Breakfast

Every one of those flippant online lifestyle articles about how to lose weight always mentions that you should eat breakfast regularly. These articles state, without much variation, that healthy people start their days with a healthy, high-fiber or high-protein breakfast. Attractive and enviable young urban professionals know that eating a healthy breakfast gets your metabolism going and gives you the energy to keep moving, thereby burning more calories throughout the day. Furthermore, these anonymous lifestyle experts suggest, not eating breakfast signals to your body that you are "starving," slowing down your metabolism to conserve energy and that you will overeat at your next meal, scarfing down hamburgers and french fries because you didn't eat a bran muffin for breakfast.

I question the wisdom of the this particular advice, and it's not because I'm one of those people who doesn't like breakfast or normally skips it. I think the lifestyle editors like to offer this advice because they know so many people don't eat breakfast, so it seems like an easy thing to say, easy to say and easy to dismiss, since most people will continue to eat breakfast or not. (Most people who skip breakfast or aren't interested in it probably are waking up too early and just aren't ready to eat.)

The thing is, and I know this is anecdotal, non-scientific evidence, most of the skinny people I know do not eat breakfast at all. That's it.  So maybe I'm a conspiracy theorist, but this "you need to eat breakfast" thing seems like a nice way for skinny people to keep everybody else fat. Whatever the motivation, there are so many different kinds of advice for losing weight and dieting because nothing works exactly the same way for everyone. (It's sort of like all the different types of cold remedies, hangover cures, and headache pills. If one thing worked for everyone all the time, that would be the solution.) Yes, burning more calories than you consume always works theoretically, but not in exactly the same way for everyone; you must also consider factors of age, hormones, gender, and metabolism.

Here is how author Gore Vidal said he started his day: "First coffee. Then a bowel movement. Then the muse joins me."  I rather like that breakfast suggestion as a bit of writing advice.

The word "breakfast" (break-fast), by the way, comes from the idea of "breaking the fast" that you endure while sleeping. Thus, when you awake at a natural time, after sleeping sufficiently, you will often be hungrier than you are at any other time of day.

I offer the cover art from Supertramp's 1979 album Breakfast in America for no particular reason, other than the fact that I like the songs. Also, you'll notice the Twin Towers represented on the cover behind the orange juice.