Eat Breakfast After the Gym for a High Metabolism

The big breakfast debate has been settled. Until now, the opposing cases have been presented as follows: skip breakfast and train fasted to spike your metabolism and increase your total fat burn by 8 per cent. Alternatively, wait to digest your morning eggs in order to train harder for faster gains. Both are enticing – which is confusing. But the latest research from the University of Scranton confirms that fasted exercise is the tastiest prospect for weight loss. And not for the reasons previously thought.

Scientists set out to discover how timing breakfast around a morning workout could affect appetite for the rest of the day. Two groups were fed exactly the same breakfast at different times, before being given the green light to indulge as they saw fit for lunch and dinner.

Subjects who ate their first meal after swinging a kettlebell, rather than before, consumed 900 fewer calories throughout the day. This supports previous research linking exercise to a decrease in the brain’s neural response to food imagery.

At a time of year when willpower is vital, the prospect of a 900-calorie deficit with zero hunger pangs is most welcome. As is the free pass provided by a hungry morning workout to really make a meal out of your breakfast. Grab’n’go toast no longer cuts it. Salmon and eggs, on the other hand? Emphatically, yes.