Elsewhere on my website, you will see my strong encouragement to eat breakfast. Now, besides the other benefits, researchers at Loughborough University have found that skipping breakfast can impair sports performance much later in the day.
Ten male, habitual breakfast eaters were put through two different trials. All participants arrived at the laboratory having fasted overnight, but they then either consumed or omitted a 733kcal breakfast. Subjects were allowed to eat freely their lunch 4.5 hours later and dinner 11 hours later. At the 9 hour point, they were put through an evening exercise test, completing a 30 minute cycling test at around 60% VO2 peak followed by a 30 minute maximal cycling performance test.
Perhaps not surprisingly, those who had not eaten breakfast, consumed around 200kcal more at lunch, but those who did eat breakfast, interestingly consumed more at dinner. The novel finding is that those who consumed breakfast, performed a significant 4.5% better during the exercise performance test.
(Effect of Breakfast Omission on Energy Intake and Evening Exercise Performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, online 12 May 2015. See http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/publishahead/Effect_of_Breakfast_Omission_on_Energy_Intake_and.97761.aspx)
