Breakfast: Skipping breakfast, What time to eat, and should we consider intermittent fasting

Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day, or have we been sold a myth? In this episode, we unpack the truth about skipping breakfast, the science behind what you should eat, and whether intermittent fasting is actually worth the hype.

We’ll explore how meal timing affects your energy, metabolism, and focus, plus who benefits most from eating early, and who might perform better waiting. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, improve your health, or simply feel better throughout the day, this conversation will challenge what you thought you knew about starting your morning.

www.drjimmysteger.com

Transcript

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Welcome to the Nutrition Factor. I'm your host, Dr. Jimmy Steager, and this week's topic is going to be on breakfast. Skipping breakfast, what time of day to eat breakfast, what is the right time of day, and should we consider intermittent fasting? In the 50 plus years I've been in this field of natural medicine and uh training athletes and people all over the world, I can clearly tell you, I personally do not ever allow my patients or clients to skip breakfast. And uh there's a lot of studies out there that talk about this, and since I've been involved in traditional Chinese medicine for almost 40 years as well, I can clearly tell you the Oriental people, the oldest living people in the world, the Koreans, the Japanese, the Pakistanians, none of them skip breakfast. And if we look at the meridian channels, the proper circadian rhythm, and when is truly the best time to eat, I can tell you from not only experience but book experience as well, reading, studying with professors all over the country and being a part of groups uh where we ate breakfast, some people did not, and the studies that we went through for tremendous amounts of years, not just over a period of 30, 60, 90 days, but we would test some of these patients out for as much as a year at a time. And you can clearly see the difference in the patients that do eat a good quality, healthy breakfast, not just anything, but the right breakfast and what is the right breakfast. We're going to talk about that today on the show. So when a patient comes in to see us, uh, once again we do VMA testing, vitamin amino acid testing on all of our patients to find out what their nutritional levels are, what they're missing, so that we can help them correctly. When I build their specialized eating program, their nutrition profile, their nutritional supplement program. We want to make sure that everything's done correctly for that particular patient. And we look at several different factors. We always look at blood type, eye color, the type of person which is the uh what we call chemical type. In Chinese medicine, there are 20 different types of people walking the face of the earth and only 20. And then we look at what their problems are. So there's four things that must go into our programs when we build a nutrition program for our patients. And eating breakfast is always at the top of the list. So let's look at breakfast. When is the best time of day to eat breakfast? Well, according to traditional Chinese medicine, the optimal time for breakfast is between seven and nine in the morning. Why is that? Because TCM teaches us that the body's energy flows through the body along these meridian channels from the internal organs and the stomach meridian is the most active during this period. So if you get a patient up or a client up, we like to get our people up and eat between 6 and 6:30. That allows the stomach to get the food in there by 7, so the meridian channel can pick up on this food. And uh the energy channels in Chinese medicine are referred to as qi, uh QI in Chinese medicine. And so eating breakfast at this time allows for the easier digestion and absorption in the digestive system, preventing the accumulation of food in the abdominal and reducing the risk of weight gain and chronic diseases down the road. Most importantly, it efficiently delivers nutrients to the correct organs, promoting mental alertness and energy levels throughout the day. The pancreas depends on this as well, as all other organs do also. So we never suggest our patients to skip breakfast. And for my people that are on my program, they will not. So for those who are diabetic, they wonder about the insulin. No problems. We take care of that as well. We make sure we balance that out based off the individual, and we regulate that. It doesn't matter whether you're type one or type two. I can teach you how to work around that for the best overall function of the body. And remember, if you're eating breakfast early in the morning, consider this. You're part of the oldest living sect of the people in the world. Because in China, Japan, Korea, your foreign countries, almost all people eat between 5:30 and 6.30 in the morning. That gets the stomach qi filled up with proper nutrients if you're eating good, that is. And we're going to talk about that next, so that the meridian channels will pick up that food and do what it needs to properly. What I've seen in my own personal uh facility, and I train people all over the world, have uh patients in over 20 countries overseas as well. I can tell you that the people that eat the earliest all live the longest. This is all factual. This is not some made-up jargon that someone came up with over the past one, five, ten years. This has been going on forever. And back in the biblical days, everybody woke up and ate early because when the sun comes up and that sunlight hits your eyes, you're stimulating the meridian channel, and you want to get food in your body so that you can function at a higher level. All my patients, especially my ladies that have thyroid disease, you'll always see that those people eat after eight or nine o'clock in the morning. The thyroid opens up between eight and ten, and when you don't feed that, then you develop thyroid problems. The men who have heart attacks and strokes, most all men who have heart attacks and strokes in this country are having that between 9 and 11 o'clock in the morning because the heart meridian channel opens up at that time as well. And if you're not feeding the heart first thing in the morning, and I mean early, then you are missing out on the opportunity to feed the nutrients, especially potassium and sodium, to the heart muscle. We need to feed the heart, gentlemen and ladies. We're going to take care of that thyroid, eat early, have a good quality breakfast like the ones we're going to talk about in a moment, and you'll see that you can get rid of your thyroid disease. We do it every day in our facility, and it's all partly due to not skipping breakfast. Chronic diseases, I never tell my patients to skip breakfast or to eat past eight or nine o'clock because it can increase totally the risk of chronic conditions such as constipation, stomach, ulcers, um, and gallstones. When food is eaten, it stimulates the stomach, initiating a reflex movement in the colon to facilitate proper bowel movements. Most people aren't having those as well. So we want to stimulate the peristolic action of the colon by eating early in the morning. However, regular omission of breakfast can result in reduced stomach stimulation, weakening the reflex movements in the colon, and eventually leading to constipation and other problems of the colon down the road. We see it every day. Prolonged fasting denies the stomach the chance to neutralize stomach acid, increasing the risk of gastric ulcers. Additionally, it hinders the release of stored bile from the gallbladder, potentially leading to the development of gallbladder sludge and gall stones. A lot of patients that come to me with gallstones. We put them on a liver gallbladder cleanse, flush these stones out. You gotta loosen them up, make them softer, and get them to pass through the body so they don't get uh the sludge in the body and cause hard gallstones, then you eventually have to go get them surgically removed, which is not never the answer. However, a lot of people do that every single day here in America. There are several studies that found that skipping breakfast increases the risk of gastrointestinal cancers, particularly raising the likelihood of gallbladder cancer and extrahepatic bile duct cancer by nearly five-fold. This is not good. So, what about weight gain? There are those who believe that uh intermittent fasting for weight loss is good, and this has been the crave now for the last five or ten years, having only one or two meals a day. Is it really healthy? No, it's not. However, for some, skipping breakfast is not as an effective method for losing weight. And I've been in this field once again for a long time and can tell you this is not recommended in any way, shape, or form, especially for you bodybuilders. Research has found that the body's metabolism and insulin sensitivity are both higher in the morning. Fasting in the morning and consuming a large amount of food in the evening can and will increase the risk of totally disrupting the metabolism. In South Korea, a study indicated that irregular breakfast consumption habits are associated with increased risk of metabolic disruptions, especially among younger working males. Irregular breakfast eaters had 15 to 20 percent higher risk of normal metabolic outcomes and increased weight gain throughout their early years and lives down the road as well. So, what about the brain? What about memory? Memory and brain power, so important. A lot of people are losing that today in our society due to faulty eating and too much garbage. And skipping breakfast and engaging in prolonged fasting can lead to low blood sugar, causing a corresponding decrease in glucose levels in the brain. This in turn may result in fatigue, lethargy, lack of concentration, and memory decline. See it every day. All the time, patients come in here and thinking, what in the world is going on with my brain? And they haven't eaten all day long. Such effects not only impact the academic learning of children in school and the work efficiency, but may also contribute to physical weakness or injuries during exercise. If you are an athlete, you may have to train or practice early in the morning, like we all did when we played ball. We used to have two a days, and I can't tell you if I had walked out of the house without breakfast, I would have never made it. And I don't know if some of these people did. Well, a lot of them performed very poorly, and that's why, because they weren't eating good quality breakfast. My parents had me up eating at least an hour, hour and a half before any type of ball. Uh, skipping breakfast will kill your ability to perform at the highest level and risk injury early on. Nutrients in the body at the cellular level are everything. This is what we do. We work at the cellular level by getting proper nutrition to the cells so people can perform at peak levels in everything they do. Besides, you cannot think and make your best choices in or out of the classroom without proper diet. So for all your parents sending your kids to school without eating a good quality breakfast, not the right thing to do. Your children are the most active and their brain is usually under the most stress between 9 and 11 o'clock in the morning before lunch. And a lot of kids are not even eating breakfast. They're eating their only source of food at school in the school cafeteria, which is usually horrible. And so these kids are not getting what they need in order to be the best they can be in school. And a lot of parents think to have children that are not uh in the best shape that they could be. Well, that's due to faulty eating. You got to feed your children well, feed them a good multivitamin with some minerals and some omega-3s so that brain can function and get your child on track. Parents wake up earlier if you have to to feed your children. The most important thing you have is your children, and that's our future generations. So feed them well. Eat grains, the right grains. This is what we put on all of our patients' diets, and grains are crucial for the health, and the body requires foods that are rich in starch, including brown rice, oriental noodles, not garbage, not foods that are loading with gluten, good quality sweet potatoes, and various other whole grains. Some people believe in cutting all their carbs, which are just starches, and this is not recommended for best health practices for anyone. I suggest to get healthy non-gluten, hot grain for most of my patients, breakfast in the morning. And once again, if you look at Chinese medicine, they all eat a hot breakfast early in the morning, and this builds their power so they can function. A lot of them are doing traditional kung fu of some type all day long, and they're working, they're working in the garden, they work 10, 12 hours a day, and these people are amazing. In Chinese medicine, there are five basic grains recognized for proper nourishment of the body. Whole grains promote brain health, provide physical strength and energy, and aid in healthy bowel movements. This in itself is a huge problem in this country. I see colon problems from the medical community every day. They send their patients over. I take care of a lot of MDs and RNs, these gastroenterologists themselves have problems and they have a hard time getting these people straightened out. So if they have IBS or Crohn's disease or many different types of bowel functions that are out there, now we always notice that those people are not eating a good quality breakfast. If you can stimulate them through exercise and get them eaten correctly, increase their water intake, you'll see that most of these bowel problems go away very quickly. A breakfast consisting solely of fruits is not good. Yes, fruits are rich in fiber and aids in digestion. However, it's important to include some starch to provide sufficient energy for bowel movements. Fruits alone cannot do this. Consuming an appropriate amount of starchy foods does not lead to weight gain, like a lot of people think, even if individuals aiming to lose weight. It is recommended to incorporate a small amount of starch into your breakfast. So they have all my patients doing, and they do amazing. After all the Orientals eat rice three times a day, and you don't see any fat Orientals until they move to America and start eating the way the Americans eat. All these processed foods and garbage that's available in these stores nowadays is terrible for the human diet. So, ladies and gentlemen, get away from these boxed cereals and these ready-to-eat formulas that are out there. If you have a child that you're trying to get out the door quickly, you can get up 15, 20 minutes earlier and fix them a good breakfast and get them on their way to school so they can function at the highest level. And that means you too, because you parents that are not doing well at work, crabby, not feeling good, your mind's messed up, foggy brain, you can't remember, you can't think. Part of this is due to improper food at breakfast if you're eating at all. So wake up, start your body with about four to eight ounces of water, a little hemland pink, salt, or celtic salt in it to stimulate the body. Wait about 10 or 15 minutes and start with a good grain-based breakfast. Meats, what about meat? Man, America's loaded in meat. Most Americans, especially southern guys down here, love Jimmy Dean sausage. I can't tell you many people we see down here coming to our clinic that eat meat three times a day. Well, most American men do because they think that's the thing to do, get their protein. And if you're not doing that, you're not a real man. Well, bacon is probably America's favorite, favorite among all breakfast foods besides ham. Good old ham, commonly found in most of your breakfast eateries along the road. If you see going down the road, you stop off at any of these truck stops. Most everybody's got some type of bacon and egg sandwich, and most of these fast foods change or making a killing off of you eating them. So occasional consumption of free-range turkey bacon is okay. Eating more than two or three times a week has been proven to increase the risk of developing colon issues and even colorectal cancer. Now, that's in the form of ham, which is pig, or even bacon. We don't suggest anybody eat traditional bacon that comes from a pig. It's just not healthy for you, loaded in parasites, and you can't kill it. And parasites are a big deal in this country, and that's another topic to be discussed, which we're going to get into one day. We're going to teach you about parasites. A study in the UK involving more than 400,000 participants, tracked for approximately seven years, found that consuming an additional 0.71 ounces, which is 20 grams of processed meat per day, only 20 grams, not much, roughly equivalent to one slice of bacon, increases the risk of colon cancer by up to 18%. This is not good. I see a lot of cancer patients throughout the country, and uh I can clearly tell you we get them off of almost all meat immediately, especially any type of pork or beef. And once we get them cleaned up and on their way, then we can go back to occasional turkey bacon in their diet. However, that's not something we recommend, especially our prostate cancer patients, because they're already having problems with too much uric acid, raising their PSA levels. So if you're a male and you're having problems with your prostate, give us a call. If you have prostate cancer, give us a call. We can help you with all this, and it will involve proper eating from day one, and that means a good quality breakfast without meat. What about cold foods? Boy, this is a big thing. Everybody's into some type of cold, quick foods nowadays, and it's been on the rise for the past 20 years. I know early on, when I was uh bodybuilding, competitively bodybuilding, a lot of people would wake up and eat cold foods like fruit juices, smoothies, yogurt, none of these things which are healthy for you at this time of day. So I don't advise eating any type of raw or cold foods in the morning for breakfast because they can ruin the digestive system totally. You need warm grains in your gut when you first wake up, not cold food. This includes items like smoothies, whether it be vegetable or fruit juice, chill beverages, yogurt, salads of any kind. I don't suggest any type of salad first in the morning. If you're gonna do a green-based drink, like my pro greens that we sell, those are a big thing uh in this country nowadays, and they're good to drink. Just drink it with room temperature or warm water first thing in the morning, and then wait about 10 or 15 minutes and eat your breakfast. People with weak kidney function, we see a lot of this in our clinic. In particular, should avoid consuming smoothies of any type for breakfast as they can increase the burden on the kidneys. Yes, kidney disease is a big deal. And for the people that come to me that have kidney problems, we know their liver's in trouble, so we have to take care of the liver and the kidneys, so we cut out any type of cold drinks they're doing first thing in the morning. I have witnessed many cases where prolonged consumption of cold foods like salads for breakfast resulted in kidney failure, necessitating dialysis for some of these patients. We have a lot of people come to me that's on dialysis or their medical doctor is trying to put them on dialysis, and if we can get them with a kidney function of at least uh 15 or 20, sometimes as low as 12, we can save them and keep this from ever happening. We have to build the kidneys up first, and this is done through proper diet and putting the right supplements in the body. We have to build the kidneys, and do this by going upline in Chinese medicine and building that liver. Lettuce salad are low in calories, making it a popular choice for weight loss. So a lot of people think, oh, I'll eat a salad for breakfast, out the door we go. However, think about this now. Raw vegetables contain gortrogens, which can lead to goiter, which is thyroid enlargement. In all my years of experience of doing this, I've seen increasing numbers in the last 20 years, uh, increased number of these young Ladies that come to me with thyroid enlargement. They often experience cold extremities and disrupted menstrual cycles, both of which could be related with too much cold foods for breakfast. Cold salads are the worst. So, ladies, if you're listening up and you got thyroid problems or mothers, you have young daughters coming up, please note that this is not genetic in most cases. It is diet related. So in the thyroid department, we usually see if the mother has thyroid problems, does the mother, does the grandchild, only if you eat the same way your mother or your grandmother did. The genetic factor makes up about five to eight percent of the equation. The rest is purely diet. So ideally, everyone should wake up and eat between 6 and 8 a.m. if you want to be healthy. Once again, the oldest living people in the world, and I've lived with them over in China, I can clearly tell you the people over there that are 100 plus years old all eat warm grain first thing in the morning. Now in America, because we have so many Europeans, we all came over from different boats at different times. We're traditionally used to warm grains in our body from Europe. If you look at the Russians, if you you know they love oatmeal. Now, do I suggest oatmeal for people? Not really. Whole grain oatmeal, especially if it comes from some of these companies, is loaded in glyphosate, which is terrible for the body, and they're ruining people's thyroids with oatmeal. So if you're going to do oatmeal and your blood type will lie you, we can do steel cut only. But we suggest, depending on your blood type and your eye color, and it does play a big difference. Believe me, if you come to my facility or we put you on a program, you'll see when I detail this and educate you properly on what type of grain to eat and why, you'll understand this. Millet, amaranth, or brown rice is by far the best for the stomach and overall constitution. Look no further than the Oriental or the Pakistanian culture for this longevity, and you'll see this to be tried and true since the beginning of time. Now, back in biblical days, they used uh wheat, eastern wheat, which was healthy, or barley. Everybody in the Bible ate wheat and barley. And uh later on we started uh developing millet, amaranth, brown rice is amazing for the stomach, depending on what type of season you're in. We'll do long grain, short grain, or medium grain rice, depending on the patient, what their constitution is, what we're trying to achieve. So this is extremely important. And once again, I've been doing this for over 50 years, building nutritional programs for patients everywhere. And by doing these seminars worldwide and studying for all these different cultures I've been with, I've never seen a person who was healthy that skipped breakfast or ate breakfast past 9 a.m. Now keep this in mind for all these people out there that are intermittent fasting, we have been doing this since the beginning of the time. So ideally, the true meaning for intermittent fasting is that if you wake up when the sun comes up and you eat till the sun goes down, you're eating 12 to 13 hours a day, which is perfect, broken up into three or four small meals, maybe five if you're bodybuilding every three to four hours apart because your digestion takes place in a three to four hour increment or a time window. So depending on what you're eating will dictate how fast that goes through the stomach and into the colon. If you're eating correctly, stomach is out of the stomach. Uh food is out of the stomach in about three hours, no more than four. Or if you're eating a heavy beef or pork meal, it will stay in there longer. The satiety value is longer, and that includes nuts too. If you're eating nuts, make sure if you're eating nuts, they're soaked. People that think that they can fast all day and um eat one or two healthy meals uh during the day later on, uh, unfortunately, they're not here to talk about it. They were dead wrong and will continue to be that way. If you want to be healthy, ladies and gentlemen, wake up, feed your family first thing in the morning, a good quality breakfast. You'll be glad you did. You will not suffer from the problems that we're seeing nowadays in our American society through this long daily intermittent fasting. I've proven this time and time again in our clinic, regardless of what type of metabolic disorder or disease a patient has, as well as my bodybuilders, powerlifters, fitness people, bikini pageant, classic physique. It doesn't matter what you're doing. I have all my patients eating, all my clients eating first thing in the morning. This starts their day, they get rid of the brain fog, they feel better, they have more energy. And then if you're training with weights or in the gym, it doesn't matter what type of functional training you're doing. Um, you know, try to wait till after 12 o'clock noon for your best overall training. The best time to train the human body is between 12 and 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening. That's been proven as well. So for all you bodybuilders out there listening, eat good. Get your two or three good quality meals in before you train. If you have to train early in the morning because you're working, that's fine. Just get your workout in, work your diet around that, and get the most out of it by eating a good quality breakfast. Should you eat before you train, if you're one of those people that are training at five or six o'clock in the morning, I have a lot of clients that come to me early in the morning. I start them off early. I usually make them wake up an hour before, eat their breakfast, and they come in, and then we follow it up with a protein shake. My one-way protein is an amazing product for that. A way you can feed the muscle after they train, we get the creatine in. I have a product called CorePro. We put the branch chains in the body, we feed the body what it needs, proper nourish it before and after train, keep their insulin levels from spiking too much. I like to not allow it to go over about 110, 115, depending on what time you're waking up and what it normally is, especially if you're a diabetic. So, once again, taking care of diabetes is a big, big part of our program. However, skipping breakfast is not. So wake up, eat a good quality, healthy breakfast, and become a better you. Our goal here at our facility, holistic healthcare and drjimmysteer.com is to get you well naturally. And that's what we do through our nutritional supplement protocols with Lifeguard Nutrition. If you want to learn more about that, go to our website, drjemysteer.com, give us a call, 251-660-1240. If you'd like to be a patient, you can call in. The girls at the front desk will take care of you. We'll get you started in as little as one week. We can get your programs built, do your VMA testing. And I personally build all those programs for my patients around the world. So it's not computer generated, takes time to build them. So we take a lot of time and and uh thought into building our individual programs for our patients, and you would be no different. We'd love to see you. Love to have you in our facility. If you're out of state, we can take care of you right there where you're at. No problems whatsoever. Until next time, stay healthy. God bless. We look forward to seeing you. Make sure you follow us, and uh, we want to take care of you and your family always, naturally. God bless.