Warning: Skipping breakfast consumes you

I continue to be awed at the elegant way our body clocks run our lives, and stunned at how our backward lifestyles are destroying our innate health.

As a culture we’re obsessed with thinness and calorie counting. Skipping breakfast is seen as a way to keep calories down. For a caffeine-addicted society, coffee can count as breakfast.

Systematic personal destruction

I’m finishing The Body Clock Advantage (affiliate link) by Matthew Edlund, M.D., as part of research for the workbooks I’m developing on how to create your own custom plan to beat seasonal depression. He makes a compelling argument why we’re destroying ourselves by skipping breakfast.

It’s no surprise that our bodies run on daily clocks, just as they operate on annual and seasonal clocks that cause winter depression when our clocks fall out of time. Sunrise, sunset, daylight and nighttime control our daily activities and schedules.

We know some of us are “morning” types and some of us are “night owls.” Our natural tendency to be one or the other further individualizes our personal rhythm, Dr. Edlund says. Whether you’re a “lark” as he calls morning people, or an owl, your metabolism is more efficient earlier in the day when it better metabolizes protein.

Like you, I’ve always heard breakfast is most important meal of the day but I couldn’t explain exactly why. The phrase has become such a nutritional cliché that like most clichés, people ignore the truth behind it.

Morning starvation mode

For many of us, if we don’t snack at night, it will be 12 – 14 hours before we eat the next morning, if we eat breakfast. Yet our bodies are still consuming almost as much energy while we’re asleep as when we’re awake, despite some common misconceptions. Because we’re not eating while we’re asleep, our available energy, in the form of glycogen, is slowly drawn down through the night. By morning, around 5 – 6 a.m., the body has run out of glycogen.

So what do our bodies do to get more glycogen before breakfast? Many people think their body will turn to digesting fat, their justification for skipping breakfast. And you’d be wrong. Because our bodies have been without food for so long the “starvation” response has been triggered and our bodies are doing everything to preserve fat as the early-morning energy need is increasing.

Eat or be eaten

Instead, the liver begins drawing protein from skeletal muscle. Our body begins digesting itself, muscle first.

As Dr. Edlund explains, we convince our brain we’re starving when we skip breakfast, or grab a coffee with sugar or a sugar-loaded doughnut that plays havoc with our body’s insulin response.

This is where we’ve got it backwards: Our metabolism is most efficient in the morning. So if you want to have energy, be alert and lose weight, the time to eat – and the time to eat the most – is in the morning. Not at night when our metabolism is less efficient and more of what we eat is naturally stored as fat.

Smoothies: Breakfast of champions

And if we’re truly listening to our body clocks, the time to eat protein – not refined carbohydrate cereals loaded with sugar, or bagels, or toast – is in the morning. That doesn’t mean nitrate-loaded bacon or greasy sausage. Think yogurt, fresh fruit, cottage cheese, smoothies made with any kind of milk and fruit, eggs or egg whites, low-sugar soy bars.

While I’m not gluten-intolerant, I can’t eat a lot of wheat-products and keep my digestive system happy. For a long time I ate oatmeal or “o” shaped cereals and added raisins, nuts and unsweetened soy milk. Dr. Edlund recommends whole grains – like oatmeal – with any combination of milks as a great alternative for cereal lovers.

Two months ago I switched to Greek-style yogurt and fruit for breakfast, particularly Southern peaches now in season. Every morning I savor heaven on a spoon; the Greek yogurt tastes like thickened cream clinging to the sweet peaches. My energy and alertness are high with no late morning lows, and a large bowlful provides ample protein and fiber.

Muscle with that coffee?

But I’ve been postponing breakfast until after my second cup of coffee. Now that I realize I’ve actually been serving myself coffee with a bit of muscle, I’ll be eating my yogurt and fruit right after getting up.

What about you? What creative ideas do you have for eating a protein-rich breakfast so your body isn’t digesting itself? Tell us in the comments.