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Athletes and breakfast: when to eat, when to skip
SPB looks at new evidence on how breakfast consumption or breakfast skipping impacts athletic performance and answers the question of which route is best for you
It was the popular but controversial American nutritionist Adele Davis who coined the phrase “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper”. However, the importance of breakfast has long been recognised in many cultures, which is why for example, the Poles say “eat your breakfast, share your lunch with a friend, and give your dinner to your enemy”! Most people are aware that breakfast is important and that eating or not eating breakfast could affect the way you feel and perform, but how and why do these effects occur and what are the impacts of eating/not eating breakfast for athletes engaged in training and competition? These are the questions we’ll answer in this article.
The impact of breakfast
In the scientific community, the reputation of breakfast being ‘the most important meal of the day’ is due to previous associations made between an increased frequency of breakfast consumption and improvements in key health markers. For example, people who eat breakfast have been shown to have a decreased body mass index (BMI – an approximate measure of fatness) compared to those who skip it(1,2). Another observation is that the incidence of chronic diseases such as diabetes(3) and coronary heart disease(4) is lower in people who consume breakfast compared to those who do not.
However, while these breakfast benefits exist, the situation is rather more nuanced in the light of more recent dietary practices that are also know to produce health benefits. Take the practice of intermittent fasting or its most popular variant for weight management known as ‘time restricted eating’ (see this article). In time restricted eating, all calorie consumption is restricted to a daily block of 8-10 hours, ensuring that there is a period of least 14 hours each day in which no calories are consumed – a practice that has been shown to help upregulate fat burning and lower body fat(5).
Another variation of this theme is to enhance fat oxidation during training by simply training in the morning on an empty stomach (ie before breakfast)(6). A study carried out on elite endurance athletes last year surveyed their nutritional habits regarding weight management(7). It found that no less than 38% of the athletes surveyed reported purposefully omitting the morning meal prior to morning training on a consistent basis due to their perception that training fasted would either improve body composition or metabolic adaptations to performance.
The flip-side of time restriction
Against the potential benefits for weight management and key markers of metabolic health when athletes train on an empty stomach, are significant downsides; research shows that consuming breakfast is important for helping blood glucose regulation, providing energy for performance, improving cognitive functioning, and for the process of muscle repair(8-11). Moreover, previous studies have shown decrements in glucose regulation and insulin sensitivity following two weeks of breakfast (whole grain cereal) omission(12), and 11 weeks of reducing meals to a single daily 4-hour period in healthy lean individuals (but not in those who are obese)(13)
Likewise, research shows that fasting until midday and consuming self-selected items after midday results in poorer blood glucose regulation and insulin sensitivity(14). This seems to be the case even when exercise is undertaken(15). Finally, it’s worth pointing out that when breakfast is skipped, there are a reduced number of daily protein feedings, and subsequent muscle protein synthesis stimulations, which some researchers have theorized may impair skeletal muscle growth and adaptations, having a negative knock-on effect on athletic performance(16). Given that recovery is a vital part of facilitating long-term training adaptations (as we’ve explained in previous SPB articles), this is obviously an undesirable effect.
Breakfast and afternoon/evening performance
Much of the research into breakfast consumption or omission has focused on the metabolic effects in the six or so hours following breakfast time. However, what’s less well understood is the impact of consuming or omitting the breakfast on exercise performance that occurs much later in the day (ie late afternoon and evening) and when food consumption has been resumed – eg by eating lunch or afternoon snacks. This matters because many athletes train after work, in the later afternoon or evening. Indeed, research has found that among Americans who exercise regularly, around one fifth train within four hours of bedtime(17)!
Given the prevalence of breakfast skipping, this means that a significant proportion of these late exercisers will be training late in the day having consumed no breakfast. What are the performance implications of this kind of routine? Also, does this kind of routine affect the long-term adaptations to training and if so, how? And does the type of exercise matter when considering any impacts that not eating breakfast may have on athletes? To date, there’s not been any comprehensive research into this topic but now a team of US scientists has tried to provide some answers.
New research
In this study, which has just been published in the journal ‘Nutrients’, the researchers carried out a ‘narrative review’ to summarize the research on how consuming or omitting breakfast might impact short-term resistance or endurance training performance, and also the impact on longer-term training adaptations(18). [NB: a narrative review in science is a study that that provides a comprehensive, critical, but subjective analysis of existing studies. A narrative review differs from a more rigid format of a systematic review by giving authors more flexibility in choosing which studies to include and how to interpret the findings.] The researchers also paid special attention to exercise performance in the morning under fasted conditions and exercise performance in the afternoon and evening following the resumption of eating.
To carry out this review, the researchers combed the scientific literature for studies that met the following criteria:
· Published prior to November 2024.
· An experimental intervention conducted in humans.
· A comparison of no breakfast to some form of morning breakfast consumption.
· Included a subsequent exercise performance component.
· Recorded changes in variables related to acute performance or long-term adaptations in response to resistance or endurance training.
Once all the relevant studies had been identified, the researchers gathered together the study conclusions and summarized the key findings, which we will list below. For those who want to refer to any of the actual studies analyzed, these can be found in the reference list (reference numbers 33 – 120).
What they found
There were a number of findings, and the researchers concluded overall that breakfast consumption/omission impacts were highly dependent on the athlete’s goals, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. In other words, depending on the circumstances, consuming breakfast was found to either benefit, or impede, or have no impact on performance. These findings included the following:
· Breakfast consumption/omission seems to affect acute performance (ie on the day), but has little effect on longer-term adaptations – eg body composition and fitness development.
· Consuming breakfast consistently improved morning endurance exercise lasting in sessions of over 60 minute, regardless of intensity. Consuming breakfast also boosted afternoon/evening aerobic time trial performance.
· Because of the above, breakfast consumption may benefit endurance athletes on competition or high-volume training days.
· By contrast, at least some of the documented decreases in performance following breakfast omission may arise partly due to psychological biases - because the majority of investigations were conducted in those who regularly consume breakfast, and many performance decrements recorded were ameliorated when a placebo breakfast was provided (in short, skipping breakfast produced negative performance expectations, which then led to a drop in performance via the nocebo effect).
· Performing low-intensity “recovery” sessions fasted prior to consuming breakfast improves mitochondrial density and metabolic adaptations to endurance exercise, but there’s no definitive evidence that this then leads to better endurance performance.
· When it comes to resistance training, the impact of consuming/skipping breakfast on performance that day, or on the overall longer-term gains achieved appears to be minimal. It’s true that when breakfast is skipped, fewer reps may be performed in the early sets of a workout; however, this seems to be a nocebo effect because when a calorie-free placebo breakfast is given, this tendency disappears.
· For body composition, omitting breakfast seems to improve reductions in body mass and body fat over the course of 4–8 weeks when athletes are eating freely and not following a calorie-controlled diet. However, this was not due to skipping breakfast per se, but primarily caused by an unconscious spontaneous reduction in total daily energy intake on missed breakfast days. When the total calories consumed are the same in breakfast-consuming and breakfast-skipping conditions, omitting breakfast does NOT lead to extra weight/fat loss. That said, for athletes seeking weight loss who don’t want to get involved in calorie counting, skipping breakfast could be a good way forward.
· A lot of the studies regarding the longer-term impacts of skipping breakfast come from time-restricted feeding studies, so may not be entirely applicable to athletes who skip breakfast (eg before morning training) but then resume normal eating patterns for the rest of the day.
Practical implications for athletes
If you are an athlete in training and wondering whether the practice of breakfast skipping could work for you, how should you interpret these findings? The first thing to say is that despite the psychological/placebo effects, the balance of evidence is that when endurance performance on the day is important (eg race day, evening time trial etc), you should NOT skip breakfast as it seems to definitely harm performance. Moreover, there’s good rationale for believing that this is the case since (as we saw earlier in the article) breakfast skipping is known to produce adverse effects such as poor blood glucose regulation and reduced insulin sensitivity.
Where skipping breakfast might help (or at least not be counterproductive) is weight management, where breakfast omission seems to help with the reduction of body fat/weight. This effect seems to occur because breakfast skippers may unconsciously consume fewer calories – rather like a calorie-controlled diet but without the psychological effort! In addition, training on an empty stomach first thing in the morning has the benefit of improving mitochondrial density and metabolic adaptations to endurance exercise, both of which are conducive to good metabolic health, and prerequisites for endurance performance(19).
Finally, breakfast skipping does not appear to have the same negative impact on same-day resistance performance as it does on endurance performance. Thus, strength athletes may have a little more leeway in terms of how and when breakfast skipping is used as a nutritional strategy. Having said this, it’s worth bearing in mind that for maximum muscle growth and regeneration, a slight calorie excess is desirable as muscle protein synthesis is an energy-intense process(20). Given that breakfast skipping is associated with more infrequent and reduced calorie/protein consumption, it’s probably not recommended for athletes who are trying to build rather than maintain strength.
References
1. J. Am. Coll. Nutr. 2003, 22, 296–302
2. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2008, 167, 188–192
3. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2012, 95, 1182–1189
4. Circulation 2013, 128, 337–343
5. Nutr. Rev. 2022, 80, 439–452
6. J Appl Physiol 2008. 104: 1045-1055
7. Eur. J. Sport Sci. 2024, 24, 1341–1349
8. Nutrition 2021, 83, 111088
9. Cell Rep. 2021, 36, 109336
10. Adv. Nutr. 2016, 7, 590S–612S
11. Metabolism 2007, 56, 1729–1734
12. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2005, 81, 388–396
13. Metabolism 2007, 56, 1729–1734.
14. Br. J. Nutr. 2019, 122, 431–440
15. J. Transl. Med. 2016, 14, 290
16. Cell Rep. 2021, 36, 109336
17. Sleep Med. 2014, 15, 755–761
18. Nutrients 2025, 17(2), 300; doi.org/10.3390/nu17020300
19. Cell Metab. 2018, 27, 962–976
20. Curr Nutr Rep. 2022 Jun;11(2):225-239
Andrew Hamilton
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