The common belief that eating most of your calories at breakfast will help your body burn them more quickly and efficiently may not be true, say researchers from the UK and the Netherlands.

They found that it doesn’t matter when we eat, our bodies will burn calories the same way no matter when we eat.

When it comes to dieting, there is an old saying “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper.”

This is based on the belief that consuming the majority of one’s daily calorie intake in the morning allows for optimal weight loss by allowing the body to burn calories more effectively and rapidly.

But a new study that came out today in Cell Metabolism says that it doesn’t matter if a person eats their biggest meal early in the day or late at night. It doesn’t change how one‘s body burns calories.

People who ate their largest meal in the morning, on the other hand, reported feeling less hungry later in the day, which could lead to faster weight loss in the real world.

“There are a lot of myths surrounding the timing of eating and how it might influence either body weight or health,” explains senior author Professor Alexandra Johnstone. 

“This has been driven largely by the circadian rhythm field,” says the author, “but we in the nutrition field have wondered how this could be possible. Where would the energy go? We decided to take a closer look at how time of day interacts with metabolism.”

The researchers selected healthy volunteers who were overweight or obese to have their diets controlled and metabolisms evaluated over time in this study; 16 men and 14 women completed the trial.

Four weeks of either a morning- or an evening-loaded diet were given to each participant at random. A balance of 30% protein, 35% carbohydrate, and 35% fat made up the isocaloric diet.

Each participant switched to the opposing diet for four weeks after a washout period of one week during which calories were distributed evenly throughout the day.

In this way, each participant served as their own research control.

The individual’s total daily energy expenditures were monitored throughout the study using the doubly labelled water method, an isotope-based technique that examines the difference in the turnover rates of hydrogen and oxygen in body water as a function of carbon dioxide production.

Body weight measurements of energy balance served as the study’s main goal. Overall, the researchers discovered that both the morning- and evening-loaded diets resulted in similar energy expenditures and overall weight loss. During each four-week period, the participants shed an average of slightly more than 3 kg (about 7 pounds).

Objective and subjective measures of appetite suppression, glucose levels, and body composition served as secondary outcomes. 

“The participants,” according to the author, “reported that their appetites were better controlled on the days they ate a bigger breakfast and that they felt satiated throughout the rest of the day.

“This could be quite useful in the real-world environment, versus in the research setting that we were working in.”

The study’s free-living nature is a limitation. Furthermore, several metabolic data could only be obtained after breakfast and not after dinner.

According to Johnstone, this kind of trial might be used to research time-restricted eating, commonly known as intermittent fasting, to help establish when it is optimal for people to consume calories when following this kind of diet.

The group wants to learn more about how the time of day affects metabolism by doing more studies like the one described here with people who work different shifts.

Due to the interference with their circadian cycles, it’s probable that these people will respond differently metabolically.

There probably won’t be a single diet that works for everyone when it comes to timing and dieting, says Johnstone in his conclusion. 

“Figuring this out is going to be the future of diet studies, but it’s something that’s very difficult to measure.”

Image Credit: Getty

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