're parent you probably have um a child or children that may or may not

want to eat breakfast in the morning it's too early they say it gives them a belly ache or whatever it is um and yet

we hear we get pressure from um you know medical providers that you know kids

need to be eating breakfast um so what what is the truth

let's sift some of this out yeah so there's a lot of different studies out

there and Carrie and I were actually looking some up before we jumped on and it's so like

5050 it was it was yes you should do it because of XYZ reasons or no you

shouldn't because of XYZ reasons um and it was really interesting and I think

just to kind of give you the the spoiler alert it's more about what works for you

so there isn't really a great yes or no answer I think but again we'll go

through some like different points that we hear from a lot of people and kind of break those down

so um and just back to the studies for a minute with all of those research

studies there's so many things about research studies that can sway the like

results or the conclusion of those research studies like how many people did they include what did they actually

do um who paid for the study that's a big one um so like for instance let's

say Quaker pays for a study on breakfast right um that is going to be skewed

because those researchers are being paid by Quaker to come up with the results that they would like to them to come up

with um or to hopefully come up with it with the results they right so they can

any researcher can skew um data or skew their research practices to try to get

their hypothesis to come out as true right so um and we're not I mean research is

important right like we all in in the B the thing with research is you actually want to because sometimes remember in

the past thinking they did another stinking study on that like we already know that right but that's the whole

point with research you want to be able to replicate those results because then that shows remember correlation versus

causation we've talked about this before like you really can't prove causation in

most cases um so it's more correlation so what is correlated what is linked

what is associated with XYZ right so then you want to the more studies that

show that and get that same correlation the stronger the correlation is right

exactly so you can't you can't go by one study that says this right right because

other Studies have to replicate those results to really to strengthen that correlation right exactly and it makes

it more like kri said we can't necessarily prove it but it makes it more true for more people basically and

another thing about research too is when excuse me when media pulls information

from research studies sometimes they're only pulling one sentence out of this

like 50 page research document um and that doesn't necessarily reflect the

whole of it either right so just one sentence of it doesn't necessarily show

that that's that what saying is what they actually found right and and

researchers and and um you know journals they want that headline they want the media to cover so they'll come up with a

headline so just um beware be wary of um

falling for just the headline or like Ashley said that one sentence um that

and we're all human right like we're all like well I want to find I want to prove

that inter minute fast works and so you're going to look for

those studies that show that it works but there's also just as many studies that show that it it doesn't um and you

can find that's the whole thing too you can find a study on no matter what you're going your angle is um you can

find research to support that so like Ashley already said the point is to

figure out what works for you and I would encourage you also to be honest with yourself like if you want so badly

for intermittent fasting to work for you to lose weight or whatever it is that you're going for right you you want be

just we're asking you to keep an open mind and be honest with yourself and um

to figure out remember like we're going to talk about those hunger cues a lot today so being aware that hunger doesn't

always mean that grumbly grumbly T tummy right there are other things that that

show that are you know hung h cues as well and being open-minded and honest

with yourself is like oh okay well maybe this is why this is happening right and to go along with that just because what

you're doing now seems to be quote unquote working for you I think it's important to like Carrie said kind of

take a step back and say okay well I think this is working and is it really

working or is it maybe related to something else that's going on the rest

of my day that I didn't really put together before um so for example if you're not eating

breakfast or maybe not eating enough at breakfast um are you starting your day

off with low energy are you drinking a lot of coffee and just a quick side note

coffee is not breakfast I think that sometimes and

I've noticed this myself too I don't drink a lot of coffee I barely drink

half a cup of coffee probably and by half a cup I mean like 4 o um like literally a half a cup um and

sometimes I find that when I drink my coffee I'm not hungry and when I push my

coffee back sometimes I'm hungrier earlier and I know that coffee can kind of um quiet down your hunger signals so

it's easy to be like oh I had my coffee and I don't feel hungry so I'm not going to eat breakfast um

so again just being kind of open with what you're doing and is this

working um how is my whole day instead of just what is the first couple hours of my day look

like yeah it's a good point because if you're are not a breakfast eater or you

have a child who doesn't want to eat breakfast the other thing to consider is

when will be the first time you're able to eat right so if you're taking off a kid's taking off to school you're taking

off to work um you may or may not get a break or maybe you're in a meeting during the break and they you know don't

want to hear your munching on a snack um or maybe your

kids depending on their age right they may or may not get a chance to have a morning snack um these are all factors

that come into play um as to whether or not you decide to eat breakfast you know

I know some people that I just can't even imagine eating first thing when I get out um and there are some mornings I

feel like that too and then there are other mornings we like I'm like I need something now right I want to eat

breakfast now um so again even if you have a certain you know look at like you

can change for yourself like some mornings I push breakfast off because I'm really just I'm just not hungry um

and I have I am lucky that I you know work for myself and I have the luxury of having a snack when I want it

um but other mornings I wake up and my stomach is rumbling and I feel like I

just really need to get something to eat definitely and and again like Carrie just said it's all about listening to

your body and what it's telling you and so one thing I hear all the time is well

I don't usually eat breakfast maybe for years and so I'm not hungry at breakfast

time and this one I think is super tricky because like k said for her some

days she doesn't feel like eating breakfast right off but she will maybe a little later and other people just

aren't hungry for breakfast anymore because they haven't eaten it in so long so what's the answer there do we eat

breakfast even though we're not hungry or do we continue not to eat breakfast and again I think it comes down

to maybe experimenting a little bit because if you are getting that low

energy or even um like low Focus like poor concent conentration during the day

those could all be hunger signals um headaches if you suffer from headaches during the day um if you get irritated

or hangry um those are all hunger signals that could be related to not eating

breakfast um and so it's kind of down to that experimentation that I love so much

try having something for breakfast it doesn't even matter what it is um

something r just read my mind so I'm like oh I've got to remember to bring up like because some people don't like

breakfast foods right right who's to say you have to eat breakfast EXA exactly

have whatever I don't care what it is have fruit have toast have yogurt have cold pizza have last dinner leftovers

have a sandwich have a yeah whatever there's no there are no rules that say you must eat you know breakfast foods

for breakfast right or granola bar if you're pressed for time or if it's if this is new for you again the

experimentation phase and just kind of notice how that goes for you um and for

me personally I was just telling Carrie about this and I've mentioned it before in our episodes I definitely need a

really light breakfast um in the morning and then usually I'm hungry for

something more like an hour maybe two later so I think of it as like a pre-breakfast or a breakfast appetizer

like it's not my full breakast breakast I'm going to have something in a couple hours and then I'll have a

lunch a couple hours after that um but that's what work best works best for me because my bell is not the best in the

morning and so finding what works for you something like that it doesn't have to be a full meal is basically what

we're saying like I think we think of breakfast lunch dinner as these like big meals but that doesn't mean they have to

be like that there's no rules about maybe it's just a snack instead of

breakfast but we're just calling it breakfast right yeah and sometimes I know um when my kids sometimes if they

just aren't in the mood for full breakfast before school um well here's

you know here's a chocolate milk you know just to get have something

um in them or like ask about fruit um you can make smoothies the Smoothie is

great too because you can kind of if you're not a big breakfast eater but you want that energy boost if you make a

smoothie you can sip on it so it's not something that's you know um you're not

gonna if your belly has a hard time with food first thing in the morning um a smoothie or something along those lines

can just sort of help get your energy level up and without overfilling your

belly right and then yeah pay attention to how it changes your day are you still

getting headaches how's your energy level um how are your meals the rest of

the day because another thing that happens to a lot of people is they're not eating breakfast or they're not

eating enough at breakfast and maybe then again at lunch maybe they're not eating enough during the day in general

and then I bet probably eight out of 10 clients that I see feel like they're

eating quote unquote too much in the evening and they're feeling cravings and they're feeling frustrated around food

at night and most of the time it's because we're not eating enough during the day and then our body realizes hey

we're going to go to bed soon and we didn't get enough fuel so you need to feed me um and again that's where those

Cravings come in that's where that feeling of like out of control around food might come in because we didn't get

enough during the day so our body's like let's make up for this right now yeah that's a great Point our bodies

are so smart yes um they our your body knows what it needs to run efficiently

um um and it lets you know that so your job is to to try to control that

is to listen to it and provide what your body needs to work its best right and so

you know I think a lot of obviously there can be other reasons too like if your brain foggy or can't concentrate or

Focus there are other things that it could be as well but at least start with nourishing your body and giving it a

Fighting Chance right um you obviously you know could might be menopause it might be you're not getting enough sleep

um might be stress um but at least start with nourishing your body um and when

you are nourishing your body the other things are easier to take care of and

work on also um so start there is my my

opinion and advice for sure and another thing too is mood because if we're not

eating enough during the day in general or breakfast or whatever if you notice

that you have um like a more low mood or more anxiety um food is definitely

another piece that can affect that and I think that there's also this other piece

of like well you quote unquote should eat all these fruits and vegetables to help with mood but if we're not eating

enough to begin with that's more important than just focusing on fruits

and vegetables I think because not eating enough is going to lower your

mood and yes we can help our mood with fruits and veggies and stuff but we have to be eating enough

first right and if you're eating just fruits and vegetables there's yes

there's protein in that but they're going to digest much quicker also so if

you're not having another form of protein with them um you know nuts um

peanut butter nut butter or you know Dairy meat fish whatever it is um seeds

you know it's going to digest um faster if you have just that Apple like I If

you have just an apple 15 minutes later I'm starving again you know right but

that that brings up another good point too um when you mentioned anxiety Ashley um when one of my son was struggling

with this when he was in high school we just took a look at his his diet when he

was eating well breakfast was usually poptarts or toaster strudles he was a sugar Hound like he he

just had a real sweet tooth um and once we went to like eggs and toast or

something like you know something with some quality protein in it to help prevent that big Big Sugar

Spike and resulting crash his his anxiety and his mood I it was incredible

like how much it helped um so that's another thing too to look at is and

we're not saying avoid all sugar or anything like that just saying if you are eating mostly simple carbs that are

high in sugar and um those can to affect your mood and your anxiety big time yeah

and like here saying we're not telling you what to do we're encouraging you to

look at what you're doing and see how it's making you feel during the day

right for sure and then I guess another piece of it is I hear a lot of people

tell me that if they when they eat breakfast they end up being hungrier

during the day and this is really interesting um it kind of goes hand

inand with the whole like when you look up should I eat breakfast it we saw a hundred times when we were

just looking at all these things online a lot of them said that it jump starts your metabolism and that's kind of I

think what a lot of people think when they think about should I eat breakfast um and I guess to a point to

clarify that eating breakfast jump starts your metabolism right yes and I

think that that's sort of true it's just

like a weird way to say and I guess it's sort of like instead of getting into all the science behind it it was the best

phrase that you could come up with yeah yeah your metabolism is always working

right exactly you always have a metabolism yes always even when you're

sleeping but yeah like we said kind of having that first meal or snack or food

whatever you're up for it does sort of say hey

we're awake we're eating um our blood sugar goes up because anytime we eat anything that's what happens um and it

kind of says oh we're going to be eating consistently for the day um so we don't

have to worry about where we're getting food or when we're getting food we're just going to be getting

food um and when we don't eat for a long time like if we going from dinner at 5

or 6 p.m. the night before until noon lunch the next day that's a really long

time and when we eat like that we can tend to turn off our hunger signals and

I think a lot of people are like oh yeah that's great I want to do that yes but again that's when we can fall into that

evening eating issues I guess um when

we're realizing or our bodies realizing hey we didn't eat enough today I'm going to have everything in the house and so

look at what your meal schedule looks like and where are these like I don't

like to say problematic areas but these like struggle areas I guess where you're

feeling like something's not right for you like

Cravings that are extreme or feeling out of control around the food all those pieces and evening eating

can be related to breakfast which I don't think a lot of us think

about yeah for sure sorry I feel a cough that's okay that's okay um yeah so

eating breakfast in the morning can help you get adequate nutrition during

the day because again with things like intermittent fasting if your window is only five or six hours of eating or

whatever that's not very much time to get all of the food that you need in for the whole day um and whether you're

doing it on purpose or not right so you might be intermittent fasting without meaning to if you're skipping

breakfast yeah and I feel like too if you have such a short small window of time to eat it's almost encouraging

disorder to eating yeah because and and overeating like it's like oh my gosh I

got to get everything in like I my body doesn't work like that I by Nature tend

to be more of a grazer y because if I over stuff my belly I just I pay for it

and I feel like garbage right uh so it it just when you kind of stop and take a

step back and think about it um it just in my opinion it just seems like it

encourages more overeating on on some level and and ultimately disordered

eating right yeah because you're going for however many hours and you're probably hungry at by the time you get

to your eating window right like over hungry probably like I could eat a horse hungry and then like Carrie said you're

probably like eating huge meals and how is that making you feel it's like that

restriction overeating pendulum that we've talked about before because when we're restricting and then we finally

allow ourselves to eat we might overdo it and that's really like Carrie said not necessar quotequote normal eating

it's a little bit more of a disordered eating behavior and how are you feeling like

emotionally and mentally through this period are you feeling like you can't

stop eating um because that's definitely not quotequote normal is either it's

normalized that's definitely true um but there's there's ways to not have to do

that yeah and I've had clients that have tried interment

fasting based on someone else's recommendations and um you know they

make comments like oh you know by 10: a.m. I'm just starving but I push it and

I it's almost like and then they're rewarded right right exactly rewarded from good job you exhibited a lot of

self-control and willpower and um I just don't feel like

not I don't feel like depriving your body of what it needs and what it's telling you that it needs should be

rewarded I agree and going back to the if I eat breakfast I'm hungrier during

the day I think that if we haven't eaten breakfast for a long time and we start

your body's like oh yes finally we're getting nutrition we need to stock up

because I'm not sure when we're going to get this again kind of an idea and once we start doing it consistently it kind

of backs off and our bodies are like oh I can feel safe knowing that we're eating on a regular basis again and so

um we can kind of even things out for ourselves yeah like it you know that's so true like your body it's same thing

like if you are um basically not hydrating well and so you're dehydrated

on some level and you start to rehydrate your body initially you're going to get bloated you're going to hold water

because your body's like well we don't know when we're going to get more hydration so we're going to hold on to

this for a while right and then as if you continue the habit of hydrating

regularly then you're going to be pee all the time but um so that's something

to keep in mind when you when you are have been depriving your body of certain

things when you start in regularly and consistently giving it what it needs

initially you might not like the initial feeling of it because your body May hold

on to that for a bit and until you have proven to it right that that you are no

it's safe you're you're going to get I'm I'm going to give you what you need now and um so then your body can let go like

it's man there's like a life metaphor in there something well another great example is

I've heard people compare this sort of thing too to when you hold your breath like if you're holding your breath and

maybe underwater maybe not when you let yourself breathe again you're sucking in air real quick at that point and it's

the same idea with food with the hydration all of that like we were just talking about and we don't question

that right right because we need to breathe right because we've accepted we need to

breathe right but I feel like we don't accept that we need to eat for for whatever reason or all of the crappy

reasons right yeah yeah so what this all comes back around to again is that is

getting to know your body and we often assume that we know our

bodies um but being honest taking an honest look at what are you using for

external cues instead of really tapping into your own body wisdom because it is

there everyone has it um if you've been pushing it down ignoring it silencing it

it can take a while to um to find it again but again that consistent practice

because that's really what this is right it's practicing um and doing it consistently

there's no perfect way of doing it there's no one perfect way of eating there is no one perfect way of

exercising there's you know um none of it it's it's um and it's your body so you're responsible for that exactly you

are responsible for your own body not um giving your responsibility or your ownership over to

someone else to tell you what to do exactly well put thank you

definitely anything else you'd like to add my dear I don't think so I think we covered most of the things we wanted to

talk about and probably more per usual this is a great conversation yes

definitely and we'll chat with you next time yes ma'am love you latte love you

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latte