Why I Strongly Recommend Eating Breakfast Every Day For My Weight-Loss Clients

The most common way to execute intermittent fasting is to fast for 16 hours, and then eat all your meals within an eight-hour window. It might go something like this: You wait until noon to eat your first meal, and then you finish eating your meals by 8 p.m. Then you start the cycle all over again the next day. Intermittent fasting certainly has health benefits that can help people heal their gut issues, but it's not necessarily the weight-loss hero it's been made out to be.

Harley Pasternak, MSc, celebrity trainer and nutrition expert, recently posted a video explaining that recent research shows that intermittent fasting doesn't have any more of an impact on weight loss than the traditional breakfast, lunch, and dinner model.

I have found this to be true in my experience coaching weight-loss clients. If you're someone who fasts for health or medical reasons (for example, fasting can be helpful for auto-immune disorders), that's a different story. But if you don't have any health conditions and you're looking for the best diet to adopt for general fat loss, I highly recommend eating every few hours a day. Here's why.

Eating First Thing in the Morning Helps To Balance Hormones

Our hormones need to be in balance in order to feel great, look great, and lose weight. One of the first things hormone experts recommend is to eat first thing in the morning. This helps to regulate your blood sugar and balance out your hormones.

Aim for a solid serving of protein first thing in the morning. That can be some eggs, a protein shake, protein overnight oats, etc. This will help you feel great for the day as well as balance your hormones, especially if you're on your period. Many women (especially moms) are so busy in the morning that they forget to eat breakfast, and then by the time 11 a.m. rolls around, they're starving and end up reaching for the wrong food. Try to eat within 30-60 minutes of waking for a couple weeks straight and see how you feel.

It's Easier To Hit Your Daily Protein Goals

The first thing I have my clients do is increase their daily protein goals. Protein is the only thing you eat that builds muscle, and you need muscle mass in the body in order to burn fat faster, burn more calories at a resting rate, and speed up your metabolism. Don't be scared of muscle, ladies. You need it to lose weight and also to look great. The only way you will get "bulky" is if you're perpetually overeating.

A general way to figure out how much protein you should be eating each day is to take your weight in pounds and multiply it by 0.8. That's the number of grams of protein you need to eat every day. Let's say that number comes out to be 150 grams. That's a lot of protein to try to shove down your throat in an eight-hour window. You will very likely fail to eat that much protein in a short amount of time, which negatively affects your chance to build necessary muscle, curb your sugar cravings, and strengthen your bones and tissue.

Protein is the only thing you eat that builds muscle.

It's much easier and sustainable to start the morning with a protein-rich breakfast (within 30-60 minutes of waking) and then eat small meals throughout the day. If you start eating protein at 7 a.m. compared to noon, you won't have any problem hitting your daily goal by the time evening rolls around.

It Prevents You from Overeating

Although the "calories in, calories out" model isn't the full scope of weight loss, the number of calories you eat at the end of day is significant. And starving yourself for 16 hours a day is a surefire way to overeat or reach for the wrong foods when it's time to finally eat, because you're ravenous and you can't quite think straight. I've seen a lot of clients try out intermittent fasting, but then they end up eating too much food in their eight-hour window and they end up feeling bloated and uncomfortably full.

Eating small meals throughout the day—in other words, portion control—is a great way to practice discipline and train your stomach to be satisfied from small portions of food. You don't want to introduce too much food to your body in one sitting, and that is often the result when you deprive yourself of food for 16 hours straight.

Plus, the psychological elements of weight loss and diet play a big role. If it's 7 p.m. and you're supposed to end your eating window in an hour, you might feel concerned or even kind of disappointed that you have to wait all the way until noon the next day to eat, and this scarcity mentality may result in you overeating at night before you go to bed. This could easily result in excess calorie intake (which eventually leads to weight gain) as well as general bloating.

Closing Thoughts

Of course, if you fast for medical and health reasons, you don't have to give it up. But I'll just tell you from personal and professional experience, women who are on a general weight-loss journey have a lot more success from eating smaller meals throughout the day. It may take some getting used to, especially if you don't normally eat in the morning, but you'll quickly find that eating first thing in the morning actually makes you feel hungrier in the morning because your metabolism is working so well. Give it a try for a few weeks and see how it goes!