Discover 3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Skip Breakfast

Introduction

Overweight and obesity are strongly associated with breakfast skipping—a common lifestyle practice increasingly adopted as a strategy for weight management. Awareness of the rising prevalence of obesity-associated chronic conditions—including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidaemia—is increasing. Consequently, meal skipping has become an increasingly attractive strategy for reducing overall food intake and creating an energy deficit in an attempt to lose weight.

For many people, the logic seems straightforward: if I eat one less meal, I will consume fewer calories and lose weight. As a result, “skip breakfast if you want to lose weight” has become common advice from friends, family members, and social media—and, in some cases, even from health professionals.

Although skipping breakfast may reduce food intake in the short term, it does not necessarily translate into sustainable weight management. More importantly, simply eating less does not address the underlying dietary, metabolic, behavioural, and lifestyle factors that may contribute to excessive weight gain.

Instead, effective weight management requires addressing the broader dietary and lifestyle factors that influence appetite, energy intake and expenditure, food choices, physical activity, and metabolic health. So, if you skip breakfast specifically to lose weight, there are three potential consequences you should know about that are often overlooked in the “if you want to lose weight, skip breakfast” popular advise.

Blood Cholesterol

Skipping breakfast may lead to short-term weight loss. But in the long term, skipping breakfast is associated with high cholesterol levels.[1]This does not necessarily mean that skipping breakfast itself directly causes high cholesterol. The observed association may partly reflect downstream biological and psychological responses to irregular meal timing. Breakfast regulates the body’s biological clock, or circadian rhythm, which helps regulate metabolic processes.[2]​

Cholesterol production in humans is entrained to meal timing. Timely meals provide nutrient signals that help synchronize the liver and other metabolic organs with the body’s circadian rhythms. Irregular or delayed eating alters clock-gene expression and disrupts the circadian regulation of cholesterol metabolism, including the timing of cholesterol production and bile acid synthesis.[3]

There may also be a more practical explanation, particularly in the Ghanaian context. Many people do not consider foods eaten without soup or stew to constitute a proper meal. When people skip breakfast, appetite can increase as the morning progresses, making it harder to choose healthy foods and control portions later in the day. This may increase the risk of impulsive snacking on convenient foods that are high in rapidly digested carbohydrates and saturated fat.

Over time, repeatedly replacing a balanced breakfast with these types of foods may contribute to a dietary pattern that favors high cholesterol. This effect is particularly common among people carrying excess weight and leading less active lifestyles, in whom the temptation to lose weight by skipping breakfast is high.[4]

​Blood Sugar

Blood sugar can be influenced by a meal itself, an earlier meal, and when the earlier meal was consumed. We are increasingly learning that the same lunch produces a lower after-meal blood glucose response when breakfast has been eaten than when breakfast has been skipped.[4]​A similar observation of higher daily blood sugar when breakfast is skipped has been reported. Regularly skipping breakfast can make blood sugar management difficult in type 2 diabetes.[5]​

Although skipping breakfast may reduce food intake for some people, it may also result in a less favorable blood glucose response later in the day, particularly among people with type 2 diabetes and excess weight who skip breakfast as part of a broader attempt to manage their weight. When you skip breakfast, it extends the overnight fast. Your body increasingly shifts its fuel use from glucose toward fatty acids. As insulin levels remain low, the body mobilizes stored fat, releasing fatty acids into the bloodstream for tissues to use for energy.[6]​

However, increased fatty-acid availability can reduce the body’s response to insulin.[7]When you eventually eat, your body may be less responsive to insulin, and may not regulate the rise in the post-meal blood glucose as effectively as it would after a breakfast eaten earlier in the day.​[8]​ If skipping breakfast can impair insulin response to lunch in healthy young individuals [6]​, the effect may be particularly concerning in people with type 2 diabetes , whose ability to respond to a post-meal glucose load is already compromised.

Cardiovascular Death

Our Expert Opinion

8 Article Sources

1. 1. Yu, J., Xia, J., Xu, D., Wang, Y., Yin, S., Lu, Y., Xia, H., Wang, S., & Sun, G. (2023). Effect of skipping breakfast on cardiovascular risk factors: a grade-assessed systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials and prospective cohort studies. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 14. https://doi.org/doi: 10.3389/fendo.2023.1256899 Open source

2. 2. Wehrens, S. M., Christou, S., Isherwood, C., Middleton, B., Gibbs, M. A., Archer, S. N., Skene, D. J., & Johnston, J. D. (2017). Meal Timing Regulates the Human Circadian System. Current Biology, 27(12), 1768-1775.e3. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.04.059 Open source

3. 3. Cella, L. K., Van Cauter, E., & Schoeller, D. A. (1995). Effect of meal timing on diurnal rhythm of human cholesterol synthesis. American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, 269(5), E878-E883. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1152/ajpendo.1995.269.5.E878 Open source

4. 4. Chen, L., Li, X., Du, X., Liu, W., Du, J., Guo, L., Xia, S., Yuan, Y., Zheng, Y., Wu, S., Guang, X., Zhou, X., Lin, H., Cheng, X., Sang, C., Dong, J., & Ma, C. (2021). Cross-sectional association of meal skipping with lipid profiles and blood glucose in Chinese adults. Nutrition, 90, 111245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2021.111245 Open source

5. 5. Ogata, H., Hatamoto, Y., Goto, Y., Tajiri, E., Yoshimura, E., Kiyono, K., Uehara, Y., Kawanaka, K., Omi, N., & Tanaka, H. (n.d.). Association between breakfast skipping and postprandial hyperglycaemia after lunch in healthy young individuals. British Journal of Nutrition, 431-440. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114519001235 Open source

6. 6. Ogata, H., Hatamoto, Y., Goto, Y., Tajiri, E., Yoshimura, E., Kiyono, K., Uehara, Y., Kawanaka, K., Omi, N., & Tanaka, H. (n.d.). Association between breakfast skipping and postprandial hyperglycaemia after lunch in healthy young individuals. British Journal of Nutrition, 431-440. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114519001235 Open source

7. 7. Tricò, D., Rebelos, E., Astiarraga, B., Baldi, S., Scozzaro, T., Sacchetta, L., Chiriacò, M., Mari, A., Ferrannini, E., Muscelli, E., & Natali, A. (2025). Effects of Hypertriglyceridemia With or Without NEFA Elevation on β-cell Function and Insulin Clearance and Sensitivity. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 110(3), e667-e674. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1210/clinem/dgae276 Open source

8. 8. Jakubowicz, D., Wainstein, J., Ahren, B., Landau, Z., Bar-Dayan, Y., & Froy, O. (2015). Fasting Until Noon Triggers Increased Postprandial Hyperglycemia and Impaired Insulin Response After Lunch and Dinner in Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Diabetes Care, 38(10), 1820-1826. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc15-0761 Open source

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