Big Breakfast Diet: A Diet That Works?

It's a well known fact that eating a good breakfast helps with weight loss and protein takes a long time to break down in your body so makes perfect sense to me, thing is there are that many studies saying this and that who has time to keep swapping and changing.

If something works for you keep at it as the saying goes KISS keep it simple stupid.

It's a relatively small study so I would like to see if the findings would be the same in a bigger trial. But I think it's definitely about the protein here. And I know personally, breakfast with protein, fiber, and some good fats help me stay full well into the day.

Those numbers don't add up! If you add up the grams of carbs per day for the big breakfast group you get 97, not 58 (58 + 34 + 5). I think this is relevant when comparing the diets.

Even though the sample size is small the results are vastly different between the two groups and would suggest statistical significance. I think it makes great sense and am not really surprised by the findings.

i dont eat breakfast every day but on the days i do, i always choose a lot of carbs because i know that if i eat breakfast, i'll never be hungry for lunch. needing the energy from the carbs to last me all day, this makes perfect sense if you indulge in a high carb breakfast and restrict them during snacks and other meals, you feel a little bit less lethargic starting up- and your appetite is not as fierce throughout the day.

This one is truly a mess...so many confounding variables to deal with, it really can't be said one way or the other what happened!

We've got more calories, more protein, different macronutrient ratios, more and less carbohydrate and fat, no clue about actual foods consumed, no clue about micronutrient intakes, no idea what either was told to do during the maintenance phase that led one group to gain and the other to continue losing...oy!

That said, both diets were low-calorie and low-carb too....97g in the big breakfast group is still low-carb.

The other issue is that this was a poster presentation, led by a researcher specifically promoting her particular diet book that this study was based upon....no peer review of the data or conclusions.....so until it's replicated, I don't hold the results all that highly.

We take the kids out for a big breakfast about once a month. Breakfast includes eggs, toast, hashbrowns, and some type of breakfast meat. I know that I feel stuffed for the rest of the day and don't want to eat another thing.

Maybe the saying "eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper" might have some merit.

This is an interesting study. I've always read that the low-carb diet is hard to maintain over the long-term. The idea behind this seems reasonable, but like some other, I'd like to see more studies performed with similar results.

I have always found that this works for me. But I would rather up the protein go easy on the carbs. I find that when the carbs gram count is high I crave carbs a whole day.

Ok, look at the total calorie numbers and the interest in this story goes away. 610 calories is not a "big breakfast" by Western definitions and 1240 calories fits within the modern idea of highly restricted. I've seen this study get enormous amounts of press and excitement, but seriously. There is nothing new here. 1200-1500 has been shown to be more effective than tighter restriction for weight loss. How you skew the calories simply may or may not be relevant.

The big breakfast group ate more calories per day, that could have helped them feel slightly more full, they also ate more grams of protein. For both groups those calories seem extremely low to me.

When are we going to stop promoting super low calories levels that are impossible to maintain long term without turning into a zombie? Never, it was a rhetorical question.

This study didn't compare low carb to big breakfast, it compared low CALORIE to big breakfast. Low carb eaters typically eat big breakfasts, eat more calories, & DON'T eat bread

Seems to me the low carb group was intentionally mis-named in order to discredit low carb diets.

The study is a big mess. What were they trying to compare: high-carb vs. low-carb; big breakfast vs. little breakfast; high protein vs. moderate protein; low calorie vs. severely low calorie; a little of everything?

Why would you ever design the study this way?

Thanks Mike. Fantastic breakdown and summary.

Who did this study; a group of grad students that have no clue how to set up an experiment?? Anyone in the research field knows that in order for a study to have any merit, you need to have only one variable at a time. This study varied total calories, carbohydrate count, fat count, how many calories were consumed at breakfast, etc. Also, how were the rest of the day's calories consumed? Did the small breakfast eaters eat a lot at lunch? Dinner? What about the big breakfast group? Did the very low carb group stick to the diet after the initial 4 months, or did they relax a bit on their regimen? Did the groups exercise?

Anyways, rant over...I usually find that when I eat a high protein breakfast, I stay full longer than if it's just carbs. I like a yogurt with oatmeal and some fruit...the fiber plus the protein and the complex carbs keep me going all morning long. But the truth is, you have to watch your total calorie intake as well...this study restricted calories in both groups, which would probably cause weight loss in just about anyone.