Diet myth: If you eat a lot in the morning and little in the evening, you will lose weight

Eat like an emperor in the morning, like a nobleman at lunch and like a beggar at night. If you want to lose weight, just follow this rule of thumb. So for breakfast there is one, maybe two croissants, a few ham and cheese sandwiches and, if there is still room, a hard-boiled egg.

This fills your stomach for the next few hours and provides energy. In addition, an extensive breakfast should prevent feelings of hunger and avoid unnecessary calorie intake, which in turn should make us lose weight – or at least that is the assumption. Unfortunately, there is a catch. However, one by one.

In order for our body to function, we need to provide it with energy in the form of food. So for us, eating is the same as refueling the car. Depending on how active we are, sometimes we need more food, sometimes less. If someone works hard physically and also plays sports, he has a high energy requirement. On the other hand, if he commutes between an office chair and a couch, this is lower.

This results in a simple formula: if we eat more than we consume, we will gain weight in the long run. Conversely, we lose weight if we stay below our calorie needs for a certain period of time. A hearty breakfast should make this easier. According to the theory, we should eat a little for lunch and dinner from the beginning when we have already filled our stomach in the morning.

A research team from Munich tested this assumption. The eating habits of 380 people were examined, of whom approximately 280 were overweight. The rest were of normal weight. Some test subjects consumed more than 600 calories for breakfast. However, others did not eat anything in the morning.

Surprisingly, the researchers concluded that it made no difference how much the subjects ate for breakfast. Accordingly, the satiety effect of a hearty breakfast disappeared by noon.

Accordingly, the subjects stayed true to their nutritional routine and ate the same lunch and dinner as always – no matter what they had for breakfast. It has not yet been confirmed that we are less hungry during the day simply because we eat too much for breakfast.

A British research team went one step further and evaluated approximately 600 studies on this topic published between 1990 and 2018. There was also no evidence that people gain weight if they eat nothing in the morning, or lose weight if they eat significant amounts of calories for breakfast.

Both studies show one thing above all: there are hardly any general rules when it comes to nutrition. Certainly, if we eat less than we consume, we lose weight. But how we approach this also depends greatly on our body and its needs.

However, it is nonsense to believe that we lose weight just because we eat three croissants and a truckload of eggs in the morning. If you have the habit of eating a lot in the morning, you can reduce breakfast slightly and continue the rest of the day as before – if you want to lose weight.