Do I have to eat breakfast even if I’m not hungry?

Your body is like a furnace in that it needs to burn some kind of fuel—in this case, food. As with your home heating furnace, the most effective way for your body to use fuel is to burn it consistently rather than having the fire stoked up, burning a lot of fuel quickly, letting the fire go out, and then having a huge fire built again. So just as a steady, consistent rate of combustion is best for your furnace, a steady, consistent source of energy is best for your body.

When you wake up in the morning, your fuel level is very low. If you try to get through your busy morning without breakfast, you’ll be running on reserves.

Many women who struggle with their weight skip breakfast and skimp on lunch. By the time they finally do eat, they lose control over what and how much they eat. But skipping one meal and skimping on the next doesn’t necessarily give you license to eat whatever you want come dinnertime. If you eat an adequate breakfast, followed by your usual lunch, you’ll be in much better control—physiologically because you won’t be so ravenously hungry at the end of the day, and psychologically because you won’t have the sense that you’re entitled to a double- or triple-size dinner after running on reserves all day.

The way to convince yourself to eat breakfast, even if you’re not ravenously hungry when you wake up, is to think of eating a morning meal as refueling your body. And you don’t have to sit down to a big, heavy meal to stroke your fires. Have some fruit, cereal and skim milk, toast, or a roll.

Another way to help make eating breakfast a habit is to avoid snacking too much late at night, which can leave you feeling full in the morning. Remember, eating at night is like stoking the fire when the demand for fuel is low.