cakeIt sounds too good to be true: Eat dessert with breakfast and lose weight! You freakin' wish! I yell back at my laptop. Which cannot hear me. But I saw the words "researchers at Tel Aviv University" and decided this wacky story needed a second look.

Shockingly enough, it sounds like it's legit. They compared people who ate a 600-calorie breakfast with people who ate a low-carb, 300-calorie breakfast. Both groups consumed the same total number of calories per day, it's just that the 600-calorie group front-loaded theirs. And those breakfasts included cake, cookies, and other treats. Not only did the big-breakfasters report feeling more satisfied, long-term they also lost more weight. Like, a lot more.

Through the first half of the study, people in both groups lost an average of 33 pounds. But then through the second half of the study, the small-breakfast people started gaining weight while the dessert breakfasters lost more. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

Over the course of a 32 week-long study, detailed in the journal Steroids, participants who added dessert to their breakfast -- cookies, cake, or chocolate -- lost an average of 40 lbs. more than a group that avoided such foods. What's more, they kept off the pounds longer.

Keep in mind, they're talking dessert as "part of a balanced 600-calorie breakfast that also includes proteins and carbohydrates." Which kind of sounds like that "part of this nutritious breakfast" line you hear in those Little Frosted Donuts cereal commercials, doesn't it?

But the key is eating those sweets first thing in the morning, when your metabolism is at its "most active." And there's more science-y stuff! Listen to this: "Breakfast is the meal that most successfully regulates ghrelin, the hormone that increases hunger," says Professor Jakubowicz. Whatever that means! I totes need my ghrelin regulated, I'm sure of it. Also, this is real dessert -- not that fakey "lite" dessert crap. Get serious.

Okay, they've got me. I almost want to try this out! I already have kind of an indulgent breakfast every day -- granola with big spoonfuls of full-fat yogurt. What if I added ice cream to that? Or brownies? Or cupcakes? Or all three? Because it's GOOD FOR ME.

What do you usually have for breakfast?

 

Image via kimberlykv/Flickr