Carbs or Fats? Using Breakfast To Set Up a Slimmer Waistline

We’ve all heard the adage ‘eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper’. Well, according to the research, this axiom may just be your ticket to avoiding dreaded holiday weight-gain. Smarter food choices while vacationing are vital if you don’t want your months of hard-work, dieting and exercise to vanish before your eyes quicker than you can say ‘insulin spike’. This means knowing how to metabolically set your body up for success to avoid excess weight-gain as you sight-see, shop and take in the atmosphere (& food) of the exotic locale you’ve chosen as your destination.

The Buffet Breakfast … So Many Choices: Which One is Right?

The buffet breakfast is a popular choice for many travelers as it provides the convenience of a ready meal in place of an often frustrating search for an appropriate restaurant in the early hours of dawn. As you stand taking in the sights in the dining area you’ll most likely see toast, pastries, cereals, fruits, jams & honey - the healthy (?) alternative to sausages, boiled & fried eggs, bacon and cheese. However, before you take a step towards the cereal bar to avoid the artery clogging grease (or so medical orthodoxy would have you believe) of a bacon & egg breakfast, I would urge you to reconsider.

Your first meal sets up the metabolism for the rest of the day, making it easier to burn off other foods. Consumption of a high fat meal upon waking (such as those bacon, eggs & sausages you’re about to pass up) is associated with increased ability to respond appropriately to carbohydrate meals eaten later in the day. On the other hand, eating a high carbohydrate morning meal ‘fixes’ the metabolism toward JUST utilizing carbohydrates and impairs the body’s ability to adjust metabolism toward fat usage later that day. 

In the study, the mice fed a high-fat breakfast remained healthy, but those given a carb-rich breakfast followed by fatty meals closer to the end of their waking cycle gained weight and had trouble processing sugar, thereby increasing their risk of diabetes. Blood tests also raises issues with markers of heart disease and stroke.

Take-Away:

While the findings of Bray et al. (2010) certainly do not suggest that the consumption of a high-fat meal entitles you to proceed by consuming unlimited quantities of refined sugars & processed foods during the remainder of the day. However, it does give us some guidance into the ideal breakfast food. So, if you want to save your waistline (& your cardiometabolic markers) on your next holiday - take the bacon, eggs, sausages and cheese over the cereal, muesli and fruit and preserve the hard work and dedication you’ve spent on reaching your current health & fitness goals.

Reference:

Bray, M.S., et al. (2010). Time-of-day-dependent dietary fat consumption influences multiple cardiometabolic syndrome parameters in mice. Int J Obes, 34(11), 1589-1598.