To help myself enjoy daily life more, I’ve been adding excitement into my routine—participating in more social activities like Bible Studies at church, and saying ‘yes’ to Friday evening hangouts driving around with friends or spontaneous walks around the park. Well, unfortunately with these post-work hangout sessions, I’ve adopted some unhealthy habits this past month. Namely, eating at irregular times, specifically sugar-rich snacks at night. I can see the weight gain in my stomach. From all my research, I know that for weight maintenance and overall health, it’s best to have long overnight fasts and to eat 2-3 regular meals each day, with the largest meal being in the morning1. But lately, I haven’t been hungry in the morning. I wanted to find out if, to get back on track, I should eat breakfast in the morning even when I’m not hungry, or if I should skip it in favor of eating one big lunch later in the day. I found out the answer when I came across an MSNBC report “These two health experts say women should feel hungry in the morning. Here’s why.” According to the health experts who wrote the report, not having an appetite until the lunch hour may signal that there’s “an underlying issue”. In this article, I am going to explain why we should be hungry in the morning and why you should eat breakfast if you’re not hungry.
Why we should be hungry in the morning
In order to understand what is going wrong with our body when we are not hungry in the morning, it’s important that we first understand the biological functions behind why we should be hungry in the morning. “Hunger” is a physical sensation that occurs when the stomach releases hormones to the brain to signal that it is empty and thus that it is time to eat2. The circadian rhythm is meant to help our body to follow predictable patterns over 24-hours, based on light-dark cycles in our environment, including to help us regulate our hunger and food intake3.
Physically speaking, since food starts to leave the stomach 1 to 3 hours after a meal4, it makes sense that after sleeping for eight hours—and therefore going without food for at least that long—one should wake up peck-ish. There is no food in your belly! In regard to the circadian rhythm, one of the main hormones that should cause morning hunger is cortisol. Based on normal physiology, circulating cortisol levels peak just minutes before a person wakes up, typically between 7:00am to 8:00am, and should be lowest in the middle of the night5. At this normal peak level, cortisol is thought to make us hungry in the morning by increasing the activity of neurons in the brain that signal hunger6.
Why You Should WANT to be Hungry in the Morning
Lastly, you should want to be hungry for breakfast in the morning because of the positive health associations. In my article investigating the benefits of the two-meal-a-day diet for weight control, I gather that “a practical strategy for long-term weight maintenance may be to have a big breakfast, then 5-6 hours later, a medium-sized lunch, (then if necessary, 5-6 hours later, a small dinner), then fast overnight for at least 12 hours“.
The possible reason why you are not hungry in the morning
As I mentioned earlier, our level of appetite in the morning has a lot to do with hormonal responses due to our circadian rhythm. BUT interestingly, the well-known “hunger hormone” ghrelin (known as such since it is the hormone released by the stomach when empty) is at its lowest circulating levels in the morning, and at its highest in the evening7. Qian and colleagues (2019) note the paradox, saying that, “This circadian rhythm in hunger may explain why, despite the extended overnight fast, people often feel least hungry in the morning and often skip breakfast”. If you skip breakfast like 25% of Americans8 because you are not hungry in the morning, it may be that other hormone causing this oddity: CORTISOL.
Ah, yes, cortisol…THE “stress hormone”, the one that causes your heart to beat faster when you’re scared (among many other things). Again, in normal physiology, the cortisol level does and should peak a few minutes before a person typically wakes up (between 7:00am and 8:00am). However, it shouldn’t SPIKE as it does in people with chronically high levels of the hormone. When you have a huge surge of active cortisol, your body is using it to boost energy, and thus doesn’t get the natural cue that it’s time to get nutrients from food.
Cortisol levels can be chronically elevated for a few reasons. Research suggests this can be due to stress9 or potentially obesity10. Chronically high cortisol promotes visceral (belly) fat storage by making the adipocytes (fat cells) in this area particularly good at capturing and storing energy from food as fat. Furthermore, high cortisol levels can cause muscle breakdown overtime and since “muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat, reducing muscle mass can slow metabolism and make gaining weight easier”11.
How to become hungry in the morning
This is the place to start in order to be hungry in the morning: you want to get a hold of your cortisol levels. You do not want to have chronically elevated levels of the hormone. One practical strategy is to NOT drink coffee while the cortisol level is at its peak. Instead, wait for at least two hours after waking to drink coffee (or caffeine in general), when there is a natural dip in cortisol levels. As sleep expert Michael Breus puts it, “Scientific research and bio-time have provided a very clear schedule for coffee breaks to coincide with cortisol dips. For the average Bears, those dips occur between the hours of 9:30 am and 11:30 am, and between 1:30 and 5:30 pm12“.
Second, you should try intermittent fasting. Specifically, studies show that early time-restricted eating is the way to go to maximize health benefits13, 14. Restrict the amount of time that you eat in the day to the morning and afternoon. You want to eat two, maybe three nutritious meals in the time frame, making sure to stick to foods rich in protein and fat and lower in carbohydrates. This means breakfast within an hour of waking, and lunch five to six hours after that, making sure to keep the overnight fast to 12-19 hours15. Avoiding the late night meal is crucial to help you want to eat breakfast as “delayed eating rhythms…commonly manifest as a lack of hunger in the morning (morning anorexia) and elevated hunger in the late evening (evening hyperphagia). These intake patterns are associated with adverse mental and physical health outcomes16” (Young et al., 2022).
There you have it. Yes, you should be hungry in the morning. Start giving breakfast a try by avoiding the late-night meal and keep cortisol levels at bay.
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6520689/ ↩︎
- https://www.uab.edu/news/news-you-can-use/mind-over-matter-recognizing-your-hunger-cues ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7830980/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8134715/#:~:text=The%20intestinal%20phase%20starts%20when,to%20enter%20the%20small%20intestine. ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7830980/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5373497/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6424662/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4881002/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6371989/ ↩︎
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1640867/ ↩︎
- https://www.pharmacyscijournal.com/articles/apps-aid1050.php ↩︎
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-best-time-cup-coffee-michael-breus ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9889728/ ↩︎
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666379123005803 ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5572489/ ↩︎
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34968560/ ↩︎