Could breakfast be the hidden key to your teen's weight management success? Join me, as I uncover the truth behind the science of breakfast and its impact on adolescent weight. Many parents wrestle with their teens over the morning meal, armed with good intentions but lacking clarity on whether enforcing breakfast can actually aid their child's health.
As a dedicated advocate for nurturing healthy habits in young people, I break down the complex relationship between skipping breakfast and weight outcomes. Whether you're a mom on a mission to assist your teen's weight loss journey or a listener keen on understanding the nuances of nutrition for adolescents, this podcast is your research-backed compass, pointing the way to informed decisions about your teen's diet and well-being.
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
Could breakfast be the hidden key to your teen's weight management success? Join me, as I uncover the truth behind the science of breakfast and its impact on adolescent weight. Many parents wrestle with their teens over the morning meal, armed with good intentions but lacking clarity on whether enforcing breakfast can actually aid their child's health.
As a dedicated advocate for nurturing healthy habits in young people, I break down the complex relationship between skipping breakfast and weight outcomes. Whether you're a mom on a mission to assist your teen's weight loss journey or a listener keen on understanding the nuances of nutrition for adolescents, this podcast is your research-backed compass, pointing the way to informed decisions about your teen's diet and well-being.
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
This is the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgary does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgary.
Speaker 2:
Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgary, and today I decided to talk about an issue that I hear there is a lot of controversies going on has to do with teenage breakfast. Now I hear oftentimes my families disputing with their teenagers and they are trying to force them in a way in a good way, I know to make them have breakfast, and oftentimes the teenager would say I have no time, or I'm not hungry, or I will eat at school. So there is always this back and forth and I know it is coming from a good place when the parents try to convince their kids to have breakfast. Now I wanted to look into more what is the evidence around having breakfast and whether that helps or doesn't help with weight gain, particularly in teenagers, and I will say that this is somewhat controversial point and I'm going to present to like as an example, two studies that they were done to investigate that question. So there was a great study that was a systematic review. It was published in 2010 and the title of this manuscript is systematic review demonstrating the breakfast consumption influences body weight outcomes in children and adolescents in Europe. So what they did is they put together data from different trials that were conducted in several different countries in Europe, including Croatia, czech Republic, denmark, finland, greece, netherlands, norway, portugal, spain, sweden and United Kingdom. So the authors kind of look at all these studies that they were done and there were different kind of studies. Obviously, some of them were just looking at the kids, asking them how frequently they had breakfast during the week, or do they normally have breakfast or not, and then they were looking at their weight or BMI. If you don't know what BMI is, you can go back to episode one where I tried to explain what's a healthy BMI for a teenager and how to reach a normal and how to calculate a normal or unhealthy BMI. So they kind of put all the data together.
Speaker 2:
And when researchers tried to put all the data together from different studies that were designed in different ways, we have to take into consideration there are some limitations in terms of the scientific method by which they reach those conclusions. But the big advantage of doing that is that you can put together a huge number of points and a huge number of subjects and that kind of strengthens your conclusion that probably is closer to the truth. So a total of number of different studies they included was 16. The total number of kids that were included in these studies were 59,528. Now, that is a very big number, and the ages of the kids that were included in all those different studies range between 7 and 21 years of age.
Speaker 2:
So what they found by putting all the studies together? They found that 12 out of the 13 studies found that skipping breakfast was significantly linked to children and adolescent being overweight or obese, and one study reported that consumption of breakfast three to five days per week was associated with higher chance of being overweight, but this was not significant for children who ate breakfast fewer than two times per week. So the conclusions that the authors came to when, after they did the studies, that it seems that most likely having breakfast is protective in terms of having a good and healthy weight. Now I will say that there have been also other studies that showed no significant association. There was another study, for example, that was published in. It was published in Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Diadetics in 2019. The title of this manuscript is Breakfast Consumption, family Breakfast and a Depository Rejectory in Adolescent the Adolescent Nutritional Assessment Longitudinal Cohort Study.
Speaker 2:
So what they did is they took a total of 945 students from different schools and then they followed them over time and they collected data on their breakfast consumption, whether they have family breakfast, and then they also look at their body mass index and they also look at the percent body fat, because they had a different method to calculate percent body fat, which is an information you don't get from BMI. So they collected this data and then they followed these kids over time to see whether the kids that had consistently breakfast versus the kids that did not have breakfast, whether they tend to gain more weight. And the total number of kids that were enrolled in this study was 945, and the strength of this study is that it isitudinal cohort, in other words, they did not lump data from different studies together, but they kind of had quite a big sample of school students that they followed over time and they can see what the trajectory was. And the researchers in this study did not find any significant association, any significant link between whether they ate breakfast and what was their trajectory over the following three years in terms of gaining weight. And there are many more studies out there. So the question is, what should we do? What should we encourage our teenagers to do have breakfast or not have breakfast, I would say the majority of the studies seem to support the idea that having breakfast is a healthier habit and has been linked with less weight gain, and that has been the traditional school of thought. If I can say that, however, my personal approach and professional approach to this subject is what works for others, what works for most people, maybe the best for your family or may not be the best for your family.
Speaker 2:
There are also differences in the eating patterns of each family and also in the eating patterns and schedule of all the teenagers. For example, there are some teenagers that I hear they have lunch at school at 11 o'clock. There are some teenagers that they have lunch at school at one o'clock. There are some teenagers that skip breakfast but have lunch at school. There are teenagers that skip breakfast and they also skip lunch. So it is very difficult to lump all the patterns of choices because every school district, every schedule for every teenager may be different. There are also some teenagers that stop eating at eight o'clock. There are other teenagers that stay up late and they eat when they're like 11 pm or midnight. So maybe the hunger signal on those that eat late snacks, which can be almost like small meals in the middle of the night is not very high in the morning, the same as another teenager who may have had dinner or a cup of milk or something in the early evening and then they don't have anything and they feel more hungry in the morning.
Speaker 2:
Really, what makes the difference is that we are able to not let ourselves get a reach to the point of starvation, not let our teenagers go feeling weak, not let our teenagers develop all this eating behaviors that are not healthy because they are skipping breakfast in order to lose weight, even though they do feel hungry and they do want to have breakfast. So I would propose that it is best to have a discussion with your teenager and try to look at their schedule and individualize what is the best approach and take this into consideration. There are studies that can point towards both directions. But force feeding breakfast, I would say, is not probably the ideal scenario and I don't think it works, also especially in the teenagers. But trying to be more cooperative with teenagers and try to discuss the different available scenario and trying to make the teenagers being more in tune with their hunger signals and so that they are not letting themselves starve and then end up overeating would probably be the best way to approach this.
Speaker 2:
So that's all I had for you today. If you found this helpful and you believe we may be a good fit to work together so that I can help your teenagers get to a healthy weight, you can always feel free to book a free consultation call with me. Lifestyle14scom. Forward slash call. I'd be happy to talk to you more. Take care and I'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for teens.