• 1 cup steel-cut oats*
• 3 cups filtered water
• ¼ tsp. Himalayan salt
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1-2 tsp. raw, unfiltered honey
• 1 tbsp. coconut oil, cold-filtered, unrefined
• ¼ cup roasted almonds
• 2 tbsp. toasted unsweetened coconut flakes
• 2 servings protein powder of choice**
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 1 banana, sliced

*This recipe can also be made with gluten-free rolled oats for a faster, gluten-free version made in the microwave; however, the water measurements will change.

**If you don’t like the taste of your protein powder, you won’t like the taste of this recipe. Step 1: find a protein powder you enjoy! In this recipe, we used Vital Farms Collagen Peptides, no flavor.  

Directions

1. Bring water and salt to a boil. Then add in the oats, stir and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for about 10-20 minutes depending on how mushy you like it.
2. Remove from the heat and let cool. Stir in the honey, coconut oil, cinnamon and protein powder. Stir until well combined. You want to make sure to let the oats cool before stirring in the protein powder. Sometimes the protein can get clumpy if it’s too hot.
3. Garnish with ¼ cup blueberries, ¼ banana slices, ½ tbsp. coconut flakes, 1 tbsp. almonds and a drizzle of honey.
4. Serve immediately. You can store the leftovers in individual-serving size Tupperware for easy grab-and-go breakfasts for the following three days. Keep in fridge. When ready to eat, reheat in microwave or on stovetop. Feel free to switch up the flavors by adding fresh fruit, unsweetened dried fruit or chia seeds on top.

Nutritional Information & Macros

Dietary Information: Contains gluten, nuts & dairy

Macros per serving

• 283 calories
• 10g fat
• 36g carbs
• 15g protein

READ MORE: 

Goji Berry Quinoa Breakfast Bowl

Peanut Butter Banana Overnight Oats

Reinventing Healthy Breakfast: Eggs on the Go

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Breakfast of Champions: Best Steel Cut Oats Recipe Imaginable appeared first on Born Fitness.

Choices are great, but having too many options is paralyzing. There’s probably something you want to eat somewhere in those healthy breakfast lists, but it’s buried an endless scroll of random stuff.

Just as frustrating? Many of the recipes don’t feel like good fit for you. Either because they’re too complicated, have the wrong mix of ingredients, or just don’t sound all that appetizing.

Instead of getting frustrated, we’ve simplified our favorite healthy breakfast recipes into categories that will work for you.

Hate to cook, or have almost no time to do it? Not a problem.

Burned out from eating breakfast staples like oatmeal and eggs over and over again? Don’t worry, we have alternatives.

Wrangling with an addiction to bacon? Never fear. We have love for your bacon love.  

Based on feedback we’ve received from our coaching clients, here are some of the most common problems you face at breakfast — and the meals that can get the job done for your life and body.

The breakfast problem: You don’t have time to eat.

If your mornings are so hectic that you barely have time to chew, much less cook, you aren’t alone. Far from it. In fact UK-based market research showed that nearly half of all people have to eat breakfast outside of their home at least once per week. A similar report in the U.S. showed a growing number of people need portable breakfasts.

Here’s the good news: There are plenty of healthy breakfast options that don’t require you to start your morning at the stove. In fact, you won’t even need to dirty a dish. Simply prep these the night before (or even on the weekend), and you have grab-and-go healthy breakfasts that can roll out the door when you do.

Eggs on the Go (full recipe here) – Get a high-protein breakfast that’s packed with veggies that fits in the palm of your hand. Tastes so good you’ll feel like you sat down for your favorite omelette, but you can do it on the road. You get it all with no mess and no clean-up. Spend 25 minutes making these one night — you’ll have eliminated the need to think about breakfast for the rest of the week.

Peanut Butter Banana Overnight Oats (full recipe here) – Get all the health benefits of oatmeal, and the protein to start your day right, no cooking required. You simply mix the ingredients together the night before, which takes about 5 minutes. The next morning, voila! Breakfast is ready, and so are you.

PB&J Energy Balls (full recipe here) – Here’s a helpful hand-friendly snack that’s great if you have to eat on the go (i.e. in your car). Like the overnight oats above, there’s no cooking required. A food processor is all you need. Knock out one batch on a weekend, and your healthy breakfasts are ready for the week.

The problem: All you want is cereal. 

People are eating less breakfast cereal than they once did, but a bowl of something crispy plus milk remains a morning ritual for many. The good news: You can eat cereal and have it be a healthy start to your day.

1. Added sugar. While it’s not true for all cereals, plenty of breakfast cereals come packed with added sugar. Look at many cereal labels and you’ll see “sugar,” “corn syrup” (a.k.a. more sugar), or plenty of sugar’s other code names (honey, agave nectar, etc.) listed early and often. You do not have to fear sugar, but you should aim to keep your intake of added sugars to below 150 calories per day if you are a man, and 100 if you are a woman. Some especially sugar-packed cereals (usually ones targeted at kids) deliver more than half of that per serving. And FYI: No one eats a single serving of cereal. Your best bet: Check the nutrition labels. Look for a cereal with more fiber and a sugar content in the single digits.
2. Low in protein. Cereals come from grains, and grains generally aren’t high in protein compared to their total calorie count. Yes, adding milk helps. But why not steer your breakfast toward even greater balance by adding a protein source like eggs on the side? Doing that provides a mix of carbs, protein and healthy fats. Here are the two main knocks against cereal (and how to solve them):

Or if you want to give your breakfast bowl a total makeover, we recommend:

The True Breakfast For Champions (full recipe here) – Crunchy, crispy, sweet and satisfying, this bowl delivers all the whole grain goodness without much added sugar. [Honey is an ingredient, but you can ditch it if you want.] For many, the blueberries and bananas provide more than enough sweetness. Combine them with the fiber from the steel cut oats and healthy fats from the almonds, and you’ve got everything you need to fuel your body to win the day.

The problem: You hate oatmeal.

Why does seemingly every health outlet suggest eating oatmeal? There are several reasons to love it:

• Studies indicate eating oatmeal lowers total cholesterol, and – notably – the “bad” LDL cholesterol. That’s because oatmeal is high in fiber and soluble fiber can help reduce cholesterol.
• Another benefit of fiber: It makes you feel fuller for longer. That helps you keep your appetite in check.
• Studies show that people who eat oatmeal consume less total calories at their next meal compared to those who ate breakfast cereal — especially among overweight people.

But look, nobody can blame you if oatmeal isn’t your thing. And there are plenty of ways to get fiber—the main driver behind many of these benefits—without turning to oats. A piece of high-fiber bread (we like Ezekiel 4:9, but look for any bread with “100% whole grain” or “whole wheat” on the label) can have nearly as much fiber as oatmeal. Toast it with a side of bacon or eggs (or both!) and you’ve got a healthy, well-rounded breakfast.

Or if you’re open to the idea of a bowl, but just don’t want it to be oats, try this new take:

Goji Coconut Quinoa Bowl (full recipe here) – We don’t like ranking whole foods against one another, but one could argue that quinoa is like Oats 2.0. You still get a fiber-rich carbohydrate, but quinoa is also high in protein. The almond slices, goji berries and coconut flakes don’t just add taste and texture, they also amp up the nutrient content.

The problem: You hate most healthy breakfast recipes.

If you are fed up with pancakes, cereal, oats, and everything else that most people think of as breakfast foods, you aren’t alone. In fact, Born Fitness coach Natalie Sabin counts herself among you.

“Breakfast foods have just never been my thing,” Sabin says. “So I make meals that I like, no matter what time of day it is.” Which is why she routinely opts for non-traditional morning meals like:

• High-protein salads
• Roasted veggies and egg whites
• Avocado toast with eggs
• Veggie curry tempeh stew

A recurring theme you’ll see running through those meals: leftovers. There’s nothing wrong with making part of tonight’s dinner into tomorrow’s breakfast. However if you want to put something completely new together for breakfast, but don’t want it to taste breakfast-y, here’s a morning meal that many breakfast food haters love:

The Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Pita (full recipe here) –  Start your day with a savory high-protein sandwich. The chicken sausage combined with zesty parmesan gives you a meal so delicious you won’t even know there’s spinach in there too. (Kidding, spinach! You know we love you.)

The Bro Scramble (full recipe here): Eggs, roasted veggies and bacon, together at last. Here’s a power-packed recipe that will impress your friends — or provide you with meals for a couple of days if you don’t feel like sharing.You’ll be delighted by the combination of flavors and textures. The combo of sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts will keep you feeling full to lunch. Best of all, they all come together in a single pan, meaning no mess and very little to clean up.

The problem: You don’t eat enough protein.

With all of the delicious carb-dense options for breakfast, it can seem like the breakfast gods forgot about protein. Sometimes the easiest route is a protein shake, and here’s how to make sure it doesn’t taste like watered down protein powder:

The Maca Chai Protein Shake (full recipe here): Haven’t heard of Maca? Here’s why you should get hip to it: The Peruvian powder has been shown to have beneficial effects on hormones as well as promise in fighting disease. Combine that with the Greek yogurt and protein powder in this recipe and suddenly you’ve got all the tasty smoothness of a Starbucks frappuchino. But where frappuchinos are packed with sugar, this drink comes stacked with 39 grams of protein.

The problem: You don’t like eggs (or are tired of eating them every day)

Eggs are an awesome breakfast staple for numerous reasons:

• Eggs are a source of high-quality protein.
• Eggs provide 18 vitamins and minerals, including several that many people are deficient in, such as zinc.
• The healthy fats eggs contain makes many of these micronutrients easier for your body to absorb.
• Some of the protein strains within eggs have anti-cancer and tumor suppression properties.
• People knock eggs for being a source of cholesterol, but here’s the thing: There’s a difference between dietary cholesterol (what you eat) and blood cholesterol (what’s coursing through your veins). Numerous studies indicate the cholesterol from eggs has little to no effect on your body’s actual blood cholesterol levels. A body of research even shows that egg consumption has positive effects on HDL (“good”) cholesterol in the body. (Here are three different examples.)

But if you’re feeling burned out from eating them — of if you just don’t like them — we get it. Other great go-tos include Greek yogurt, milk, protein powder, chicken and salmon — either smoked, cured (a.k.a. “lox”), or just leftover from the night before.

Here are two non-egg recipes that you might enjoy:

The Berry Nutty Parfait (full recipe here): Talk about easy. You can have this one ready in 5 minutes (max). Fruit, granola and yogurt are a simple yet potent combination. You get protein and healthy fats (both great for keeping you full) along with powerful antioxidants from the berries, which have been linked to better brain health and numerous other benefits. Pretty sweet indeed!

Bacon & Date Protein Pancakes (full recipe here): What’s the only thing better than a plate stacked with flapjacks? Having that stack be packed with bacon and protein. Each bite is a sweet, salty, savory explosion of flavor. It’ll taste so good you’ll think you should feel bad — but when you see that there’s three times more protein than there is fat, you’ll know you don’t have to.

READ MORE: 

Is Sugar Bad For You?

Fix Your Diet: Understanding Protein, Carbs and Fat

How Many Eggs Are Safe to Eat?

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Win the Morning: Healthy Breakfast Recipes for Any Situation appeared first on Born Fitness.

Turns out the “right thing” really depends on whether you want to eat early in the morning. That’s because two recent studies found that eating breakfast has no direct impact on weight loss. We’re not talking observational studies, like many done prior. This was a direct comparison of an early meal versus no early meal. And the results had a simple message:

Eating breakfast is not weight loss magic.

From a physiological perspective, there’s nothing special about eating early in the morning and triggering weight loss.

In the study, which looked at more than 300 people, participants were split into 2 groups. One ate breakfast and the other did not. While there were some small differences, the bottom line was that there was no significant difference in weight loss between the breakfast eaters and the breakfast skippers. In fact, both groups lost weight and this occurred without the researchers telling participants what to eat (or not eat) for breakfast.

The growing evidence should be a welcome relief for those who don’t like eating first thing in the morning. If there’s one thing that needs to be understood it’s this:

Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. 

But neither is lunch, dinner, or snacks. This isn’t meant to be puzzling or a letdown to those of you trying to crack the weight loss code. Believing that one meal is the foundation of success can be detrimental to your healthy living goals.

The Diet Refresh: What We Know About Meal Timing

The problem with the breakfast-is-best hypothesis is that it steers people into the “there’s only one way to eat” mentality. The truth is, it doesn’t matter when you eat your meals: Morning, night, or spread out through the day. If there are behavioral reasons why you want to eat breakfast, such as it energizes or improves focus, then those are good reasons to have an early meal.

If breakfast feels forced or makes you sluggish, then there’s no pressure to force feed just for the sake of eating. In fact, recent research also suggests that  it’s your choice if you want to eat three meals, six meals or anywhere in between, and that there is a meal frequency that’s ideal for weight loss.

If you that sounds wrong, you might want to read this study and this one as well. Research can be flawed, but our body’s biological nature is not meant to be deceiving. Weight loss depends on how many calories you eat, the foods you eat, and the macronutrients you consume in your diet (that is, what’s the ratio of proteins, carbs, and fats). Add in your exercise tendencies, and that will determine how you look and feel.

Some people believe that eating more frequently has a host of benefits, such as curbing appetite. This can be true—but the opposite can also occur. Eating more can make you feel hungrier and consume more calories.

And there’s the thought that frequent meals improves your metabolism. But as long as total calories are equal (and macronutrients are balanced), your body will burn the same number of calories in the digestion process. That’s just science.

Yes, there are other processes in your body that can play a role in the weight loss process—most notably stress and hormones—but that’s a separate conversation altogether. Before you can even worry about those individual issues, you must make sure that you’ve established baseline eating habits that are the foundation for a healthy life. Once you do that, you might experience the type of change you didn’t think could happen for your body.

Why The ‘Breakfast is Best’ Model is Broken (And Always Has Been)

Here’s the problem with the breakfast hypothesis: The moment you insist that breakfast is essential, you create a mental block that over-emphasizes the importance of the meal. Suddenly if you miss breakfast, you believe that your fat loss will be slowed, you’re destined to eat more at the next meal, and your energy will be off.

It’s the real issue with diets: they create psychological barriers that make the journey seem harder, rather than suggesting flexible solutions that make the process more convenient to your lifestyle.

Changing your body is as much a psychological process as it is a physical one. You need to believe that you can become better. But you also need to believe in the program you’re following, and use an approach that can be maintained.

Any time you want to make a change you’ll have to make sacrifices. But don’t confuse working harder and removing certain habits with losing all control. That’s a recipe for failure.

For years, we were told breakfast is the most important meal of the day. In fact, physicians are notorious for scolding patients who skip breakfast—particularly people who are embarking on a plan to lose weight.

There is some credence here, by the way: a study conducted by scientists in Massachusetts in 2008 showed that participants who ate a calorically dense breakfast lost more weight than those who didn’t.

The theory was that the higher caloric intake early in the day led people to snack less often throughout the day and lowered caloric intake overall. There are also some epidemiological studies that show a connection between skipping breakfast and higher body weight.

However, the crux of the breakfast study is ultimately that a larger breakfast leads to lower overall caloric intake. That is, the argument for a larger breakfast ultimately boils down to energy balance; if that study is reliant on the position that weight loss comes down to calories in versus calories out, then the makeup of the food shouldn’t matter. And this isn’t the case.

What you choose for breakfast will have a big impact on what you eat the rest of the day. 

Case in point–eating 5 eggs is not the same as eating 1 donuts, even if the calories are matched. So it’s true that if you choose to eat breakfast, the benefits of that first meal will depend on your food selection.

However, if we’ve learned anything from Mark Haub’s Twinkie Diet, it’s that you can eat garbage and lose weight; so clearly, something else is going on. The pro-breakfast folks declare that because insulin sensitivity is higher in the morning, eating a carbohydrate-rich meal early in the day is the greatest opportunity to take in a large amount of energy without the danger of weight gain.

There’s only one tiny problem with that theory: insulin sensitivity is not higher in particular hours of the morning. It’s higher after a minimum of eight hours of fasting. It just so happens that you fast when you sleep, so the information is misleading. More specifically, insulin sensitivity is higher when your glycogen levels (the energy stores in your body) are depleted, like after your sleeping fast.

That’s why some people experience benefits by pushing back their first meal. (Technically, your first meal is always breakfast because it’s when you “break” your overnight fast.) Intermittent fasting takes that a step farther and turns your body into a fat-burning, muscle-building machine. You see, if you skip breakfast and extend the fasting period beyond the typical eight to ten hours, you increase insulin even more.

In the end, there is no science that supports the idea—from a direct comparison—that eating breakfast is better than not eating breakfast. This is not about food choice; it’s simple a matter of food timing.

In reality, this is closely linked to the multiple meal hypothesis. French researchers found that there is “no evidence of improved weight loss” by eating more frequently. And they even went a step farther to show that in terms of the number of calories you burn per day, it does not matter if you graze or gorge—assuming that you’re eating the number of calories you need to lose weight and the macronutrients (proteins, carbs, and fats) are equal.

If you’re told to eat 2,000 calories per day, it doesn’t matter if it’s separated into five 400-calorie meals or three larger calorie feasts. (However, the composition of those meals does matter.)

But that’s not all. Canadian researchers decided to compare three meals per day to six meals per day, breaking the six into three main meals and three snacks (the routine that has been advocated by every diet book written in the last twenty years). The results? There was no significant difference in weight loss, but the people who ate three meals per day were more satisfied and felt less hunger.

What does it all mean? Some people might have a psychological dependence or belief that they need breakfast. It makes them feel better, it gives piece of mind, or maybe it very realistically helps control morning hunger.

From a physiological perspective–or how your body actually reacts to breakfast–there’s nothing special about eating early in the morning when it comes to triggering weight loss. In fact, forcing yourself to eat at a particular time, or a prescribed number of times, is just as big of a problem as saying you need breakfast.

What About Your Metabolism?

Before we go on, remember there is nothing wrong with eating breakfast. You can eat breakfast and be perfectly healthy and use it as part of an effective weight lost plan. But it’s important to remember that if you’re forcing breakfast for it’s supposed weight loss and metabolism benefits, you’re now free to choose if you want an early meal.

In another study conducted at the University of Bath, participants either ate or skipped breakfast for 6 weeks. This time, there was no change in metabolic (fat loss) or cardiovascular health. This was important because unlike the general weight loss study, this research assessed the old concept of, “breakfast ignites your metabolism first thing in the morning.” And yet, when metabolisms were actually tested, there wasn’t any evidence to prove the theory.

While there isn’t anything wrong with eating breakfast, potential downsides do exist. The problem with a traditional breakfast is that it creates a big eating window. That is, the number of hours during the day that you are consuming food. This is typically about a fifteen-hour period (between seven a.m. and ten p.m.).

In a recent groundbreaking study by the scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, it was found that a larger eating window was associated with more fat storage and a higher likelihood of health problems such as diabetes and liver disease.

This study was done with mice, but the findings are too important to overlook. The mice were put on a high-fat diet that would typically cause obesity. One group of mice ate whenever they wanted, and the other could only eat for eight hours, starting in the afternoon and finishing at night. The mice that ate whenever they wanted gained fat, developed high cholesterol, high blood glucose, and liver damage.

The mice with the eight-hour feeding period starting in the afternoon? They weighed 28 percent less and had no health problems, even though they ate the same amount of fatty foods.

The scientists believe that by cutting down how long you have to eat, your body does a better job of metabolizing your fat, glucose, and cholesterol. What’s more, because you’re eating for a smaller window of time and starting later in the day, your body is burning more fat. Why? Because you pushed back breakfast, extended your overnight fast (which occurs while you sleep), and became a fat-burning machine.

What’s more, by skipping breakfast (or just starting it later in the day), you also prime your body to feel hungrier less often. That’s because the moment you start eating food, your body creates an expectation for calories. And for most people, that expectation means hunger pangs that are too hard to overcome, leaving you grabbing for snacks by ten a.m. and eating more calories than you should by the end of the day.

To Breakfast or Not To Breakfast: The Choice Is Yours

Here’s what you really need to know about breakfast: It’s great for some but not for others. (I love breakfast foods, but rarely eat breakfast anymore.) Insisting that someone has to eat breakfast to lose weight could be the one change that actually makes it harder to experience long-lasting change. Some people aren’t morning eaters, and there’s no reason they have to change that aspect to be healthy.

Don’t believe in dogma. Just as you have a unique body, you can have a unique diet.

If you like breakfast, eat it. If you like snacking, make that your habit. But don’t let anyone convince you that your success will depend on any one meal.

But the process can be made easier. It can be enjoyable. And most of all, it will be effective if you take the right approach.

Eat breakfast. Don’t eat breakfast. That choice is yours.

And by making that choice, and determining what’s best for you, then you’ll be on the path to change that works and lasts.

Less Thinking. Fewer Frustrations. More Results.

A weight loss plan doesn’t have to be a world of false promises and hype. Plenty of people have success, but the difference is that it’s personalized.

Now you can have  your own risk-free plan created with Born Fitness online coaching. Sign up for your free consultation call, and the if you’re unhappy with the first month you receive a full refund. This is one-on-one coaching at it’s best. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Click here to get started.

READ MORE: 

Is Intermittent Fasting Right for You?

Winning the War on Hunger: Practical Solutions to Overeating

Fix Your Own Diet: Understanding Proteins, Carbs and Fats

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Breakfast is Not the Most Important Meal appeared first on Born Fitness.

All of this was indisputable until intermittent fasting came into the picture, and the importance of breakfast was brought into question. Or more accurately, the timing of meals was analyzed in a new way. If you’re not familiar with this style of eating, intermittent fasting focuses on control over your appetite. It’s an approach that has several variations, such as offering an eating window during the day (think “Lean Gains 16/8” where you only eat for 8 hours a day), or days where you don’t eat at all. (A la Eat Stop Eat, with one weekly 24-hour fast.) Some methods even combine fasting modalities with certain types of training (As was prescribed in Engineering the Alpha.) Each approach is designed to take advantage of the growing evidence of the benefits of fasting, an area that is admittedly still young in terms of research.

Although intermittent fasting became synonymous with being an anti-breakfast diet, it’s an inaccurate generalization of a style of eating that attempts to remove rules (you must eat breakfast within 30 minutes of waking!) and replace it with a simplified approach that offers flexibility. For example, you can still wake up, eat breakfast at 9 and then stop your meals at 5. This would be considered intermittent fasting. Or you could have breakfast 5 days a week and fast one day per week. This is also intermittent fasting. [Eds. note: I practice a style of intermittent fasting—and wrote a best-selling book that shares an IF style diet—but I do not think it’s the only diet approach or the best for everyone. Every eating style should be dependent on an individual’s goals.]

Whether you practice intermittent fasting or not, it’s important to know that you don’t have to eat a meal at any particular time of the day. Just as it’s ridiculous to insinuate that having a meal after 6 pm will make you fat, it’s just as careless to make a blanket statement saying you must eating upon waking and enjoy a big breakfast.

Some people don’t do well when they are forced to eat first thing in the morning. Others prefer this style and find that it helps them prevent overeating. Both models work, with the main message being your eating schedule should fit into a sustainable lifestyle pattern. Saying “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is a misnomer; every meal is the most important, and your food choices are much more important than the times you eat.

But I heard Skipping Breakfast is Bad For Your Heart…

Fasters and non-fasters should be able to get along just fine—if not for some dangerously misleading research that was recently published. Scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health (or maybe more accurately the PR department at the school) made the all-too-broad claim that skipping breakfast was tied to an increase in heart attacks and coronary heart disease.

Wait.

One.

Second.

Skipping breakfast does what?

After a close look at the study design and the results, that conclusion couldn’t be more inaccurate or misleading. If you only look at the study abstract, it appears that skipping breakfast leads to a 27% increase in heart issues. That’s what you’ll hear in the news and see published at all the main outlets. What a shame.

After a close analysis, here’s what the research really found:

• The study compared more than 23,000 breakfast eaters to a little more than 3,000 breakfast skippers.
• The incidence rate of heart attacks in breakfast eaters was 5.77% whereas the incidence rate for the skippers was just 5.05%. In other words, those who ate breakfast had a 14% higher incidence of cardiovascular problems during the duration of the study. Not quite what the press release suggests. But wait, there’s more.
• The study becomes even more interesting when you review the lifestyle behaviors of the subjects. As we all know, smoking isn’t good for your health and is tied to heart disease. So that would be an important variable to consider when drawing any correlational conclusions between a behavior (skipping breakfast) and a health condition (heart attacks). In research we call these confounding variables, and all too often they are completely ignored. This study was no exception. From the subjects used, breakfast skippers were three times more likely to smoke than breakfast eaters. (And no, this does not mean skipping breakfast leads you to smoking). Naturally, it would be fair to question: Is it skipping breakfast that’s causing the heart issues or the smoking? This study was not designed in a way that could answer that question, but it needs to be asked.
• The smoking relationship wasn’t the only red flag. The breakfast skippers also exercised less, consumed more alcohol, and sat on their ass and watched more TV per week. All of these factors could easily be tied to an increase in heart disease, but instead it was breakfast that received all the attention.
• If that wasn’t enough, the “fasters” were also more likely to be single. This is important because prior research shows that single men are likely to more stress and heart issues.

I could go on—such as discussing how the real variable in this study appears to be age—but that would be belaboring the point. When the study was adjusted for factors including high cholesterol and diabetes, blood pressure, and BMI, the link between skipping breakfast and the increased risk of heart attack was no longer statistically significant.

Or in layman’s terms, there was no connection between fasting and heart attacks.

To Breakfast or Not to Breakfast: The Choice is Yours

I’m a big fan of science, but I take much of it with a grain of salt. We need to use research to test informed ideas, not twist results to scare people and complicate health decisions and daily behaviors. It’s very easy to look at data and make association conclusions and find links between seemingly unrelated behaviors. But unless a study directly tests for that and can prove some sort of causation, it doesn’t benefit anyone to spread information (and panic) to the mass media that won’t provide any real service.

If a man who doesn’t eat breakfast starts eating tomorrow, there is no guarantee that he will lessen his chance of having a heart attack. In fact, if you take the hard numbers of this study, just 1 out of every 292 breakfast skippers have heart disease and 1 out of every 249 breakfast eaters have it. Do these numbers really mean anything?

As always, we must continue to keep an eye on what science tells us and learn so that we can become healthier, but we also must be critical enough to ask the questions that allow us to draw the line between a cool statistic and reality.

So eat breakfast. Or don’t eat breakfast. Choose the one that works for you based on whether you feel better, have more energy, want to gain muscle, lose fat, or know if one eating pattern will give you more control over your diet.  But don’t make that choice based out of fear that isn’t rooted in valid claims that will impact your health.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

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