I TRIED THE 'DESSERT FOR BREAKFAST DIET' SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO

In my quest to become a breakfast person, I attempted to incorporate my favorite meal of the day - dessert. It did not go well.

I’ve never been a breakfast person. When you see a teenager in a sitcom running out the door for school after taking a mere bite of dry toast, abandoning a vibrant spread of fluffy eggs, sizzling bacon, pitchers of juice and the obligatory plate of fruit on the dining table - that’s me. I’m the teenager. I’ve always been one to choose a cup of coffee (or three) first thing in the morning and wait until my insides are burning around 11:30AM to really get my grub on. I don’t know why I do this. I love eating and I love breakfast food. I’d happily eat that French toast for lunch or even dinner. But the thought of eating immediately after waking up makes the back of my throat clench.

When I posed the question “Are you a breakfast person?” to friends on Instagram, to my utter shock, 34 of the 49 replies were Yes. The most popular reason for not being a breakfast person among those who replied No was that they are just not hungry when they wake up.

Along with my aversion to breakfast comes my obsession with sweets. I would do bad things for a snickerdoodle or a piece of cheesecake. I’ll take any combination of sugar, butter and flour. I long for the crystalline sheen of refined sugar over technicolor greens and oranges and reds - Sour Patch Kids. Yum. To put it plainly, I don’t feel like a meal is over without a saccharine, mouthwatering punctuation in the form of a baked good (or even a bagged or boxed one).

I’m always looking for ways to fix this addiction. I’m a) a woman and b) a millenial, so my journey towards improvement by way of self-care, consciousness, and holistic health is never ending.

In light of the new year, I went searching for an experiment that would help me change my nutritional habits and stabilize my cravings and oscillating energy levels. So, doesn’t it seem serendipitous that in my search for a new way of eating I found a regimen that brings the two together!? In a fortuitous stroke of chance, I found the “Dessert with Breakfast Diet,” fully backed by the Endocrine Society after a 2012 study. The randomized trial was conducted by Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz of the Wolfson Medical Center at Tel Aviv University and followed 193 nondiabetic adults with an average BMI of 32 kg/m2. Jakubowics reported that the group (of both men and women) were split into two different weight-loss diets. According to the study,

“One group received a low-carbohydrate diet, featuring a 304-calorie breakfast with only 10 grams of carbohydrates, or "carbs." The other group ate a 600-calorie breakfast with 60 grams of carbs, which included a small sweet, such as chocolate, a doughnut, a cookie or cake. Both diets contained protein (such as tuna, egg whites, cheese and low-fat milk) at breakfast, but the "dessert with breakfast diet" had 45 grams of protein, 15 grams more than in the low-carb diet.”

The dessert-for-breakfast diet for women allotted 600 calories at breakfast, 500 at lunch, and 300 at dinner, while the low-carbohydrate breakfast comprised 300 calories in the morning, 500 at lunch, and 600 at dinner. The big-breakfast group consumed 60 g of carbohydrate at breakfast, compared with 15 g in the comparison group.

The experiment found that for the first four months, results for both groups were similar. However, in the final four months, the dessert with breakfast group lost another 15 pounds while the low-cal breakfast group regained an average of 22 pounds. Additionally, the group who dessert with breakfast reported feeling less hunger and fewer cravings compared with the other group. Subjects' food diaries showed that the dessert with breakfast group stuck with their calorie requirements better, and the levels of ghrelin, the "hunger hormone," dropped much more after breakfast than in the low-carb group: 45.2 percent versus 29.5 percent, respectively.

Jakubowicz attributed the better results from the dessert with breakfast diet to meal timing and composition. She suggests that the “diet's high protein content reduced hunger; the combination of protein and carbs increased satiety, or feeling full; and the dessert decreased cravings for sweet, starchy and fatty foods.”

Reading this study sent me into a panic about all the ways in which I am missing out on eating breakfast, not to mention breakfast dessert. If the key to feeling less captive by the alluring power of sweets is eating breakfast (and a little bit of dessertO, than I’d be a fool not to try it. With all this riveting information and a newfound determination that only the New Year can summon, I decided to go on a quest to become a breakfast person. But not just any breakfast person. A dessert with breakfast person. In order to do this right, I had to create a guideline for how I would approach the experiment.

Here’s how I broke it down:

(based on a regular 2,000 calorie diet)

800 calories for Breakfast

700 calories for Lunch

500 calories for Dinner

Breakfast must contain 800 calories; at least 20 grams of protein; 50 g of carbohydrates and a small sweet. I must eat breakfast before 10:00AM. Subsequent meals must get smaller as the day progresses. Because I’m doing this experiment to gauge energy levels and cravings and not to lose weight, I’m not going to keep track of weight loss or gain. I’m only focused on my feelings, like a true millennial.

DAY 1

I wake up dreading having to shovel food in my mouth first thing in the morning, so I stall and don’t eat until 10:00am, which is not part of the program but baby steps? I decide that the best way to slowly integrate myself into breakfast eating is to start with a smoothie. The thought of all full Grand Slam breakfast stresses me out so I opt for a drinkable, blendable alternative. I choose ingredients that are high in protein and carbs so I can get to my gram count for the morning. My smoothie includes: 3/4 cup frozen spinach, 12 g collagen powder, 1 banana, 1 cup almond milk, 2 tbsp almond butter, 1/4 cup coconut.

According to my janky math, my smoothie is only about 600 calories. Because I’m nowhere near my 800 calorie goal, I add a piece of buttered toast (which has way more calories than I anticipated) which brings me over the 800, but not by much. To complete the “dessert” requirement, I add a dark chocolate covered almond to the meal. By the time I finish the toast and the smoothie, I am so completely full I DON’T EVEN EAT THE ALMOND. So basically, I 1) don’t get to my calorie count 2) don’t eat dessert with my breakfast and 3) don’t eat as early as I had initially hoped. Turns out going from 0 calories to 800 is really hard. The experiment is off to a rocky start, but I am still committed.

Breakfast: 31 g Protein, 72 g Carbs

At 1:15pm, I am still incredibly full from breakfast and haven’t even had the urge to finish so much as the lonely almond still sitting on my plate. I guess it’s working??? Suddenly at 2pm, I’m ravenous and I scarf the sad almond before making myself some tuna poke. It has avocado, sashimi grade ahi tuna in a soy sauce/sesame oil/sriracha mixture with some scallion and cilantro over a bed of brown rice and barley. It’s delicious. Although I’m feeling satisfied after the poke bowl, I can’t help but want a taste of a little something sweet. By 3:30pm I’m jonesing for a Red Vine or a Choco Taco. Normally, if I wasn’t monitoring myself, I would give in and have something like a cookie. But I guess this is the price I pay for not eating my dessert with my breakfast on the first day of my “Dessert with Breakfast Diet.”

At 4pm I cave in and eat a salted caramel macaron. It’s totally worth it. When dinner comes around, I’m definitely hungry but feeling too tired to cook and clean so I whip up a salad with leftover grilled chicken breast. I’m doing really good on calories until I add two tablespoons of olive oil to my salad, which is 240 calories! Who knew? It depresses me so much that I’ve gone over my limit for dinner that I immediately crave something sweet and eat a second macaron. :(

Other than not staying within my calorie limit for dinner, I’m really pleased that I managed to invert my usual calorie intake by having most of my daily calories at breakfast. My energy stayed at normal level throughout the day, but cravings for sweets really didn’t subside much.

DAY 2

I wake up ready to attack breakfast head on, but still manage to eat later than I wanted to. Still, I eat earlier than I did on Day 1 (9:45am!). This time, I make sure I incorporate a dessert with my meal so I don’t have the sporadic craving throughout the day, or at least that’s what I hope for. I opt for a cup of plain, non fat yogurt with ground flaxseeds, honey and blueberries, 2 slices of turkey bacon and an orange cranberry scone from Trader Joe’s. And of course a cup of coffee with half and half. I’m pretty excited about my breakfast; it looks appetizing and honestly I am very stoked to dig into that scone. About halfway through, I start to slow down. The turkey bacon was easy, but it’s hard to get through a cup of yogurt in one sitting. Add in the scone, which I only finish about two thirds of, and I start to feel like Kobayashi. I don’t finish the yogurt or the scone and kind of feel like I need to lay down. However, I am positive that I won’t be craving anything for the next few hours. When I calculate the calories, I am shocked to discover this breakfast is only 600 calories and I almost quit on the spot. I try to finish, but I can’t.

I have to admit, I am enjoying the ritual of making breakfast for myself in the morning. It’s nice to have a task first thing and I’m enjoying sitting down at a table with my toddler at the start of my day.

Breakfast: 41.35 g Protein, 70 g Carbs

Again, despite how full breakfast made me, I am dying for lunch by 2:00pm. I take the leftover turkey bacon from breakfast and make a BLT (with avocado) - one of my favorite sandwiches of all time. I;m so hungry that I forget to take a picture. I add a pear and 5 prunes as a side “dish”. A pear because it was there and prunes because I love prunes. In the deep caves of my psyche, I’m probably adding these fruits to my lunch because they scratch an itch for something sweet.

My husband makes scallops for dinner and, for the time ever, we try cauliflower rice. It’s...not real rice. We put the scallops (super high in protein and very low in fat) over the cauliflower rice and green peas. We also eat some salad. Although the meal is yummy, I’m still hungry about an hour later and have a bowl of Original Cheerios with almond milk to fill up. Luckily, my lunch and dinner were essentially as big as my breakfast, so I didn’t go wildly overboard. Tomorrow is a new day.

DAY 3

I wake up feeling crappy and completely ill equipped to make myself a meal. I manage to blend a smoothie and microwave a frozen Trader Joe’s oatmeal. My smoothie has

1 banana, 1 cup almond milk, and 1 pack acai & guarana. To boost calories I add flaxseed and blueberries to the oatmeal, and collagen powder to the smoothie. Even after the boost, the calories are not even close to 800. Due to my sour mood, I say fuck it. For my “dessert” I eat a macaron.

Breakfast: 23.65 g Protein, 86.5 g Carbs

At lunch, I essentially have an extension of breakfast and eat half a bagel with lox. I’m still hungry so I munch on hummus and chips from our local Farmer’s market and eat some homemade zucchini bread, which sounds healthy but isn’t.

In between lunch and dinner, I do notice that my craving for something sweet is definitely less strong but I don’t know if that’s because I’m still hungry from lunch or because the diet is working. By dinner time I have a headache that comes out of nowhere. For dinner I have a pretty balanced meal of pork tenderloin and lots of veggies and salad. Admittedly, I do have a piece of dark chocolate afterwards.

This experiment has really been testing my New Year’s resolution to eat less meat and be more sustainable.

DAY 4

Forget everything I said about loving the ritual of breakfast. I’m so annoyed I have to think about making something to eat this morning, I wish I could just drink my coffee and skip all this nonsense. There are too many things to do and I don’t want to deal. To top it all off, I’ve just started my period. Nevertheless, I push through and make French toast because I know my baby will like it and it’s the only thing I can imagine eating in my current state. Plus, French toast is basically dessert, I mean, come on. I’ve also realized that meals that require forks in the morning instantly become more appealing. I can’t say why this is. I add a protein bar to the French toast to up the protein. With all the fruit, bread, eggs and the protein bar, I’m only a few calories shy of my breakfast goal!

Breakfast: 37.3 g Protein, 106.5 g Carbs

But, the meal puts me so over the edge of fullness that I actually forget to eat lunch and don’t eat again until dinner. However, in the time between, I didn’t crave any sweets! Normally between lunch and dinner I will have had at least one confection to tie me over (and if I’m on my period, fuh-getta-bout it). I basically use sweets as my snacks in between meals. But today, nothing!

At dinner, I go wildly off the rails and eat Thai take out with two glasses of red wine. Oops. I can’t say it was an extremely unhealthy meal, but I can say with some certainty that I did not stay within my calorie limit. This meal definitely rivaled the calories of breakfast. Womp.

DAY 5

I’m a little hungover after my two glasses of Italian red in tandem with salty Thai food from last night. Such is life. I go back and forth between wanting something heavy and wanting something light and fresh. Mostly I just want water. I opt for a huge fruit salad and an egg, with a scone as my dessert. My morning coffee is not cutting it so I walk to our local cafe and get an almond milk cappuccino. I’m super disappointed at how low the calorie count of breakfast is, considering I feel very full and satisfied after eating it. I could add something, but I don’t.

Breakfast: 14.86 g Protein, 71.1 g Carbs

Inevitably, this leaves me starving by lunchtime around 1:00pm. I eat leftover pad thai, broccoli and some dried mango, which also isn’t enough and leaves me starving for dinner around 7:00. We go to a Mexican restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday and I have a steak quesadilla and a margarita and lots of chips. Again, I have failed to eat the bulk of my calories in the morning. BUT- I’m excited to say that at dinner, when the chocolate cake is passed around, I’m actually not dying to eat it! Again, this could be contributed to many things - the margarita, the fact that chocolate cake isn’t my favorite cake, or maybe that the quesadilla was extremely filling. But still, I only take a few bites.

DAY 6

I’m excited because I procured English muffins at the store yesterday and they are usually delicious at any time of day. I have a toasted English muffin with avocado and a fried egg along with raspberries and two tablespoons of almond butter to make my protein count. I add dried mango because it’s lying around, and a scone for dessert. I make my calorie count - booya! And for the most part, I am satiated.

Breakfast: 22.2 g Protein, 105.3 g Carbs

But again, when I get hungry it hits me like a food truck. I eat up more leftover pad thai and a pear. Obviously, I’m still hungry and I find a baguette on the counter and eat tiny pieces of it like I’m a mouse. I think to myself “If this experiment involved giving up bread, I wouldn’t do it.”

In all honesty, my body has adjusted to having sweets in the morning, but has definitely not gotten used to inverting the time at which I eat the bulk of my calories. I have a headache in the afternoon and I really miss my big dinners, partially because I enjoy cooking so much.

For dinner, I opt for a homemade, warm soup. To use up some veggies in the fridge, I make a hearty lentil soup and inhale about 3 bowls of it. I have no idea what the calorie count is and I don’t care. I finally feel full for the first time since breakfast. This is not how I was anticipating this experiment to go.

DAY 7

It is the final day of my journey, friends. I wake up so excited for the end of this goddamn project. I have spent a full week realizing that my disdain for breakfast was in fact warranted and that I will never be a breakfast person and  will always be a dessert person.

I decide that the easiest way to get my protein and calorie count is certainly a smoothie. Because it is my last smoothie, possibly ever, I really make it count. These are the ingredients I put in it: 1 banana, 1 cup almond milk, 12 grams collagen powder, 100 grams of acai/guarana, ¾ cup frozen spinach, ¼ cup shredded coconut, ⅓ cup blueberries, ½ cup rolled oats, 1 cup chopped pineapple. 2 tablespoons chia seeds. It resembles a cross between wet cement and New York snow sludge. I also add an English muffin and my mandatory cup of coffee. Needless to say, I do not finish this 890 calorie smoothie. I also can’t even think about eating dessert.

Breakfast: 35.55 g Protein, 147 g Carbs

I feel full for a long while after I drink about three fourths of the smoothie (and eat half of the English muffin) and when I’m finally hungry again (4 hours later) I reheat my leftover lentil soup. I really nailed that soup, to be frank with you. It is so good. Today is going much better than yesterday and I’m guessing that is because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I also realized that I’m not craving anything sweet midday, which is pretty crazy.

When dinner rolls around at about 6:00pm, I notice that we basically have nothing in the fridge to make. I’m trying to finish strong, so I plan to keep my calories low for my last meal of the day. I make tofu, green beans, mushrooms and brown rice in a weird mish mash of Asian flavors. It’s actually pretty good and I go to sleep knowing that I at least finished the day with a bang.

WHAT I LEARNED

Breakfast is hard work. There is simply too much to do in the morning for me to be focused on eating by 10:00am. My body never really adjusted to eating that early in the morning and my brain was very angry with me for forcing it to make such critical decisions as what to eat right when I wake up. Maybe if I found a breakfast that I could have every morning, the same exact way, without any thought put into it, I could manage. The smoothie was the closest I came to that in my failed journey. All of my favorite breakfast foods are way to annoying to make on a daily basis. Although - I just realized I never ate cereal for breakfast this whole time.

I also learned that my need for sweets is so much more than an affinity. It is baked into my bones; a requirement. I’m just programmed to finish a meal on a sweet note. No amount of breakfast dessert is going to get my craving for a piece of chocolate after dinner out of me. Sadly.

While I have not been transformed into a breakfast person via this experiment, I do have a newfound admiration for the people who commit to it. The morning is a lovely time, and I envy you.

I’ve also realized that sometimes it’s good to just take stock of what the food you are putting in your body is doing for you. I never knew the protein content of an egg before I did this. That seems bonkers in retrospect. I should know on a basic level what I’m eating.

Overall, I think I’m just a dinner girl. I’m destined to be that sitcom teenager, running out the door with only a bite of toast to sustain her.