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Breakfast Might Not Be So Essential After All

Studies have found little evidence that eating a meal in the morning actually helps people lose weight.

Breakfast often looks, and tastes, delicious. But it might be far from the healthy necessity it's portrayed as.Credit: K2 PhotoStudio/Shutterstock

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It’s long been said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But a recent diet strategy known as intermittent fasting has been challenging that idea. Instead of counting calories or carbs, or cutting anything out, the diet focuses on when you eat. And, for a lot of people, it involves skipping breakfast.

The most popular types of intermittent fasting are time-restricted eating, which involves constraining eating to within a certain time window, and alternate-day fasting, which alternates a whatever-you-want-to-eat day and either a day with a single 500-calorie meal or no calories at all. No matter which way you swing it, these strategies all seem to have benefits ranging from weight loss to improved sleep and mental clarity to better cardiovascular health and more.

As it turns out, the evidence for the benefits of intermittent fasting is starting to outweigh the evidence in favor of breakfast. When ...

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