Now that we've covered the basics, it's back to how breakfast affects your metabolic rate. Because your metabolic rate — in its most simplified term — is how much energy/calories you burn in a day, it's fair to assume that if you eat in the morning, you're going to burn more calories throughout the day. "It's partially true and partially wrong," Dr. Arad told POPSUGAR.
"Because when we do eat, the body processes food and there is an increase, a small increase, in the amount of energy that the body burns. Just because the body needs to process that food," he explained. Don't get too excited yet. According to Dr. Arad, "the increase is so small — it's about five to 10 percent of your baseline — that the amount of calories that you eat certainly makes that increase not significant."