Don't skip it, but don't indulge.

That's the message of a new study in the journal Nutrition  that looked at the role of breakfast in the fight against obesity. 

Dr. Volker Schusdziarra, who works in Else-Kröner-Fresenius Center of Nutritional Medicine, conducted research on more than 300 people who were required to document what and how much they ate in a day. 

Although the size of the participants breakfast varied, scientists discovered people would later consume the same amount of calories at lunch and dinner, even despite having had a larger portion in the morning.

This led researchers to suggest wise breakfast choices could be key to reducing total daily calories and fighting obesity.

The team referred to a previous study saying it was misleading to that suggest a large caloric breakfast could be offset in a day.

In that earlier study, the participants’ breakfast was proportionally bigger and the researchers only looked at the ratio of calories consumption in breakfast rather than the whole intake over the day.

In this new study, differences occurred when people skipped a mid morning snack, but this did not offset the calories they had already consumed.

Restricting calorie consumption, reducing intake of saturated fat and sugar, and having 5-a-day servings of fruit and vegetable are sensible ways to lose weight, according to National Health Service guidelines.

Stephen Lau and editing by Aimee Keenan-Greene