The No-Breakfast Club

The next person who tries to tell me that you need to eat breakfast in order to lose weight, is going to get a New Rock boot in the teeth.

FFS. What is it with people wanting to sound smart by regurgitating information they hear on TV or read in a magazine, despite not really having a clue what they're talking about? You hear loads of it at work if you happen to be unfortunate enough to work in an office or other mainly female dominated place of employment. Someone or everyone is almost always on a diet at some time or other and it almost always just turns into some kind of competitive game to them, wanting to get one up on each other, just out of pure female bitchiness. And the amount of crap some of them spout, trying to sound like the font of all weight-loss knowledge....it really is fucking laughable.

“You know, you shouldn't eat carbs after 6pm or you'll gain weight.”

Really? So if I get by on 300 calories a day and 200 of those calories come from a muffin eaten at 10pm, I'm going to gain a ton of weight? Um, no. Don't think so dickhead.

“Fat is bad for you.”

Er, no. Too much fat is bad for you. Too much of the wrong sort of fat is bad for you. Too much of ANYTHING is bad for you. But your body needs fat in order to synthesise hormones and absorb some nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat soluble and can only be absorbed by the body in the presence of fat. So, you can knock back those multivitamins with a glass of water and fuck all else all you like, but don't come crying to me when your hair is falling out and your skin looks like shit.

“You can't eat chocolate on a diet.”

Yeah....that's a real shame if it's true for you, but guess what? I eat chocolate every day when I'm restricting and you know what? I'm losing weight. It's not WHAT you eat that makes you gain weight, it's the amount you eat, versus the amount you burn off. Of course your body will be thankful for receiving nutri-dense whole foods instead of processed stuff – and you'll more than likely be able to eat a greater volume of them than you would sugary, fatty, junk foods – but you really just need to learn how to restrict your portion sizes and your caloric intake if you want to lose weight. 

Yes, processed sugar is a bit of an evil demon, created by the food industry and can technically be classified as a poison; but most of us have adapted over the years to deal with processing a small amount and still remain healthy. It's when you over-consume these foodstuffs that you run the risk of not only gaining weight but developing type II diabetes. Sure, you can adopt a low-carb way of eating and try to eliminate all processed sugars from your diet, but is that something you are going to be able to commit to on a permanent basis? Are you willing to tell yourself that you are never again going to have a bar of regular chocolate, a slice of toast or a few French fries? I know I'm not that infallible. And to get the benefits of a low-carb diet (both weight-loss and overall health-wise) you need to make a long-term commitment to a newer, stringent way of life. 

Me, I know that if I start to ban something from my diet entirely, it's the first thing I'm going to want to eat. Who wants that as an added extra source of pressure when you're already trying to restrict and limit your intake? Not me. I want results and I want to make it as easy as possible to maintain my willpower, so if that means giving up some of my daily calorie allowance, in order to eat a small bar of chocolate, then so be it. It's working for me and it could work for you too if you wanted it to. You just gotta make your choices and stick to them.

“You need to eat breakfast in order to lose weight.”

Shut up. I'm pretty sure people dying of malnutrition in famine starved areas of the world aren't getting a full English or a bowl of Cheerios every bloody morning. The theory behind that statement is that by eating breakfast – something fibre based, wholegrain and low in fat and sugar – you will fill up your stomach, take time to digest it and be able to ward off hunger pangs until lunch time; thus helping to avoid those bad choices some of us turn to when the rumbling stomach and subsequent cravings allegedly lead us to snack on higher calorie foodstuffs, almost on autopilot.

And yeah, that might sound like a pretty sound theory if you think you're the kind of person who can't make it through till lunchtime without eating something. But it's not the added extra calories you may consume through breakfast that will make you lose weight, it's the supposed fewer calories that you'll allegedly consume throughout the rest of the day, that will in theory help you to lose weight. And what if you don't eat breakfast, don't snack all day, stick to a planned low-calorie lunch and dinner and manage to come in at – or just under – your daily calorie allowance? Will you still gain weight?

Chances are, probably not. If you're taking in less than you need to keep going throughout the day then your body will have to turn to it's own internal resources to sustain itself. Ergo, it will burn fat and you should lose weight. I say 'should' because some people have medical problems that can cause them to struggle to lose weight and others might have messed up their metabolisms through overly fasting or disordered eating, but for the most part, if you eat less than you need to keep going and you're overweight, you're gonna lose weight in the long run.

So no, you don't necessarily need to eat breakfast to lose weight. That's just something the 'healthy eating' brigade try to tell you so you don't try and lose weight through drastic dieting. There's probably some study somewhere sponsored by Kellogs too that contributed to the 'evidence' that allegedly fits these claims, but I'd hate to get all conspiracy theory on your ass and melt your head just now! I personally find that if I get up and eat, it seems to kick start the metabolism into wanting to eat more food, throughout the day, whereas if I go without breakfast, I can pretty much last right on up to evening time (or beyond if I choose) and still eat within my daily caloric allowance. Never mind the fact that it just seems so weird and gluttonous to want to shove food down your gullet, the minute you wake up out of bed – is that all you can think about first thing in the morning? Personally speaking, I'd much rather take the time to apply my make-up properly, gather my things together and grab a coffee to sip on my way into work, than try to grind up food between my recently cleaned teeth and leave my stomach feeling like it's carrying a bowling ball in it. But hey....if you want to eat breakfast that's your bag....Me? I'd rather not have the calories, but each to their own.

Do you know what I mean when I say how much all these crap-spouting morons annoy me, when it comes to the mythology of weight-loss? It's like everyone seems to think that they've discovered the 'magic bullet' that will ensure guaranteed weight-loss and they're just waiting for the moment to tell you this amazing piece of information, so that they can seem all-knowing and look down on you for not following their sacrosanct regime. Don't eat fat, don't eat carbs, don't eat chocolate, don't miss breakfast, don't mix meat with dairy, don't eat on Tuesdays, only eat in the bath, only eat what you can shove up your own nose....For fuck's sake. It's like listening to medieval charlatans trying to sell us snake oil to cure baldness, guarantee fertility or grant you the elixir of youth. 

If you've got a plan and it works for you then well done. I'm really happy for. Truly. But please don't try and get me on board with promises of 'guaranteed weight-loss' because I already know the secret of how to shift pounds and drop dress sizes. I mean, I can tell you the secret if you really want to know, but you gotta promise not to tell another living soul, m'kay? Because this here is pure fucking gold. This is what everyone wants to know. It's the answer to all your prayers. 

Okay. Here goes.

The secret to losing weight is.....

Stop eating so much, you greedy fat fuck!

Did you get that? Because I know it might be a little bit 'out there' and a tad complicated for you to understand, what with it requiring so many special formulae and whatnot. But trust me. It works. It works for runway models, it works for hunger strikers and it works for victims of famine. So let's not try and bullshit ourselves here by claiming that “Diets just don't work for me.” That ain't true. What's true is:

If you aren't working at your diet, your diet ain't gonna work for you. 

Period.

There are no fast-track, short-cuts (unless you manage to get some dodgy plastic surgeon to suck out every ounce of fat off of you and give you a full surgical body lift – which is expensive, painful and even then won't turn you from a 300lb hippo to a supermodel overnight!) or insider secrets to shifting flab. It's all down to you. You are in control of what you put in your body and you are in control of what you burn off. 

You are the only thing standing in the way of you achieving weight loss. You and those two grasping hands of yours, that shove all that food into that big ole greedy mouth of yours. You. Not McDonalds for making the cheeseburgers that you love, not Coca Cola for putting so much sugar in their drinks, not your friends for offering you so many tasty treats, not television for showing you all the food you have available to buy in your local supermarket. You.

It's not anyone's responsibility but your own. As a fully autonomous human being, with free will and volition, you make the choices whether or not to reach for that second slice of pizza, packet of crisps or glass of wine. If you choose to eat more, you choose to get, be and stay fat. If you choose to eat less, then you choose to weigh less.

The choices are yours – what are you going to choose to do?

Me, I choose to eat less.

But then, I'm not you and I can't make your decisions for you.

Only you can do that.

But either way, either via intent or by default, you WILL make a choice. 

And you will have to live with the consequences.

What consequences are you prepared to live with?

****

Okay, so here endeth the lesson, LOL! Sorry about that, I just get really pissed off when idiotic fucking harridans try to tell me that they know how to lose weight, despite them really only losing and regaining the same five pounds every six months, trying out every new diet on the cover of 'That's Life' magazine. It's like taking elocution lessons from David Beckham or Stacey Solomon. Urgh....

On a quick, lighter note however, my intake today has been acceptably low:

Tea with semi-skim milk and two sugars - 40 calories

Coffee with semi-skim milk and two sugars - 66 calories

Small chocolate chip muffin from Spar - 219 calories

4 litres of water - 0 calories

Total Intake for today = 325 calories.

I know it's about 2.15am though right now and I'm technically into the next day, but I consider a day to be the time that elapses between me getting up out of bed and then turning in to sleep later on. I keep strange hours, but my waking hours are what constitute my days. I might have another cup of tea before I go to bed in which case my daily total will still be fairly respectable at 365 calories, but I might just keep to the water and be really good for the rest of the night. Either way, I can be happy with how much I've consumed today and can really only just hope to be able to maintain that willpower tomorrow also.

Stay strong lovelies

xx

P.S. A big hello to my new followers (I have FIVE now...ha ha...I'm practically famous!) thank you for following me and please feel free to leave a comment any time you swing by.

Laters

x

P.P.S. About an hour after I originally published this post, I stumbled upon the following article, whilst browsing the Google Communities.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/myths-surround-breakfast-and-weight/?smid=tw-share&_r=1

Talk about perfect timing!

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