Low Carb Snacks: Peanut Butter Cookies | Chocolate Cheesecake | Protein Ice Cream | Chocolate-Coconut Muffins | Guilt-Free CustardLooking to Lose Fat? Stop Eating Breakfast!
by Ori Hofmekler
When you wake-up, your body is already in an intense detox mode, clearing itself of endotoxins and digestive waste from the past evening meal.
During the morning hours, when digestion is fully completed (while you are on an empty stomach), a primal survival mechanism, known as fight or flight reaction to stress, is triggered, maximizing your body’s capacity to generate energy, be alert, resist fatigue and resist stress.
Animals aren't the only ones with fight or flight reactions!
This highly geared survival mode is primarily dominated by part of the autonomic nervous system known as the SNS (sympathetic nervous system). At that state, the body is in its most energy-producing phase and that’s when most energy comes from fat burning. All that happens when you do not eat the typical morning meal.
If however you follow what “normal guys” do and eat your morning bagel and cereal and egg & bacon, you’ll most likely shut down the above energy producing system.
The SNS and its fight or flight mechanism will be substantially suppressed. Instead, your morning meal will trigger an antagonistic part of the automatic nervous system known as the PSNS (Para sympathetic nervous system), which makes you sleepy, slow and less resilient to fatigue and stress.
Instead of spending energy and burning fat, your body will be more geared towards storing energy and gaining fat. Under this state, detox would be inhibited. The overall metabolic stress would increase with toxins accumulating in the liver, giving the body another substantial reason to gain fat. (Fat tissues serve as a biological storage for toxins)
There's a reason many of us are naturally not hungry in the morning!
The overall suppressing effects of morning meals, can lead to energy crashes during the daily (working) hours, often with chronic cravings for pick-up foods, sweets, coffee and tobacco. Eating at the wrong time, would severely interrupt the body’s ability to be in tune with the circadian clock. The human body has never adapted to such interruptions. We are primarily pre-programmed to rotate between the two autonomic nervous system parts: the daily SNS and the nightly PSNS.
The SNS regulates alertness and action during the day, while PSNS regulates relaxation, digestion and sleep during the nightly hours. Any interruption in this primal daily cycle, may lead into sleepiness during the day followed by sleeping disorders at night.
Morning meals must be carefully designed not to suppress the SNS and its highly energetic state. Minimizing morning food intake to fruits, veggie soup or small amounts of fresh light protein foods, such as poached or boiled eggs, plain yogurt, or white cheese, will maintain the body in an undereating phase, while promoting the SNS with its energy producing properties.
*Note: Athletes who exercise in the morning should turn breakfast into a post-exercise recovery meal. Such meals should consist of small amounts of fresh protein plus carbs such as yogurt and banana, eggs plus a bowl of oatmeal, or cottage cheese with berries.
A better breakfast.
An insulin spike is necessary for effectively finalizing the anabolic actions of GH and IGF1 after exercise. Nonetheless, after the initial recovery meal, it’s highly recommended to maintain the body in an undereating phase by minimizing daily carb intake in the following meals.
Applying small protein meals (minimum carbs) every couple of hours will keep sustaining the SNS during the daily hours while providing amino acids for protein synthesis in the muscle tissues, promoting a long lasting anabolic effect after exercise.
In conclusion, breakfast is NOT the most important meal of the day. The most important meals are post-exercise recovery meals. Saying that, for a WARRIOR every meal is a recovery meal helping to recuperate from either nutritional stress (undereating) or physical stress (exercise). It’s when you eat that makes what you eat matter.
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An interesting article: agreed that post-workout nutrition is of primary importance in an intelligently-designed diet.
The title was obviously designed with shock value in mind. After reading the article, it appears the author doesn’t advocate against breakfast per se, but rather in favour of lighter meals in lieu of the traditional heavy breakfast.
This makes perfect sense to me. I do not eat breakfast and often wondered why I felt better not eating breakfast.
Great article for sure!
Teri
I don’t agree with this article at all. Sure, a light breakfast is fine, but it IS important to have something. The “Warrior Diet” is probably one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard of, but whatever floats your boat.
The Warrior Diet definitely goes against EVERYTHING we have been taught int he bodybuilding and fitness community for a long time…
Recently, several people I know have been experimenting with the Warrior Diet (myself included) and so far, every single person has had positive results! And I am not talking about 3-4 people… I am talking about 25+ people (my colleague has 15-20 of his online training clients on the diet right now). Everyone is getting leaner and stronger and those who wish to gain mass ARE gaining mass. Because of my schedule, I cannot follow it to a T every day… but 5 days a week I am a “warrior…”
It’s super convenient to NOT have to lug food around all day… plus my energy is fantastic and I am getting leaner despite not being super strict with my food choices.
It’s definitely not for everyone as intense hunger all day can definitely lead to binging at night and create a VERY unhealthy starve/binge cycle (especially in those predisposed to eating disorders)… and we ALL KNOW that thousands and thousands of people have gotten extremely lean eating 5-8 small meals a day… so it’s not that that approach is “wrong” or “doesn’t work” but it is definitely something worth trying if eating all day doesn’t bring good results or is inconvenient for you.
This is false. That very emergency mechanism is what triggers your body to begin clinging to its fat because it thinks you’ve stopping having food available, like a bear in the winter. Fuel in the morning is ideal to start up your metabolism. You just need to eat a healthy breakfast with some protein.
@ Molly Galbraith
I’m sure it is convenient for you especially when working long hours as a waitress.
Which leads to my next question- why is someone who considers herself an authority & expert figure in (no pun intended) working as a server?
@plankit So just out of curiosity what are you an authority/expert in? The dietary requirements of the service industry? Or just using the anonymity of the internet to call other people out while adding nothing of value to the actual topic at hand. Either way…Bravo!! Do you have an authority site that I may subscribe to, or perhaps a newletter.
As per the actual article, it actually amazes me the amount of resistance that The Warrior Diet has gotten. People embrace the Paleo lifestyle, and all it’s restrictions based off human evolution. And yet the Warrior Diet is based off the same thing, and is shunned because it adds the element of meal timing. I am guilty as well, since I bought into the whole “you will starve to death if you don’t shove food in your face every 120 mins” scheme, but seriously what sense does that make? Who stands to benefit from recommending a diet that required 6-8 meals a day? The supplement industry perhaps?!
I was twenty pounds overweight at the beginning of the summer
and never bothered to eat breakfast now its all gone.
Mind you I rode a bike every day but I had no idea about this
warrior diet thing. My only problem was the low blood sugar.
Now I eat plenty of fruit in the morning.