Hello Health Campions. What would happen if you stopped eating breakfast for 30 days? You
have probably been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day
and therefore it would be a terrible idea to skip breakfast. You have probably heard things like,
the brain only runs on glucose and if you don't refuel the glucose with the breakfast then
you'll run out of brain juice. That after 12 hours without food when you're waking up your glycogen,
your carbohydrate reserves, would be almost gone. That you have to refuel your energy and your vital
nutrients. That these are things you have to fill up on you have to top off every few hours
before it's too late. Don't do that then you will become lethargic and unfocused and
you're becoming unproductive and your life will go down the drain and you'll probably be half dead
before you even get to lunchtime but it turns out that none of these are actually true. So let's go
through and talk about what actually happens. Will you actually run out of glucose? Well not nearly
as soon as people might think because you have something called glycogen that's the storage form
of glucose. That's the reserve of carbohydrate that your body has. And people will tell you
that you're using mostly carbs and therefore you run out quickly but the biggest reason that your
body uses a lot of carbs is if you feed it a lot of carbs. It's not such a strange concept whatever
fuel you feed your body the most is what your body is going to use the most. And if you do
that all the time then your body will get adapted to it so if you eat a lot of carbs your body will
use a lot of carbs both because they're there and because your body wants to get rid of them
because it can only store so much and an excess is really unhealthy because it causes high blood
sugar and metabolic problems. So therefore if we reduce the number of carbohydrates
and or the number of meals that we eat in a day, now your body is going to find another source of
fuel. If you stop feeding it so much carbs it'll start using something else and the stored fuel on
the body for the most part is fat and that's the stuff people want to get rid of so if you cut back
on one fuel source it will start using more of another. And if you go low carb and I'm not even
talking ketogenic let's just say you go from 300 grams of carbs to 75 or a hundred. You just
reduce it dramatically now you're not feeding so much carbs so your body gets better at using
something else which in this case is going to be fat. And fat is the preferred fuel for the
body when you are at rest such as when you're sleeping especially, and if you're low carb you
probably will use somewhere between 80 to 95% of the energy from fat. And when you're at rest
most of the energy consumed, most of the work done in your body, is by your vital organs,
and they prefer fat and that's why you're going to end up in this range. Now another thing to
understand is that the body maintains certain amounts of glycogen if you have on high carb
diet then you will probably maintain a little bit more but it doesn't mean that you don't maintain
any if you're on a low carb diet. That's part of what the liver does it wants to maintain
a certain amount of glucose reserves and if you are on a low carb diet, if you're teaching your
body to use fat, then this is going to last longer. The glycogen doesn't get used up so
quickly so if you're on a high carb diet and your body is trying to work its way through
the carbohydrate you will probably maybe use up half of your glycogen in a 12 hour period. However
if your body is already accustomed to using mostly fat, now it's going to use
much much less of that glycogen, and it will last much much longer. So after a 12 hour period
that glycogen will probably have barely been touched. What about nutrients don't we have to
replenish them well obviously we do have to eat on a regular basis your body has certain needs
just not the way that we have been told that you're going to run out after a few hours.
So the nutrients that we have in the body the vitamins and the minerals and the other resources,
we have enough for days and weeks and months and in some cases even years. There's nothing that
you're going to run out of in a few hours. Well what about calories for energy how soon do we have
to refuel that well we talked about the glycogen the carbohydrates, that we have stored in the
body, that depending on how good we are at making energy from fat, the carbohydrates might last us
a day or two but that's a very very small amount compared to all the fat that we have stored. Fat
is the most effective form of energy both for usage and storage we have more calories per gram
and it takes less space and less weight to store it also. The fat is going to last us a
long long time so if you're an average person maybe 150 pounds an average would be like 25%
fat if you look normal weight you're not super athletic or super overweight now you have a
hundred and thirty thousand calories stored on your body. That's gonna last you a while
what if you're a little more athletic if you're a big guy with lots of muscle 200 pounds 15% fat
you still have over a hundred thousand calories. And if you are obese if you're like 285 pounds 50%
fat which is not that unusual now you have half a million calories. You're not going to run out
of energy anytime soon. And what about cognitive function and focus are you going to be lethargic
unfocused and unproductive are you going to feel half dead before lunch. Well this is kind of
interesting because a lot of people that I work with they report that they get more energy they
get better focused. In fact some people say that you know I love that I lost the weight. I loved
how all of my blood work came back better. All my health markers are better, but I have to tell you,
the single biggest transformation in my life is how much energy I have, how much focus I have.
But then a lot of people will miss breakfast today and they feel terrible, and here we fall
prey to the syndrome of trying something for too short a time. It's kind of like someone tells us
to change our diet and then this person comes and says well it doesn't work because I ate a carrot
once and nothing happened. Well we have to stop thinking like that because if your body is used
to something and you change it once, your body hasn't had time to transition to become better at
doing something else. So it's going to take just a few days, but then you will find that you actually
probably feel better. But also let's take a look at the bigger perspective of the animal kingdom
and where we came from from our ancestors. Now ancestors they did not have any cereal,
low-fat milk, waffles, crackers, pop-tarts, pancakes, toast, jam, or even orange juice.
They didn't have any of the things that we call breakfast, nor did they have a fridge or a pantry
where they could go and retrieve these things. And what about all the other animals on the planet?
Are they going to be weak because they're hungry and now they can't hunt and they perish. Well
eventually after several weeks and months then they will deteriorate and perish without food,
but if you look at this cheetah. It's the fastest animal in the world is he gonna wake up and say
"I didn't have any breakfast" and he's gonna pout a little bit and say, "I don't feel so fast today.
I don't think I'll catch anything". No of course not. That's ridiculous and you hear how ridiculous
that sounds. So what actually happens is that when we don't get the breakfast now the body
changes it starts mobilizing resources. It has various hormones it has adrenaline and cortisol
and growth hormone and neurotransmitters and what happens is you actually get more focus
because it's more important than ever that you're able to stay focused and you have the energy
to pursue whatever you need to do to put food on the table. And now that you understand that it's
not strange or abnormal or dangerous to miss breakfast or any other meal once in a while,
let's talk about what happens if you stop eating breakfast for 30 days. The first two three days
there may be a slight setback you might get a little tired, hungry. You might have some
cravings you might get a headache or feel a little off and that's just because your body
isn't used to it. You've been doing one thing for so long and anytime you change it, your body
goes - what happened? Where's my usual stuff. But as soon as you're past the first couple of days,
now things start getting better. As you cut back on the frequency of meals and it wouldn't be a bad
idea to cut back on some carbs as well, now your body is going to increase its fat burning. If you
stop putting one thing in it's going to burn more of something else. And as you increase your fat
burning now you find that you have less hunger and less cravings and because you don't depend
on carbs and frequent meals you get more stable energy. You're not dependent on topping off your
blood sugar every couple of hours and now actually your energy will increase because it's more stable
more sustainable. And when you get into that fat burning as we talked about you have an
almost unlimited supply of energy available. And if you go for 30 days without breakfast
and you do some blood work you find that a lot of your metabolic markers are going to improve,
and that's because you are doing something called intermittent fasting. You're doing time restricted
eating so instead of having a late evening snack maybe at nine and then a breakfast at seven which
would give you a 10 hour fasting windows. Now you just extended that fasting window by about
six hours if you instead of having breakfast you wait till lunch and you don't have to do this
immediately. You don't have to push the total six hours just skip the breakfast and then have like a
healthy snack maybe and and as you get used to it it will be very very easy to not even think about
food before lunch. And next time you measure your glucose you'll probably find that it's better and
you will find that your fasting insulin is better and that's something I recommend measuring that
is rarely done but it's one of the best markers for insulin resistance. You'll probably find that
your long-term glucose is going down your a1c. And you'll also find that insulin resistance markers
and other markers of cardiovascular disease, risk markers, are going down like triglycerides
and VLDL, very low density lipoproteins. So all of these have to do with blood fats and if you become
fat adapted, if you put less carbs in, your body burns less carbs and it burns more fat,
and less of the fat hangs out in the blood. And one of the biggest changes is going to be
in your total insulin resistance, because insulin is released in response to eating food,
and if you give yourself an extra six hours without food, that's six hours where your insulin
is allowed to keep dropping. And after 30 days without breakfast you'll probably find that
you have lost some weight and that's primarily because your insulin has dropped, your growth
hormone has increased and your fat burning has increased. And this goes all together like we said
when you go longer without food, then your insulin drops, and insulin is a fat storing hormone
it stores fat and it prevents the release of fat. It prevents the access to fat
so when insulin drops now all of these reserves you have on your body they become more available.
Growth hormone is a fat burning hormone and these two put together is going to make a significant
difference in your ability to burn fat. But then it gets a little confusing because
then there is research, and you go online and you read something, and it says this
study found that people who don't eat breakfast are five times more likely to be overweight.
But that's not really what the research says and if you try to see what they studied and
what they're saying, it's not that skipping a meal makes you fat. It's that for some people
who don't eat the right things and don't understand how it works if they skip a meal
they're going to do something else to compensate for it. So what the research actually says
is that people who skip breakfast tend to double up on donuts and snacks. So when you start
doing this it does not mean that you have free access to the vending machine, right? You have to
start understanding this and making some changes and understand that it might be uncomfortable for
a couple of days, but after that it's going to be easy sailing. But maybe the best part of all
is the sense of freedom that you get, because you will spend less time cooking you spend less time
eating. And if you have more time what could you do if you have an extra 20-30 minutes every day
what could you do with that? I'm sure there's some people who could use a few minutes extra
sleep. Maybe you'd like to go hiking take up some new hobbies you have a few hours a week just
by not eating breakfast. But it gets even better because now you start realizing that there is no
such thing as specific meal time. Those are just habits. When your body is independent
of that schedule you have so much more freedom if you're involved in something
or you're working on a project you don't have to interrupt it just because there is a certain time.
You're not a slave to a habit you're not a slave to a food schedule. You don't have to plan
your entire life around a food schedule anymore. If you enjoyed this video,
you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health,
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