Power Breakfast -The Most Important Meal

If you don't already know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  While most of us know this, people continue skip breakfast.  When you ask someone, why they skip breakfast, they often cite lack of time, and not feeling hungry in the morning.  After eating clean for over a year, I wonder how anyone can wake up in the morning and not feel hungry.  The average person sleeps between 6-9 hours per night; this means that your body goes without food for 6-9 hours or longer if you skip breakfast.  This period of not eating is know as a Fast.  When you eat in the morning, you are literally, breaking the fast.  This is where the word breakfast comes from.  It is extremely important within the first hour of rising to break the fast and give your body the energy it needs to function properly.  The choice we make to eat breakfast or not has implications for our families and for ourselves thought the day.  The consequences of skipping breakfast include fatigue, irritability, inability to concentrate, mood and behavioral problems, and poor health to name a few.  If you are one of these breakfast skippers you may be one of these irritable people!   The American Dietetic Association would agree, stating that, "Eating breakfast encourages increased concentration and problem solving-skills throughout the day."  If you are not going to eat breakfast, consider doing it for your loved ones and coworkers. No one want to spend time with groggy, irritable, and unproductive people.

Breakfast sets the standards for all of your forthcoming meals each day. Eating breakfast helps you to both lose and maintain an ideal body weight. People often skip breakfast as a way to cut calories.  This however, DOES NOT WORK.  People who skip breakfast actually end up storing more calories because the body does not know when it will be fed again.  People who skip breakfast, also tend to eat more during the day or late at night.  Do yourself, and loved ones, a huge favor; make breakfast a priority!

What to eat? Just as cars do not operate properly on dirty gas, the human body does not function well on poor fuel.  Eating high sugar foods only stimulates your cravings for more of them.  Avoid high sugar foods especially early in the morning; they will only cause you to feel exhausted once that sugar high comes crashing down.  Stick to high quality foods, as your fuel of preference.  These fuels include lean protein partnered with complex carbohydrates.  In my opinion oatmeal is the prefect breakfast food.  I call it the Carmen Electra of the pantry.  If you don't like oatmeal, consider cold breakfast cereals with high nutritive values such as granola, muesli.  Also consider whole wheat bread with peanut butter and banana. Low fat cottage cheese and yogurt mixed with berries are also great and tasty. Or if you prefer, eat the gold standard of protein - EGGS!  Egg whites are the gold standard of which all other proteins are measured against. 

Make breakfast a priority - for some this might be the perfect New Years Resolution. 

My Favorite breakfast - I eat this every day. It keeps me full for 3 hours!!!

Combine the following ingredients and nuke in the microwave 

1 whole egg (beat) or 1/2 cup egg whites

1 Tbsp whey protein 

1 Tbsp ground flax seed

2/3 cup oatmeal 

1/2 cup blueberries 

1/2 banana (cut as small as possible- I usually mash up with egg)

1 cup skim milk (or use 1/2 cup low fat yogurt and mix with a little water)