Dr. Oz Explains Health Benefits of Skipping Breakfast on Pop of the Morning

By Emily Mae Czachor Jan 13, 2020 7:31 PMTags

Is breakfast no longer the most important meal of the day?

It depends who you ask. In this clip from Monday's Pop of the Morning, wellness aficionado Dr. Oz doesn't necessarily recommend doing away with your morning meal, though he does suggest you pay closer attention to what time you're eating it.

"The medical data around this is incontrovertible," he says, explaining that, most of the time, feeling hungry minutes after your alarm clock rings indicates bodily withdrawal from food or alcohol consumed the evening prior. Per the doctor's comments, that typically happens if you've eaten a late dinner. Eating earlier at night, he argues, prompts a shift in metabolic processes that should theoretically alter a person's desire to eat again first thing in the morning.

"Let's say you have a meal and finish by 7 [p.m.]," he continues. "By the time you wake up in the morning by 7 [a.m.], you've been fasting 12 hours. Your hormones have reset. The metabolic switch has flipped. And you no longer are gonna feel that hungry."

As Pop of the Morning co-host Lilliana Vazquez now knows firsthand—she tried the whole "ditch breakfast" thing today and jokes she's entering "some weird alternate universe" nearly eight hours post-wake up—skipping breakfast entirely typically isn't productive. Dr. Oz acknowledges that as well, noting that most people will "get hungry a couple hours" after waking up either way.

His thoughts on breakfast (which Mark Wahlberg seriously disagrees with, by the way, largely due to his morning workout routine) are one component of broader theory about "intermittent fasting" and the potential health benefits associated with shortening your daily food consumption window to eight hours a day.

Want to learn more? Check out the clip above to hear Dr. Oz's explanation in full.