Don’t expect skipping breakfast or the 16:8 intermittent fasting method to help you control your weight; instead, pick a meal timing you can stick to long-term.

26. Don’t expect skipping breakfast or the 16:8 intermittent fasting method to help you control your weight; instead, pick a meal timing you can stick to long-term.

Cost: There’s no monetary cost. What you save is the mental energy you’d otherwise spend worrying about meal timing.

In plain terms: Popular belief holds that skipping breakfast leads to overeating at lunch and dinner, ultimately increasing total daily calorie intake. Research does not support this: people who skipped breakfast consumed over 200 fewer calories per day on average, and ended up slightly lighter. Compared to simply eating less overall, 16:8 intermittent fasting produces no meaningful difference in weight after a full year. That said, people who regularly skip breakfast do have a roughly 17% higher risk of cardiovascular disease; no significant difference in overall mortality has been observed, however.

Benefit: Let’s first address the claim that skipping breakfast causes people to eat more later in the day. One meta-analysis combined data from 13 randomized trials. Participants assigned to eat breakfast consumed 259.79 kcal more per day on average than those who skipped it (95% CI 78.87–440.71). Their body weight was also 0.44 kg higher (95% CI 0.07–0.82). However, people who skipped breakfast did not make up for those missing calories at subsequent meals. All these trials had very short follow-up periods: an average of 7 weeks for weight tracking, and just 2 weeks for measuring calorie intake. Next, we look at 16:8 intermittent fasting, which restricts eating to a specific window each day. One trial involved 116 overweight adults over 12 weeks. The group limited their eating to 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. showed no significant weight difference compared to those eating three regular meals daily: a difference of −0.26 kg (95% CI −1.30 to 0.78). Another trial conducted in Guangzhou followed 139 obese patients for 12 months. Those who combined time-restricted eating with calorie restriction lost 1.8 kg more on average than those only controlling calorie intake (95% CI −4.0 to 0.4), a difference that also failed to reach statistical significance. Finally, we examine whether long-term breakfast skipping is harmful. A pooled analysis of 2.38 million people found that skipping breakfast raised cardiovascular disease risk by 17% (OR 1.17, 95% CI 1.09–1.26), and cardiovascular-related mortality by 49% (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.20–1.84). These findings come from observational studies that did not assign participants to breakfast or non-breakfast groups. One original study with 17–23 years of follow-up reported a 1.19-fold higher all-cause mortality risk for breakfast skippers (95% CI 0.99–1.42), a figure that crosses 1 but is not statistically significant.

Evidence grade: A

Sources: Sievert K, Hussain SM, Page MJ, et al. (2019). Effect of breakfast on weight and energy intake: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ. <https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l42>; Lowe DA, Wu N, Rohdin-Bibby L, et al. (2020). Effects of Time-Restricted Eating on Weight Loss and Other Metabolic Parameters in Women and Men With Overweight and Obesity. JAMA Internal Medicine. <https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.4153>; Liu D, Huang Y, Huang C, et al. (2022). Calorie Restriction with or without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss. New England Journal of Medicine. <https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833>; Zhang H, Zhang S, Liu Y, et al. (2025). The association between skipping breakfast and cardiovascular disease: a meta analysis. Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine. <https://doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2025.1565806>; Rong S, Snetselaar LG, Xu G, et al. (2019). Association of Skipping Breakfast With Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2019.01.065>; Fernandes-Alves D, Teixeira GP, Guimarães KC, Crispim CA (2026). Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials Comparing Time-Restricted Eating With and Without Caloric Restriction for Weight Loss. Nutrition Reviews. <https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuaf053>; Sun T, Zhang L, Lu Y, et al. (2024). Non-linear relationship between the first meal time of the day and gallstone incidence in American adults. Frontiers in Nutrition. <https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2024.1521707>; Liu T, Wang Y, Wang X, et al. (2023). Habitually Skipping Breakfast Is Associated with the Risk of Gastrointestinal Cancers: Evidence from the Kailuan Cohort Study. Journal of General Internal Medicine. <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-023-08094-7>

Notes: This topic remains controversial. The 17% rise in cardiovascular disease risk stems from observational studies without controlled group assignments. Breakfast skippers also tend to smoke more, drink more alcohol, lead more sedentary lifestyles, and have lower incomes; these factors are not fully accounted for in the data, so it is unclear how much of this risk is directly attributable to skipping breakfast. The all-cause mortality finding also crosses 1 but lacks statistical significance. 16:8 intermittent fasting is similarly debated: a pooled analysis of 30 trials involving 1,341 participants showed that when both groups ate the same amount of food, the time-restricted eating group lost 1.46 kg more on average (95% CI −2.65 to −0.26), but at the cost of losing 0.41 kg more lean body mass. Most of these trials were very short in duration; the longest and most rigorous 12-month trial found no meaningful weight difference between the two groups. Prolonged fasting may also affect gallbladder health. One cross-sectional survey of 6,547 people found that for every hour later a person ate their first meal, their risk of gallstones rose by 5% (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.02–1.08); those whose first meal was between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. had a 49% higher risk compared to earlier eaters (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.24–1.77). The underlying mechanism is that bile remains in the gallbladder longer, increasing the likelihood of stone formation. However, this is a cross-sectional study, so it is possible that existing gallbladder issues prompted people to change their eating habits. The Kaiping Cohort Study in China followed 369 cases of digestive tract cancer over 5.6 years: breakfast skippers had a 2.32-fold higher risk of colorectal cancer (95% CI 1.34–4.01) and a 5.43-fold higher risk of gallbladder and extrahepatic bile duct cancer (95% CI 1.34–21.93). The very wide confidence interval for the latter figure indicates very few events occurred, so this should be viewed as a preliminary clue rather than conclusive evidence. Overall, when it comes to weight control, meal timing has minimal impact; there is no need to spend mental energy on this factor. As for whether long-term breakfast skipping is beneficial, all available evidence is correlational, not causal, but the trend leans toward negative outcomes. To be on the safe side, it is better to eat regular meals; don’t expect skipping breakfast to help you lose weight. The primary causes of gastritis and gastric ulcers are Helicobacter pylori infection and long-term use of painkillers; details are covered in Section 1, Item 23. For people who have gallstones detected via checkups but never experience pain, guidance is provided in Section 1, Item 20. To effectively control weight, proven strategies are eating enough fruits and vegetables (Section 2, Item 27), cutting back on ultra-processed foods (Section 2, Item 28), and keeping BMI within 20–25 (Section 2, Item 32). These recommendations do not apply to people with diabetes, those taking blood sugar-lowering medication, or pregnant individuals; skipping meals could lead to hypoglycemia in these groups, so they must follow their doctor’s instructions. Extreme fasting and induced vomiting are separate issues altogether; see Section 28, Item 1 for details.