I find this to absolutely true, so I hold off on eating anything until lunch. Once I start I can’t stop. Glad to know I am not the only one.

DG: The issue may be what you have been eating at your first meal, as well as when you are eating your first meal.

At your first meal of the day/ when breaking the nightly fast focus on protein, healthy fats, fibre and water over starchy carbohydrates because together these nutrients fill us up and keep blood glucose stable. Think of the traditional (primarily) savoury breakfasts in the Middle East, South Asia, the Mediterranean, Scandinavia.

For example try organic eggs or smoked fish with a pile of non-starchy vegetables, or try traditional soft cheeses, air-dried ham or Greek yogurt with mixed seeds and low sugar berries.

Modern UK/ US breakfast items such as breads, other baked goods and boxed cereals are surprisingly processed (even when marketed as ‘whole’ and ‘natural’), so can be quick to digest and cause a spike and dip in blood glucose levels.

Starchy or sugary breakfasts also load the muscles and liver with the fuel glycogen. Since glycogen is stored alongside quite a bit of water, weight gain may be noticed but this is unlikely to be measurable fat gain in just a few days.

HTH!

Hotel breakfasts are dangerous for two reasons. In my past life I travelled a lot, living in hotels. Even in good hotels breakfast is usually the worst meal. In the days when I ate breakfast I would usually skip the hotel offer and pick up some street food, which would be fresher. Now that I rarely eat any breakfast, when I do it wrecks my day. I was travelling last week and the hotel had a “meal deal” – evening meal and breakfast for a silly low price that made the evening meal cheap. Having paid for it, I ate breakfast. Not a lot but I was overloaded and unhappy all morning. This surprised me – my previous experience has been that breakfast starts the hunger, so with breakfast I can’t win either way.