If breakfast is the most important meal of the day, would two breakfasts be twice as important?
As the latest food trend, two breakfasts isn't so much two whole breakfasts but breaking up the breakfast over two moments within the morning. In some cases, people use a second breakfast in place of a morning snack.
For those who hate eating first thing in the morning, or can't get going well enough to have time for a decent breakfast, the two breakfast system sounds like a dream. The biggest question to ask is whether people are eating more as a result.
Discipline is usually the one lacking element of keeping things on track. More temptation can lead to more dietary disasters.
When I ate bad, I would eat breakfast and then go to work. If there was free food at work, I would have a second breakfast if it was there. No food, no second breakfast. Food = second breakfast.
When I started to eat better, I ate less for breakfast and nothing before lunch. Our intern at the time asked me on this plan if I was hungry about 11:30 a.m. My stomach could have spoken for me; I verbally added a "yes" to the reply.
Now I'm not even tempted when free food comes in the morning. And I'm not usually tempted to eat between breakfast and lunch. Some of that is what I eat for breakfast, but when I stopped associating free food as necessary food, my desire for a second breakfast disappeared. And if I was tempted, I would take it and eat it as a dessert for lunch.
The idea in eating breakfast is to eat enough to give you energy to get to lunchtime. An afternoon snack can make more sense than a morning snack. But for those who can't eat that much in the morning, and can make a smart choice for the second breakfast (not so much on free bagels and donuts at the office), two breakfasts can work … with smart discipline.
Of course, you could go to the ridiculous extreme of having a gigantic breakfast, such as one found in a diner in Great Yarmouth, England.
The diner has the audacity of calling it a "Kidz Breakfast" — the meal weighs about 9 lb. and contains 6,000 calories. Here is what you get:
12 pieces of bacon, 12 sausages, 6 eggs, 4 slices of black pudding, 4 slices of bread and butter, 4 slices of toast, 4 slices of fried bread, 2 hash browns, an 8-egg cheese and potato omelet, sautéed potatoes, mushrooms, beans, and tomatoes.
Figure that you ate this with 10 other people, you would still get a decent amount of food to start your day. If you and 4 others evenly divided the breakfast, you would eat more than half of the recommended calorie daily amount at breakfast.
Even when we are told that breakfast is the most important meal, our choices are usually the least thought out. We think about what we eat for dinner and lunch; breakfast is more of an after-thought. Breakfast, if done properly, can lead you on a good path for the day, and you can afford a "slip-up" or two throughout the day if your breakfast goes well.
And as you've learned from me, you can do dinner for breakfast. You are not limited to traditional breakfast food. A mix of reasonably healthy carbohydrates and protein can make a big difference.
If you have to spread that out over two periods in the morning, keep a good carbohydrates/protein ratio each time and limit the calories. Don't think so much about each interval as long as you are getting an appropriate amount of calories for the day.
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