Fact or Fake: Skipping Breakfast Will Help You Hit Your Goals
- June O’Brien
- Mar 1
- 3 min read
Knowing exactly what to do and not to do is impossible, whether it's about skipping breakfast or any other aspect of female health. Fitness content is pouring out of social media into our ears constantly, whether it's correct information or not. But here's the truth:
Skipping Breakfast Will Only Make You Miserable.
Have you been trying to make progress by sticking it out in the morning? Well, it turns out you've been doing the exact opposite of the right thing.
Studies conducted on skipping breakfast and its effects on our bodies have shown (across both genders):
it disrupts our circadian rhythms, impairing our gut microbiome, metabolism and inflammation control
it actually can make you gain weight (regardless of exactly what your breakfast is)
and it can increase your risk for cardiovascular illnesses and many other causes of mortality
Specifically in female bodies,
skipping breakfast impairs your body's ability to regulate its blood sugar in the hours after eating
and it signals a lasting cortisol spike.
Skipping Breakfast & Cortisol 101 Part of the reason that skipping breakfast is so detrimental to our health is because women have a cortisol spike after they wake up in the morning (usually within 30-60 minutes, according to a National Library of Medicine study[6]). The Women's Sports Medicine Center explains how cortisol and melatonin are essentially opposites. However, many studies suggest that without breakfast, cortisol never drops and stays at a higher level throughout the day. This disrupts many of your body's rhythms and, as Dr. Stacy Sims (who is a pioneer of women's heath and nutrition) states, your body starts taking from your muscle and bone mass, reversing any positive effects that fasting could have and replacing them with ones that significantly harming your progress, like decreased muscle, weight gain, increased stress and inconsistent cortisol cycles. What a thing it is to be female. |
So... what does that mean for you?
Don't skip breakfast.
Eat food (even if it's just a little bit) within 30 minutes of waking up. This does not include coffee!
Debunking the myth that skipping breakfast is difficult because most people don't even know why it's a problem, partially because the actual research on female bodies lags significantly behind male science, but also partially because many studies contradict each other. Hopefully regardless of whether you understood the concept beforehand or not, this article helped you to understand a little bit more of the science behind the female body.
Love,
June
If you'd like to know more, please check out these resources:
Mel Robbins' podcast on women's health
(I reccommend the episode where she interviews Dr. Stacy Sims, who was mentioned in this article)
Sources & Research
As always, the information here is from numerous reliable sources (because if it wasn't, what is even the point?):
[1] A study conducted by the Department of Bioscience at the Federal University of São Paulo analyzing 66 studies from 2010-2025 about skipping breakfast.
[2] A study conducted by 7 scientists, from the Public Health Nutrition Laboratory in Rome, and with PhDs in Socio-Economic and Statistical Studies. They took more than 770 participants and grouped them into breakfast eaters (eating before 10 am) and skippers (eating after 10 am). They found that breakfast skippers (and late lunch eaters) had a higher risk of obesity (independent of any other factors such as age and gender or exactly what they were eating).
[3] An analysis done by 8 scientists from the Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology in the affiliated hospital of Southwest Medical University in Luzhou, China. They conducted a meta-analysis of many different studies, finding that skipping breakfast is associated with and increases the risk of obesity.
[4] A meta-analysis conducted by 11 scientists from multiple hospitals in China and China's Medical University in Shenyang, taking information from 221,732 participants. They found that "Skipping breakfast was associated with elevated risk of cardiovascular disease (relative risk 1.22 95% confidence interval 1.10–1.35) and all cause mortality (relative risk 1.25 95% confidence interval 1.11–1.40) compared with eating breakfast regularly."
[5] A study done by 3 women from the Institute of Clinical Research & School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Nottingham, finding that insulin response is negatively affected and weight gain is more likely when women skip breakfast.
[6] A study on the difference between the spike in cortisol in the morning for normal menstrual cycles and menopausal women, done by 6 Korean scientists from varying hospitals.
[7] Women's Sports Medicine Center article about fasting and skipping breakfast.
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