“If I eat breakfast, I feel hungrier all day” complained a working mom who wanted to lose 10 pounds. She was a breakfast skipper. She believed skipping  breakfast would save her some calories and helps her shed a few pounds. Plus, when she ate breakfast, she  reported she  felt hungrier the rest of the day.

 The reason she felt hungrier when she ate breakfast was because she did not eat  enough breakfast. She’d have just an English muffin with a dab of jelly. That was only 200  calories. Her body wanted at least 500 calories – English muffin plus a tablespoon of peanut butter on each muffin-half plus a banana and a ½ cup of milk in her coffee.

If skipping breakfast was truly an effective way to lose weight, she would have successfully lost weight. But that was not the case. She described her eating as being “so good during the day, but so bad at night.” That is, the minute she got home from work, she’d devour cheese and crackers and then a big dinner and then graze some more.

She thought that nighttime eating was the problem. It was actually the symptom and the result of her having dieted “too hard” during the day. Her dietitian suggested she experiment with eating MORE breakfast, to see if that would curb her evening appetite. Although she shuddered at the thought of eating more food, she completed the experiment and discovered that the heartier breakfast did satisfy her appetite and enabled her to curb her evening over-eating.

If you believe that breakfast makes you hungrier, think again and trust that eating a hearty breakfast is indeed the best way to start a day of dieting. Give it a try!

Be wise,
Nancy Clark MS RD
Sports nutritionist and author, Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook
www.nancyclarkrd.com

Information provided by Nancy Clark, MS, RD CSSD (Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics), Chairperson of the Nutrition Committee of the Female Athlete Triad Coalition.
Nancy Clark counsels active people at her private practice in Newton, MA (617-795-1875). For more information, read her popular Sports Nutrition Guidebook and food guides for new runners, marathoners, soccer players and cyclists, available via www.nancyclarkrd.com.

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