Breakfast – Lunch – Dinner | What Happens Skipping each one of Them

Skipping Meals … ??? Recently, following an impressive diet plan, many persons are reviewing their habits concerning the time of their daily meals.

The Intermittent Fasting Diet breaks an old rule requiring many and frequent meals throughout the day, imposing long fasting periods. In line with this logic, many wonder, “what is better? Should I skip breakfast or dinner, or maybe lunch? What happens then? ”

Till to date, skipping one or more meals was considered as something negative for the metabolic rate of our organism, and so for the management of our body weight.

However, new studies suggest that skipping a meal – that is, applying a controlled fast – does not slow down the metabolic rate, rather promoting fat burns, aiming at securing amounts of energy.

The energy restriction imposed on you by avoiding a meal is to be compensated in another way by organism, via processes presented below.

The thinking behind this is that as the organism needs to be “nourished” properly and remain functional, “pulls” energy from the body itself, so resulting into fat loss and use of body fat released as a source of energy, as “fuel” for the proper functioning of the mechanism (of organism).

It would be better to leave the general assumptions for a while and look briefly into the meaning for the organism when skipping each of the main meals.

Skipping Meals : PROS & CONS

Skipping Breakfast

Breakfast being a very important meal for some people is considered as impossible to skip it, while others feel no problem if they take just a coffee.

The Intermittent Fasting Diet works within this logic. Especially the intermittent fasting program (16: 8) based on avoiding either breakfast or dinner.

Therefore, the person wishing to follow 16: 8 (i.e. 16 hours of fasting / 8 hours of food consumption) should select the diet model best suiting its needs, WITH NO breakfast or dinner.

It is worth noting that – according to statistical studies – a person (in case selects to include breakfast in its diet) is accustomed to consuming a large part of its total daily caloric intake at this meal. Make a note that about 20% of total calories come from breakfast alone.

So the question sounds reasonable and remains. If we skip breakfast we save a high number of calories, or this is not exactly the case?

Having spent a night fasting, the organism of some people shows a sign of energy deficiency in the morning, difficulty waking up, lethargy and poor mood, while for other people seems easy to prolong their night fast by skipping breakfast.

My opinion is that there is a RIGHT way to avoid breakfast, while there is also a WRONG way to do it.

For example, I find it completely pointless to avoid your breakfast by having a hard day’s work ahead of you (where even mental / emotional production for the necessary concentration requires energy).

In fact, according to many dieters, skipping breakfast is usually followed by significantly higher calorie consumption via the rest of the meals (lunch – dinner), making no sense in the end.

On the other hand, a very smart and efficient way to skip breakfast is in the case the person is used to morning workouts.

So ideally, a morning workout with no breakfast (a process intensifying fat loss) and then a boosting snack restores your tired muscles.

You might hear many nutritionists opposing this diet, claiming that breakfast is essential for the body.

Many even describe it as the “king of meals”, providing dieters with greater caloric freedom for this day’s meal.

The logic is that the energy you get from your breakfast is the fuel for the organism to function. Otherwise, a large evening meal will lead to accumulation of calories in organism in the form of fat.

I continue to believe that both sides express their justified concerns.

Therefore, everything is in the way you implement your diet plan. You may “eat”, or you may “not eat”.

Both may become positive or negative for your organism, depending on the way you apply them.

Skipping Lunch

Many office workers are used to skip this meal.

Don’t forget this is the day’s middle meal that will maintain the blood glucose levels high between breakfast and dinner.

However, what happens in the organism in case lunch is skipped?

Have you ever wondered what the results in the organism are if the body’s glucose levels start declining?

People going from breakfast to lunch and then to dinner, do not give their organism the time needed for balancing their blood glucose levels, as these start increasing after each meal.

In fact, it gets worse if you add snacks between meals (in fact following a diet requiring 5 to 6 meals a day).

This diet maintains a constant high concentration of glucose in the blood throughout the day, so not allowing the body to enter a “postprandial state”.

A major disadvantage of this diet is the constant supply of the organism with energy, without going into a process of fat loss (required in any case).

In fact, many say that constant dietary intake leads to weight gain, as the body converts excess energy into extra body fat (this certainly related directly to the amount of food consumed at each meal, as well as to lifestyle of each individual, for example if there is a training program followed and what’s the size of it.

Skipping Dinner

Dinner is another meal often selected for skipping it during an intermittent fast. For many, skipping dinner is more difficult than skipping breakfast (which is actually an extension of their evening fast).

There are a number of factors affecting in a negative way the process of skipping the evening meal. A major redeeming factor is psychology. Boredom, fatigue, stress, sadness, depression make difficult to skip dinner, resulting to a more intense feeling of hunger much more intense (perhaps more than it really is).

Nevertheless, people who manage to exclude dinner from their daily diet have significant benefits, by rejecting a significant high calorie intake to be converted to body fat during sleep, strengthening their organism by offering to it valuable time to convert lunch and balance the insulin hormone levels again.

Once the body burns the carbohydrates received from the diet, will inevitably look for another source of energy, which eventually (and depending on the duration of fasting followed by the individual) leads to the desired fat loss and weight loss.

Finally, what is the best meal to skip?

Though the most common and popular option is to skip breakfast, I personally choose to skip dinner.

Certainly, the choice relates to program followed by each individual and the time selected for its workouts (Yes. This is probably one of the most important factors to determine the diet plan) and its sleep program as well.

If, for example, someone goes to bed at 10, it would not be good to have dinner at 9, since the digestive process has not been completed, at the time going to bed.

So in this case, we would suggest, either to skip dinner, or go to bed later (allowing the organism to have the 3 hours required for the digestive process).

Can I skip dinner every day?

Statistically, dinner is the meal leading most people to the highest weight gain.

Skipping dinner can be very effective in trying to lose weight but also to lose accumulated fat in various parts of the body (buttocks, circumference, waist, abdomen, arms, and thighs).

Many nutritionists seem to support this dietary model initially (rejecting the older theory of many small meals).

In fact, some argue that during the intermittent fast, the last meal of the day can be around 2 or 3 at noon. In this way, the organism metabolizes the caloric intake of from lunch completely, promoting then fat loss.

How skipping dinner increases the diet’s effectiveness?

Skipping dinner, as mentioned, allows the organism to reduce insulin levels in the blood gradually and balance hormones again.

Therefore, by avoiding dinner or other snacks late in the afternoon or evening, the hormone insulin remains low showing a positive effect on controlling a person’s appetite.