Reasons Skipping Breakfast Might Actually Be Heart-Healthy

The Canadian fitness researcher Brad Pilon suggests that there are a number of reasons that skipping the morning meal might actually enhance metabolic health. Pilon points out that no one really skips "breakfast," since the meal is by definition the food one eats to end a fast, a break-fast, no matter when it is eaten. And going without food, also called intermittent fasting — as the even greater increase in cardiovascular disease in men who ate late at night suggests — might actually be the key to heart health.

Skipping Breakfast Lowers Leptin levels

Eating any kind of breakfast provides extra calories that can be stored in the form of fat. When fat cells are full, they release a hormone called leptin. This hormone tells the brain "OK, we're full, so you can go about your regular activities now," including the stimulation of inflammation. Before fat cells fill up, they don't release significant amounts of leptin.

Lower levels of leptin in the bloodstream result in lower levels of inflammation throughout the body, including the linings of blood vessels. Eat less, and the body releases less inflammation. Eat more, and the body releases more inflammation. Perhaps the problem wasn't skipping breakfast, it was actually eating late at night, before going to sleep (and then eating breakfast, too).

Skipping Meals Allows Fat to Be Burned Instead of Stored

Pilon also points out that fasting, which is going without any food for any period of time longer than is currently considered normative, also changes the way in which fat cells respond to insulin. The insulin hormone activates a protein called hormone-sensitive lipase, which is also known as HSL. This hormone locks fatty acids inside fat cells in a form that can't slip out through molecule-sized portals to the bloodstream. Fat stays inside fat cells and can't be burned for energy as long as insulin levels are high.

Eating just 8 grams (about 1/4 of an ounce, the equivalent of 30 calories) of food causes the pancreas to release insulin so that the consumed fat stays locked in place. The only way ever to get rid of fat is to lower insulin levels so your fat cells are less sensitive to HSL, and that only happens when you go at least a little while without eating — optimally at least 18 hours.

And the easiest way to fast for 18 hours is to avoid late-night snacks, and in fact to stop eating at all after dinner, and to then also skip breakfast. It makes a lot more sense to rely on not-eating as a way to avoid gaining weight and raising cholesterol, along with increasing inflammation, than to suppose that eating a "healthy breakfast" somehow has a magical, heart-healthy effect.

That is not to say that a healthy breakfast is bad for you, as such — not at all. We do need to give our bodies the time to go through their natural cycles in order to stay healthy, however, and piling the calories on will always lead to weight gain.