 Breakfast Debate - To Eat Or Not To Eat In The Morning?
“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper,” (Adelle Davis).
By Elena Voropay
Did you skip breakfast today? How did you feel by lunch-time? Probably exhausted, tired, devout of energy, irritable and ravenously hungry. Skipping any meal during the day and not fixing your energy and running on low blood sugar levels almost guarantees poor physical and mental function until you have your first bite. This is especially important at the beginning of the day.
If you want to understand how the body balances its energy in an instant, think of your system as a car that operates 24 hours a day. If the fuel tank is empty, the car can't take you anywhere, no matter how hard or how fast you would push on the gas pedal. You wouldn't take your car out in the morning with an empty gas tank would you? Well, how can you expect your body to perform unless you give it some energy to use? Unfortunately, that's how many of us operate our bodies in an attempt to conserve calories, or because there is no time to eat a proper meal. Problem is, if you cut too far back, you are likely to be frantically hungry by the next meal.
Those who skip breakfast force themselves to run on empty for hours against their natural metabolic cycles, then dump in more calories than their bodies need and regret later on. Think of what's happening inside: neither the stomach, nor the pancreas and the liver can't handle the load of this mindless roller coaster of starving and gorging. First, you are breaking down body's own reserves for energy, which mostly come from valuable lean tissues. Then, you must turn the outpouring sugar supply into constructive material which is likely to show up as extra bulge in the form of cellulite on hips and thighs, or as a double chin, enlarged love handles and the lesser wanted tire around the waist. This a disaster, a self-destructive strategy which causes all kinds of metabolic disorders.
Why Eat Breakfast?
 “You wake up in the morning, and your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or less than you receive,” (Dr. Thomas Arnold Bennett).
You've heard it millions of times that a nourishing filling breakfast is the cornerstone of healthy eating. It is not just a fad claim. There is science behind it. Even the name breakfast underscores its importance: to break a fast. So, why morning is a particularly important time to eat?
Because the space between the last meal you eat before bedtime and first meal of the new day is a long one, probably the longest stretch of time between any two meals. Do the math. Let's estimate that the last time you ate anything was at 8 p.m. last night. If you didn't eat lunch until noon today, that's 16 hours of no re-fuelling! Some people think that an evening meal is sufficient enough to nourish their bodies all the way throughout the evening, night and morning hours. Breakfast skippers, especially those who are desperate to lose weight, mistakenly reason this habit by the fact that if they have a large dinner and then go to sleep they don't burn all the calories consumed the day before and should have plenty of energy for hours after waking up.
However, when you are physically resting you are still alive. Being asleep is not the same as being dead. Body cells are always active, even during deep sleep the body demands energy. The fuel that keeps our motors running is glucose. Your brain and your nervous system need glucose to work at all times, whether you are walking, speaking, sleeping, exercising, stretching, typing, reading - any activity requires this fuel. If you don't supply it constantly, your system resorts to finding stored carbohydrates or it tries to turn proteins and fat into glucose.
The Wonderful Journey of Food: What happens in your body from dinner to breakfast
Let's see what happens inside your body from the time you have dinner till the time you wake up.
Imagine that you just swallowed the last bite of your night-time dessert, washed it down with a sip of Camomile tea and cleaned up the dishes. Assuming the meal was not an over-indulgence of fat-free sugary candy and the size was reasonable, your blood sugar levels should be moderately high. At any one time, you have only about 20 grams of sugar in the blood, enough to supply the brain for less than an hour. What happens when these 20 grams are burned? In case your tummy still has some food in it, the digestive system will break it down into simpler molecules, absorb into the bloodstream and deliver to the required destinations. If your dinner included carbohydrates, then these are turned into sugars and are used directly as fuel. Proteins and fats are used for other valuable purposes, such as constructing new tissues and supporting optimal growth.
Depending on what you've eaten for dinner, it takes anywhere from 1 to 4 hours for digestion to complete. Simple sugars take the least amount of time to be absorbed. Complex carbohydrates, fibre, protein and fat take a lot longer, slow down all digestive processes and keep you fuller for longer. This delay in nutrient delivery should explain why it is recommended to eat most of your nutrient supply during the day, avoid large heavy dinners and have your last bite a few hours before retiring for the night. Big dinners make you temporarily drowsy but prolong digestion, which interferes with a good night's sleep.
If your digestion needs improvement and you can't figure out what is the problem exactly, try to eat your biggest meal before mid-afternoon and have a light evening meal of foods which most people find easy to utilise - some chicken, extra-lean meat or fish at dinner to help curb middle-of-the-night snack attacks. Spicy foods, such as garlic, chillies, cayenne, or other hot spices can contribute to sleep problems and cause nagging heartburn or indigestion. Avoid gas-forming beans, brans, cabbage and never swallow without proper chewing. Hurried eating also causes abdominal discomfort which in turn interferes with sound sleep.
 You can try a high-carbohydrate snack, such as crackers and fruit or toast and jam right before hitting the sac. These little treats trigger the release of a brain chemical called Serotonin which aids sleep. The traditional glass of warm milk, a protein-rich beverage, also contributes to Serotonin production. Plus, any warm liquid soothes and relaxes you and makes you feel full, which might help facilitate sleep.
Where Has The Dinner Gone?
So, after all blood sugar is gone, your liver should have additional supply of around 100 grams of polymerised from of sugar called glycogen. Glycogen is similar in structure to amylopectin, a type of starch, and each gram has 4 calories. The liver makes it by converting glucose, fructose, galactose, amino acids, and other metabolites from foods into storage material and then later breaks it back down into usable glucose. Though this stored sugar is not as accessible as blood sugar, it can easily get into your blood when there is a need for it. It is a kind of “power pack” that can be switched on very quickly. Liver's 100 grams of glycogen provides you with 400 calories which should keep your body functioning during your shut-eye hours provided you are sleeping.
Your muscles represent the second glycogen-storing tissue. They hold a bit more, around 300 grams of additional sugars (or 1200 additional calories) depending on how your body is made up. The more muscles you have, the more calories you can eat and store in your lean tissues without converting them to fat – a good explanation why lean muscular athletes and bodybuilders can eat almost anything they want without getting fat. Besides the outstanding capacity to store energy, muscles burn calories just to sustain themselves. They are like furnaces – you poor in sugars and muscle burn them in flames of fire - this is why they are called metabolically active. With ageing, we naturally lose lean tissues. Not only we become weaker, but our metabolic rates drop significantly after the age of 30. The greatest advice you can get from any weight-loss veteran is to maintain and build as much muscles as you can with resistance exercise - strength will keep you young despite the passing years.
If we calculated glycogen correctly, by the time you go to bed your body should have around 1500 calories of useful ready-to-go energy. The amount of calories you use during the next 12 or so hours of rest depend on how much you weigh, whether you've exercised during the day, your body composition and your overall metabolic rate among other factors. An average person who weighs 70kg may burn around 800 calories during the process. Not as much as you would expect, but you are not an average person either.
A 100kg bodybuilder will nuke more that 1200 calories at night! You can easily add another few hundreds if the recovery from intense training is in place. Not bad for doing nothing. Before you sign up for the "all-you-can-sleep" diet, keep in mind there are better ways to burn calories.
The entire night-time metabolic path of hormones, neurones, brain waves, immunity is extremely complex and describing it is a topic of another chapter. But there are a couple of issues worth mentioning when we talk about nutrient purpose and the use of dinner caloric material.
Incidentally, while during sleep the metabolic activity is at its lowest, it is optimal for tissue repair. At this time you are using up most of the nutrient support provided during the day for re-constructing all cells, especially the metabolic furnace – muscles. Your connective tissues also become stronger and more resistant during the night. Sleeping replenishes critical neurotransmitters (Dopamine, Adrenaline, Noradrenalin, Acetylcholine and more) which are responsible for focus, attention, motivation, overall energy levels and muscular contractions. These chemicals are depleted by hard training, stress, thinking, worrying, receiving and remembering information and a range of everyday activities. Only sleeping allows your body to repair itself and replenish the chemicals that are needed for you to get best results in the upcoming day.
About 30-45 minutes after you fall asleep fantasising about the muscles you are building the levels of the potent anabolic Growth Hormone (HGH) rise, blood supply to the lean tissues increases carrying an array of nutrients in it. The simple fact is that after you spend an hour or so working your muscles out at the gym your body needs substantial quality recovery time from the workout. The best recovery time is approximately 8 hours of sleep each night; some people need more, some can get away with less.
One reason people can go 12 hours or so in the evening without eating is because most of that time they are in low-energy mode, sleeping or doing very sedentary activity. When metabolic demands are low, you can rely on glycogen from the liver and some body-fat stores. However, when you wake up the metabolic needs change.
Having been without any caloric input for somewhere between 8 and 16 hours, your body is more or less in a “fasted”state to say the least. Chances are that by morning your dinner has been fully used by the brain, the heart, the hard-earned muscle tissue and by all cells that need to be constantly regenerated. If you lift weights after dinner, some extra post-workout protein and carbs may help your results. Otherwise, the nutrient demands go up and without nourishment you may end up further breaking down the lean tissues during the night instead of constructing these. If you don't fuel all cells with energy, the tissues get robbed of the structural material and are left without any support. No wonder many professional athletes, especially bodybuilders, wake up in the middle of the night to eat or drink their shakes – they don't want to waste the precious muscles! This is not a requirement and is actually not a very good practice – eating at night may disrupt your sleep patterns. So, you are always better off getting all the needed nourishment with the regular normal day-time meals. For heaven sake, let your stomach rest once in while!
Do You Eat While You Sleep?
“I dreamed I ate a marshmallow, and when I woke up my pillow was gone! “(Unknown)
Some people are rare exceptions. They get up in the middle of the night and eat during sleep without remembering it. This is a potentially serious condition which researchers call “sleep-eating disorder” related to bulimia. Other names for sleep eating are sleep-related eating (disorder), nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder (NS-RED), and sleep-eating syndrome.
Sleep eaters are at risk for the same health complications as compulsive overeaters, with the added dangers of sleepwalking. Sleep eaters are comparable to sleepwalkers in many ways: they are at risk for self-injury during excessive nocturnal overeating (compulsive hyperphagia), they may feel exhausted during the day and are usually emotionally distressed, tired, angry, or anxious.
The actual number of sleep-eating sufferers is unknown; however, it is estimated that 3% of the population is affected by sleep eating. Mostly, as you would expect, these are individuals with eating disorders. Symptoms typically begin in the late 20s. Episodes may reoccur, in combination with a stressful situation, or an episode may occur only once or twice. Additionally, many parasomnias seem to run in families, which may indicate that sleep eating is genetically linked. Women are more likely to have sleep-eating disorder, but it can afflict men as well. The dangers go beyond simply overeating because, as you may guess, people consume toxic substances unconsciously!
So, if you wake up with a stomach-ache and chocolate smeared on your face and hands, contact a nearby sleep-disorders clinic.
Good Morning, Sunshine!
The night is gone. Seemed like a blink of an eye. As you open your eyes to the rising sun, stretch, turn from side to side and get up from the bed, your brain activity picks up. The main hormone which helps to maintain blood sugar levels at this point is Glucagon, a catabolic hormone secreted from the pancreas (as opposed to anabolic Insulin and Growth Hormone) – it facilitates the conversion of stored glycogen into blood sugar. Physical motion is brought up to speed and you are thinking about rushing to work, getting into your daily routine and getting on with life. The central and peripheral nervous system, the heart and the brain itself increase their demands for sugar. To meet these increasing metabolic issues, your heart rate goes up which delivers more oxygen and iron-carrying haemoglobin throughout the body. Blood levels of other catabolic hormones, including Testosterone, Epinephrine, Cortisol, Glucagon are further elevated. The function of these and many other hormones, neurochemicals and growth factors is to support the body with energy by mobilising stored glucose and make all body's reserves available and ready to use as fuel.
Since most of the glycogen has been already used up at night, its reserves are low in the morning. The liver slowly converts its own glycogen and some which is stored in the muscles. One problem with muscle glucose is that it cannot be used by any other tissues than the muscles themselves which are in the mild catabolic state already. How so? Because muscles lack a special enzyme involved in conversion of glycogen into brain-friendly glucose. The very little sugar you've got stored in your lean powerhouses, if you are lucky to have anything at all, may mainly support your physical movements and nothing else. For any sort of cognitive function you need to top off your liver glycogen consistently by eating frequent small meals at least five times a day every two or three hours. This ensures your system is thoroughly nourished, increases lean body mass by enhancing nutrient absorption and inhibits storage of fat. Whether you're trying to lose fat or add lean body mass, sporadic eating is anathema to making progress.
The Science of Night-time Fat Burning
When your blood sugar levels and liver glycogen stores are used up, the proteins and fats are converted to metabolic by-products known as ketones which are used to do the work carbohydrates normally do. Ketones are not the most optimal fuel for the body. In fact, they are the toughest metabolic material for a healthy body. There is an argument that you can use ketones as an alternative fuel to carbohydrates, but this doesn't work as easy as you wish and cannot fuel all tissues. While your muscles and some organs can derive energy from ketones, your brain, red blood cells, immune cells all require glucose. Additionally, without carbohydrates, body fat is only partially oxidised. Fatigue, low energy, drop in metabolic rate, sugar cravings, mood swings are the consequences of low blood sugar levels. This is why extremely low-carbohydrate diets, the latest fad, are not recommended for longer than two weeks and are used mainly therapeutically for such conditions as Epilepsy.
Plus, to get the maximum weight-loss benefits you would first need to get into ketosis, which takes several days of no carbohydrates in the diet. To make it brief, remember that ketosis is not a normal state of body affairs. You would have to make a compromise as your energy levels will never be the same while you are in ketosis as if you would eat a normal balanced diet.
Where Is The Morning Energy? Hormones, Hungry Hormones
If you skip breakfast, your body is tricked into thinking that a famine is starting, and there may not be any food available for a long time. Being very smart and sensitive in nature, every organ in the body detects the shortage of fuel supply very quickly. To help you survive, your body slows down all metabolic reactions to ensure that every bit of energy you have stored before will last as long as possible. Every single cell of every single organ now switches to the slow-motion mode. Your brain's activity is reduced pushing the breaks on all the nervous and muscular activities. This is often called "survival mode".
At this state, you not only burn less calories altogether, but also hold on to every single gram of fat you've got. Granted, you do burn fat when you don't eat. Very unfortunately, you may also burn some lean tissues as well. Why wouldn't the body convert your fat deposits into energy? Because fat is a very efficient tissue. It doesn't have blood supply, doesn't need the essential nutrients to maintain itself and it packs twice as many calories as do lean tissues in the body. The important amino acids from which muscle tissue is made get synthesised into glucose to fuel the brain, nervous system, and other organs and tissues. A pitiful scenario.
When fat stores are slowly being mobilised and burned, blood levels of hormone Leptin are also lowered. Leptin is a potent regulator of both long-term and short-term appetite. Its levels go up and down throughout the day peaking at night (between midnight and around 3AM) and hitting the lowest point around lunch-time. Leptin is mainly made in your fat cells and has many functions with one most important goal – to keep you alive. Leptin detects how well-nourished your body is and triggers various chemicals in the brain and the digestive system telling them whether you should eat or not. When Leptin is low, you get hungry, which happens naturally every morning.
When you lose weight, exercise, skip a meal or get stressed, your Leptin levels drop too. And when these levels get too low, the body continuously thinks it's hungry. So you eat more than your body needs, raise your blood sugar levels so high that your Insulin gets disrupted and you can’t recognise how hungry or satisfied you really are. This is your sure way to obesity – forget the look of striated muscles. Leptin also controls higher metabolic rate and stimulates the metabolic master – your Thyroid gland. When levels of Leptin are optimal, you mood may be much better too, you feel satisfied and calm and more likely to choose healthy foods. This is because Leptin alters the function of mood-controlling brain circuits.
Some symptoms, such as a wave of nausea, a little light-headiness and poor co-ordination is something to expect. No wonder you feel awful – this is how your body is screaming out, "Hey, give me some help here! I need my nourishing support. Where is my water, sugar, amino acids, essential fats, vitamins and minerals?” Why put your body through all this? Don't panic, being in catabolic state is a natural process our bodies go through to sustain life every day. You just need to know your limits.
The best way to keep the state of metabolic balance, bring muscle catabolism to a minimum and get out of the miserable situation of poor energy, constant hunger and packed cellulite is to eat. So, do what mom said and eat that breakfast!
The truth is, we need to get the nutrients required for optimal physical and mental performance, optimal growth and recuperation in place. By eating a proper breakfast, you are telling your body that there is plenty of food available, and there is no need to store excess fat. Your metabolism is boosted, your energy levels go through the roof, you've got power, motivation and desire to be productive.
Top 10 Reasons To Eat Breakfast
A well-timed mug of coffee, cup of tea, glass of OJ and a hearty breakfast can lift the curtains on a groggy mind and buy a few more hours of alertness.
1.You will get more nutrients.
Breakfast is a good chance for people who don’t eat the recommended number of servings of lean proteins, whole grains, fibre, dairy and fruit to pack in extra nutrition. One study reported this year of almost 16,000 adults 20 years or older found that those who don’t eat breakfast get fewer micro-nutrients, including folic acid, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium and fibre. An explanation is that many foods we eat at breakfast, such as cereals, dairy, eggs, juices, fruit and nuts, are really hard to fit in with lunch and dinner. The obvious exception being if you’ve had a Pop Tart or dried Corn Flakes for breakfast – they are unlikely to sustain you for long. Plus, who cares what you eat at lunch if you started your day with junk food anyway?
2.You won’t crave junk food and be less hungry during the day.
Studies have shown that people who miss the morning meal tend to be malnourished and overweight, perhaps because they over-compensate for the missed calories early in the day and make unhealthy choices when hunting for food outside the home. You may know it from experience.
Remember the days when you shun breakfast? You get extremely exhausted by early afternoon. If you do it all the time, you are probably used to feeling fatigued soon after the day begins and start counting minutes impatiently waiting for your lunch break. When the time comes, you tend to eat faster and more food later in the second part of the day sending the blood sugar and energy levels on a roller-coaster ride. Breakfasters are less likely to suffer a mid-morning energy slump and reach for a high-calorie snack which lack quality nutrients.
3.You will burn more calories, lose more fat, maintain most muscle.
When it comes to setting up your metabolism, morning is the most critical time of the entire day. What you eat for breakfast causes a chain reactions for the next 24 hours. People who regularly skip breakfast burn an average of 150 fewer calories a day than regular breakfast eaters, according to scientists at the Mayo Clinic for Medical Education and Research. So you can either shovel snow for 15 minutes, do water aerobics for 30 minutes, or take the easy option and grab some breakfast. Most breakfast skippers have slower metabolisms, and if these people are bodybuilders, especially in the hard-gaining category, their anabolic growth comes to a halt.
4.You will reduce your risk of developing Insulin Resistance and Diabetes.
Research has shown that breakfast eaters are up to 55% less likely to have problems with Insulin Resistance or become obese than their non-breakfasting counterparts. The benefits of early meal go beyond simple metabolic boost and appetite suppression. When you wake up from sleep after long fasting hours, your body is in a catabolic state. Your liver and muscle glycogen levels have been depleted and all cells are especially sensitive to the incoming nutrients, muscle tissues in particular. They have opened their doors, special receptors on the outer surfaces of the cell membranes to let the nutrients. Now all amino acids, sugars, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, supplements, anti-oxidants will be used primarily for replenishment and growth. The only way these nutrients can get into the cells is with the help of Insulin, a hormone secreted by your pancreas in response to supplied carbohydrates.
If you miss this golden opportunity of Insulin sensitivity, your tissues will shut down their doors and get angry with you and start eating themselves from the inside out. When you eat lunch, the receptors will not be as welcoming to Insulin surge and will uptake only portion of the nutrient supply. Where would the rest go? Fat cells. They are always sensitive to Insulin and have their gates wide open for any calorie which passes by. In time, your pancreas will start producing more Insulin to ensure all tissues get their share of nourishment. And again, your fat cells will get the most. This is how you can develop Insulin Resistance and Diabetes Type II – just by skipping breakfast.
On the other hand, breakfast eaters have their blood sugar levels better managed without any spikes and valleys and their lean glycogen-storing tissues don't get angry. They do only what's best for you – grow, progress and become better at everything they do.
5.You’ll catch fewer colds, recover faster from workouts, have more energy to exercise, keep many ailments at bay and with stronger immunity you'll live longer.
Forget marketing-spun vitamins, herbs, fad low-calorie diets and mythical fountains of youth. The truth is unnervingly simple – according to research by the Stress Institute, people who reach the age of 100 eat breakfast more regularly than those who don’t make a century.
Also, researchers at Cardiff University showed that people who regularly ate breakfast were less likely to suffer colds, flu and other respiratory tract illnesses than daily breakfast dodgers were. In a recent study from the Netherlands researchers analysed the impact that consuming a 1,200-calorie breakfast has on a man's immune system, versus eating nothing at all. They found that eating big and eating early increased blood levels of gamma interferon, a natural antiviral agent, by 450%! Going hungry and will lower your immune response by 17%.
We don't know exactly how many calories you should eat for your immunity breakfast, but I can tell straight away that if your breakfast consists of pancake syrup over bacon and cheese, you will probably get sick sooner than the cold virus hits your nose, even if the sweet breakfast of lard would have the recommended 1,200 calories. Instead, hit your quota by eating a bowl of fibrous grains with dairy, some fruit and nuts. Presumably this combination boosts your immune system, not because it coats you in a Brekkie-style germ-proof shield. Wish we knew this decades ago. Maybe we did... and maybe we just forgot.
6.You'll make better lifestyle choices.
The research from the National Weight Control Registry in the US (a database of more than 3,000 people) has documented that 78% of people who enjoyed eating breakfast every day have lost more that 27 kg of body-weight and kept it off for an average of 6 years.
Whether breakfast was the main reason for losing weight is not certain, but we know that breakfast eaters were better able to keep up with other great lifestyle choices, such as eating a low-fat diet and exercising for an hour or more each day. All these factors contribute to longer, healthier and happier life. On the other hand, people who skip breakfast do everything against longevity - they are more likely to drink alcohol and smoke, and they’re less likely to exercise.
7.How about a memory boost? Morning meal improves your thinking ability and helps to maintain top mental performance.
A study in the Journal Of Psychiatric Research linked having breakfast to academic performance and several studies have shown it improves memory.
David Benton, a professor in the department of psychology at Swansea University in Wales confirms that breakfast fuels the brain, helping it perform better. In a 1998 study of 137 women and 47 men, Benton found that students who routinely skipped breakfast recalled fewer words than people who had had breakfast. A study published in the November 2001 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that eating breakfast improved participants' performance on memory tests. Their performance improved even further when they were given a glucose drink.
Tufts University, in published statement on the link between nutrition and cognitive development in children, recognised that "Children who participated in the School Breakfast Program were shown to have significantly higher standardised achievement test scores than eligible non-participants."
8.You’ll be smarter, calmer and happier.
Regular breakfast eaters are less likely to be emotionally distressed, depressed and to die by suicide, according to a study by the University of Bristol. Eating early in the morning fuels brain and nervous system with sugar, the best emotional gasoline. Many hormones and neurochemicals, such as Serotonin and Dopamine, go up after you eat. Lack of these will make you to feel tired, unable to concentrate and irritable. If you’ve ever wondered why your work-mates are always keen to make you breakfast, it is probably they can't wait to see you happy.
A Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital study of children in Philadelphia and Baltimore schools discovered that students who usually ate school breakfast had improved math grades, reduced hyperactivity, decreased absence and tardy rates, and improved psycho-social behaviours compared with children who rarely ate school breakfast.
9.You'll smell better.
Need more convincing? Your breath will be better. Breakfast dodgers are more likely to scare colleagues and loved ones with their halitosis until lunchtime. You should lose it after the first meal, unless you drink a glass of beer or a cup of black coffee and finish it with a cigarette. Amazing, but thousands of dieters do just that. I know you are not the one. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend eating garlic bread or raw onions for breakfast.
10.You'll get a refreshment.
If long-term satiety, satisfaction, improved blood lipids, boosted immunity, well-managed blood sugar levels, decreased body fat without sacrificing muscle tissue, superb brain function, outstanding concentration, better mood are not enough reasons for eating breakfast, then chances are your system is already so deprived of what it needs that you can't understand what I am talking about and you should take a deep breath of fresh air – at least some oxygen may help whatever you've got left inside your head. Then promise yourself to never miss breakfast again.
One major producer of all sorts of meaty fatty breakfast conveniences, from sandwiches to roll sausage (known as Jimmy Dean), truly believes that “The Day Begins With A Happy Breakfast”.
Lee Labrada, the noted bodybuilder who holds 22 professional bodybuilding titles, has helped others reach their health and nutrition goals not just by word of mouth, but by creating an empire of award-winning nutrition and supplement products called Labrada Nutrition. He knows a thing or two about anabolic nutrition and reckons there is no life without breakfast.
“Breakfast has always been my favourite meal of the day. Forget the coffee and donut routine. Where breakfast is concerned, I wake up as hungry and approach the breakfast table with the intent of fuelling my body up for the whole day. The right breakfast can mean having lots of energy in the gym, even if you are training late in the afternoon. That's because the nutritional profundity of breakfast extends well past the morning hours. Whether you are training to be Mr. Olympia as I did for years, or you just want to pack on thick slabs of muscle, breakfast is Meal Number One for you!”
Ready to Eat? Don't Ever Eat Breakfast!
Breakfast is the meal that makes champions.
And so do lunch, dinner and snacks, especially snacks.
Eat breakfast, even though it is NOT the most important meal of the day. You've heard me right - doctors and nutrition experts are saying it’s OK to skip breakfast. To most of us, eating breakfast to fuel brain activity sounds good and seems like common sense by now. I am sure you've been in the hungry state of “brain fog” before. But not everyone agrees.
Whether to eat breakfast or not is probably one of the most controversial areas of nutrition where it is most difficult to reach consensus. Doctors, scientists, nutritionists, dieticians have been telling us for decades that the morning meal is said to to get your training energy on the right track, stoke metabolism, stop late-night grazing, thwart obesity, reduce diabetes risk, improve nutritional intake, sharpen concentration—even increase longevity. However, a growing number of experts and dieters say it may even be more healthy not to eat breakfast, as long as you eat well for the rest of the day. Let's see where we can draw the line.
How have we started thinking that breakfast boosts metabolism? It started from a large study in 2005 conducted by Ruth Striegel-Moore, a professor of psychology at Wesleyan University. The research involved 2,400 adolescent girls who were followed for nine years. The results were promising - girls who ate breakfast more consistently had a lower Body Mass Index (BMI). However, the picture changed when the researchers accounted for other factors that differed among the girls, such as overall energy intake, physical activity levels and parental education.
Some other studies conducted earlier didn’t find a clear relationship between skipping breakfast and obesity. For example, a 12-week clinical trial published in 1992 52 obese women eat a reduced-calorie diet. Both groups consumed the same number of calories during the day. Interestingly, there was no significant difference in weight loss between a group who skipped breakfast and a group who ate three meals a day. This brings out the conclusion that the total amount of calories is what matters in the long run, regardless of when you eat. Now, take this with a grain of salt. Obese women don't have the same metabolic needs as healthy individuals. Their goals, lifestyles and metabolisms are different than those of fitness enthusiasts.
However, I should note that no-one monitored the breakfast skippers and the conclusions were based purely on the subjects’ own reports of what they ate. The problem with this sort of data is that most people don't tell the full story of their dietary patterns: they either forget, under-estimate, over-estimate, or just simply don't tell the truth, especially when it comes to their diets. It's human nature. How could the researchers be so sure that the reason for the lacking nutrients was the missed breakfast? Why couldn't the subjects eat a wider variety of delicacies at lunch and dinner to make up for the the hungry morning?
Another important point is that you don't need to get all these nutrients at breakfast. After all, what is breakfast? By strictest definition, it is the first meal of the day. Whether you eat breakfast or not, most people should agree that getting the right amounts of necessary nutrients is the most important thing, and breakfast isn't the most important meal of the day. If that takes you two meals or six, that’s the right way for you. It's when you eat that makes what you eat matter. One extremely important point to remember is that the most important meals are post-exercise recovery meals. As long as you are eating enough calories which come from healthy balanced meals throughout the day, you should be able to meet all the recommended amounts of all nutrients.
Breakfast Is The Most Important Meal – To Avoid!
Biologically, it makes sense to literally “break the fast” held during sleep and refuel the brain with glucose and other lean tissues with used-up glycogen, amino acids and essential fats. However, now there are more and more professionals in the field of medicine and nutrition who support the “No-Brekkie-Club” and recommend to skip breakfast altogether. About one third of all American and European adults skip breakfast, and neuroscientists say it could actually be healthier to do so.
Proponents of skipping the morning meal say some of the pro-breakfast science is shaky and that other studies show people who skip breakfast and even lunch don’t eat more calories later in the day.
There is even a diet, called the “Warrior Diet” encourages skipping breakfast, under-eating during the day and overeating at night. "Breakfast is the worst meal of the day," Says Ori Hofmekler, the author of the “Warrior Diet” book.
The objective of the diet holds that morning is the worst time to eat and depriving the body of food during the day encourages the sympathetic nervous system’s fight or flight response, making you more alert and able to handle stress.
“When you wake-up, your body is already in an intense detox mode, clearing itself from endotoxins and digestive waste of the past evening meal. During the morning hours, when digestion is fully completed (while you are on empty stomach), a primal survival mechanism, known as fight or flight reaction to stress, is triggered maximising your body's capacity to generate energy, be alert, resist fatigue and resist stress. This highly geared survival mode is primarily dominated by part of the autonomic nervous system known as the SNS (sympathetic nervous system). At that state, the body is in its most energy producing phase and that's when most energy comes from fat burning. All that happens when you do not eat the typical morning meal.
If however you follow what "normal guys" do and eat your morning bagel and cereal and egg & bacon, you'll most likely shut down the above energy producing system. The SNS and its fight or flight mechanism will be substantially suppressed. Instead, your morning meal will trigger an antagonistic part of the automatic nervous system known as the PSNS (parasympathetic nervous system), which makes you sleepy, slow and less resilient to fatigue and stress. Instead of spending energy and burning fat, your body will be more geared towards storing energy and gaining fat. Under this state, detox would be inhibited. The overall metabolic stress would increase with toxins accumulating in the liver, giving the body another substantial reason to gain fat. (Fat tissues serve a biological storage for toxins)...
We are primarily pre-programmed to rotate between the two autonomic nervous system parts: the daily SNS and the nightly PSNS. The SNS regulates alertness and action during the day, while PSNS regulates relaxation, digestion and sleep during the nightly hours. Any interruption in this primal daily cycle, may lead into sleepiness during the day followed by sleeping disorders at night.”
Let me digest this mumbo-jumbo for you. After you eat your large dinner, your body is busy digesting it for long hours while you sleep. Eating more in the evening calms you down. You better rest for a while, let your body naturally do its magic – turn food to nutrients which will help repair all cells and tissues. Then, go to sleep and the miracle of recuperation will happen on its own.
During your sleep cycle, your body is relaxed, so it has more energy to be set aside for food processing. By morning, you should have digested and absorbed all the caloric gorge from dinner. Now you wake up with the energy stored from the previous meal. Hopefully, you didn't eat too much and at least wake up with an empty stomach. Now you may be hungry, but wait! Don't eat! You have plenty of stored calories to use and will begin to edge into a catabolic (tissue tear-down) state. This is when the best things in life are about to happen – your blood sugar is low and there is nothing to use but the cellulite! You tap stored fat for energy and eventually the scales in the bathroom will become your best friend because the numbers of your body-weight are on their way down. On the other hand, if you eat breakfast, you will become fatter! This is what the helpless dieter who has fought the war against her own body has to recommend.
With your permission, I would make a comment on this. First, why would you want to eat a lot at dinner and then go to sleep? Haven't we learned the basics of human metabolism by now? If you don't use the ingested calories as soon as possible they will pretty much go to the permanent parking place known as fat. Need proof? Look at bears. They eat tons and then go into their winter nap. The animals don't have to worry about body composition issues for months, and they like to be as fat as they can. I don't know about you, but I am in no hurry to look like a bear. I want lean dense muscles which, by the way, will help me grill some stuff off my love handles.
When you wake up, you may be hungry, anxious, irritated, nervous, just like a hungry lion ready to kill and eat anything that moves. This is called “energy” by Ori. Eating breakfast means losing this energetic spike once again, so you should starve yourself to a more productive day... Hum... This doesn't make too much sense, but you sure are losing weight regardless of how you feel. Try hitting the gym with some high intensity heavy lifting – I wonder how long you will last!
The myth that eating breakfast makes you sleepy doesn't have any substantial weight, unless you eat too many sugars and fats. In fact, it is the other way around – food gives you energy to do whatever you ask of your body. So, if you want to lose weight, start dieting at dinner, not breakfast.
Then, Ori Hofmekler notes that “morning meals must be carefully designed not to suppress the SNS and its highly energetic state. Minimising morning food intake to fruits, veggie soup or small amounts of fresh light protein foods, such as poached or boiled eggs, plain yogurt, or white cheese, will maintain the body in an under eating phase, while promoting the SNS with its energy producing properties.”
...Well, to me it seems like a normal breakfast. An American extravaganza. I don't know where her initial comment about not eating in the morning fits in here. At the end, her breakfast recommendations go in lieu with what you should eat any time of the day.
Is skipping breakfast an exception to the rule or do most of us need a solid boost of energy to get up to speed in the morning? Will eating in the morning stop the fat-burning cycle? If so, then how do we figure out the best way to lose weight without slowing down metabolism? It all depends on what works best for you individually.
Why do some people feel and function worse after having breakfast?
There is another explanation, perhaps even more compelling, why breakfast-eaters think better while breakfast-skippers may have a tough time organising their thoughts. The reason is our built-in biological clock, known as circadian rhythm. Each person has their own circadian rhythm which scientists are coming to believe comes from your genes. Whether you're a lark or a night-owl by nature can have a profound effect on how your body reacts to everything in life. Your internal clock is highly intertwined with physiological and behavioural processes, such as what time you wake up and eat breakfast, your brain wave activity, hormone production, and cell regeneration and how you cope with things like shift-work.
Breakfast skippers are usually the ones whose bodies operate better at night, also called “night owls”. Their brains rebel against any early-morning activity, including eating, exercising and even going to work. Most of the time they go to sleep quite late and eat larger dinners. When they wake up in the morning, their circadian clocks are telling them that it's still night-time, or they're plain exhausted and need the extra zzz's. Because of late meals at night and the nature of metabolic machinery, the digestive systems of night-owls may not be ready for food in the morning – they lack the enzymes to turn food into usable energy. Eating at the wrong time, which happens to be breakfast in this case, would severely interrupt the body’s ability to be in tune with the circadian clock which may add up to poor mental function and problems with obesity.
The unresolved mystery of breakfast for “night owls” is that probably waking up early and pushing the system against its natural function is what makes these people feel terrible. It is not the breakfast that lowers their cognitive function, but the time of the day. In any case, if there are responsibilities which have to be fulfilled in the early morning hours, then blame the demands, not the breakfast. If anything, brain and body nourishment could only help these poor sunrise victims.
Extremely fascinating are studies in animals suggesting that skipping meals makes them smarter, lowers their blood pressure and heart rate, and gives them lower Insulin levels. Tames Horvath, a veterinarian and neuroscientist at Yale University, notes that both hungry mice and hungry people have higher blood levels of a hormone called Ghrelin, which is released from an empty stomach, signalling hunger to the body. In his study, the researcher found that mice engineered to lack the Ghrelin gene took longer to learn how to avoid electric shocks in a maze-running task.
“It has been known for hundreds of years that for an animal to perform, you need to food deprive them,” Horvath says.
Now, wait a minute. Where does breakfast fit here? We know that when the stomach is empty, it starts growling, signals Ghrelin to tell the brain - “feed me!” It doesn't matter what time of the day or night it is. Unless you feed your system, especially the brain, you can't think straight. When there is no Ghrelin, you don't 'feel' the hunger, so you wouldn't normally eat. This is what happened in the case of mice.
I can't see how animals would force themselves to eat if there is no need. While we, humans, do it sometimes, especially if our favourite food comes along in the social environment where everybody else eats, generally this is not how it goes. When weight loss is the issue, people stay away from food as long as they can. Assuming the starving mice haven't re-fuelled their systems, chances are their blood sugar and mental function was impaired. This is why they were so slow at responding to electric shocks! Just because the mice lacked the hormone which stimulates appetite were slower doesn't tell us anything about how normal mice would perform if they eat. In fact, it could be just the opposite of what the researchers suspect – feeding could have increased both the brain function and neural response of mice, so the results of the research could've gone in the opposite direction.
Somehow, Tames Horvath have made a connection between hungry animals, brain function and breakfast: “Who invented breakfast? It was a social thing. Most animals don’t have breakfast, lunch and dinner.” I agree, animals truly don't have breakfasts. They would eat any time, anywhere, anything given the chance. And yes, breakfast is a social thing, a good community builder, an event which accompanies many presentations, exhibitions, get-togethers. It is a bonding activity, especially important for family relationships.
Breakfasts of The World
No-one knows where and when the concept of breakfast was first invented. Today is enjoyed by cultures around the world: coffee with French bread and butter and jam in Algeria; soup and rice porridge in Thailand and Vietnam; stuffed steamed buns and soy milk in northern China; a heart-stopping plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and fried bread in the British Isles, a bowl of porridge in Russia, or something like eggs, toast, cereals with milk, fruit, cheese and other dairy and a cup of coffee in the US. A favourite traditional breakfast in the Philippines consists of garlic fried rice, fried or scrambled eggs, and a choice of breakfast meat, like a fried beef jerky, caramelised pork, dried, smoked fish, tinned sardines, sautéed corned beef, or crispy pork adobo, sometimes with Western-style baked beans, sliced tomatoes and a local pickle (achara) on the side.
In Pakistan breakfast is usually a heavy meal which consists of two separate dishes – a sweet fatty chew Halva made from semolina, and a spicy chick-pea and potato curry Aloo Cholay, plus a small circular deep-fried flat bread Puri. And this is just an appetiser. The next breakfast option is something most of us would eat for lunch or dinner only - a stew made from beef or lamb and curry, known as Nihari which is also eaten with Naan bread. For some Pakistanians the breakfast resembles our smoothies and desserts – Lassi, a drink made from milk and yogurt, served in sweet, and rarely, in salty flavour.
The question remains: What are we to eat?
People have been fretting about what constitutes an ideal breakfast since at least the 1800s. You might say that breakfast has a long history of having the fun drained out of it. What is the all-American breakfast, anyway?
The answer to that question has changed over the years. Traditional breakfasts in the United States and Canada derive from the full English breakfast and other European breakfast traditions. A cowboy in the 1880s may have munched on antelope steak and boiled coffee, while the Puritan settlers of the 17th century enjoyed a cornmeal mash called "hasty pudding."
Traditional breakfasts today include hot oatmeal porridge, grits (in the South), other hot grain, porridges, eggs, bacon, ham, breakfast sausage or small link sausages, hash browns, biscuits, toast, pancakes, waffles, bagels, French toast, cornbread, English muffins, pastries (such as croissants, doughnuts, and muffins), milk, tea, coffee, yogurts and fresh or stewed fruits.
While most experts disagree on the specifics, the majority of researchers seem to agree that what we put into our bodies in the morning after eight, ten, or even twelve hours of sleep, the breakfasting moment is physiologically unique. “The nature of the food we eat affects hormones in profound ways for many hours after a meal, and that’s more important after breakfast,” said Dr. David Ludwig, associate professor of paediatrics at Harvard Medical School and author of Ending the Food Fight. “We’ve been fasting and stress hormones are elevated and we’re insulin-resistant, so we can use the properties of food at this time to our benefit or our detriment.”
According to a recent study published in the International Journal of Obesity, basing your breakfast on the wrong nutrients can sabotage your weight-loss efforts.
So what, then, to eat?
The studies and advice grow ever more specific and contradictory: If your aim is to optimise attention span and memory then, according to one study, the best breakfast is ham and hard cheese on whole-grain bread. If you want to prevent heart disease, try whole-grain cereal; one bowl per day is associated with a 28 percent lower risk of heart failure.
In a 1999 study led by Ludwig, 12obese teenage boys were fed at various occasions high-GI (“instant oatmeal”), medium-GI (“steel-cut oats”), and low-GI (“a vegetable omelette and fruit”) breakfasts and lunches, and then were allowed to consume all the food they wanted for the rest of the day.
The results were just what was expected – instant oatmeal was was a perfect solution to a state of crashing blood sugar and surging Adrenaline levels. First the energy went through the roof, then it dipped so low, that the dieters devoured 500 to 600 extra calories. On the other hand, low-glycemic foods, such porridges and lean proteins may even help breakfasters achieve that dietary holy grail: speeding up metabolism. In another study, subjects kept on such a diet saw their metabolic rate shift slightly to burn approximately 80 more calories per day—not a lot, but every little bit helps.
This is important because controlling Insulin and blood-glucose levels in turn controls appetite and, ultimately, weight. Now it all comes to choice. You need sugar for the brain without sending your blood sugar on a roller-coaster ride. You need protein for satiety and building mass which can be delivered to the cells only via hormone Insulin produced in response to carbohydrate intake. You need fat for hormonal balance, satiety and for all neural connections without the notorious sedating effect, extra calories and heaviness which come from eating fatty foods. How do the researchers solve this puzzle?
Carbohydrates and Cereals
Breakfast cereals are relatively modern additions, debuting after the invention of “granula” by Dr. James Jackson in 1863, and corn-flakes by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg in 1902. Sylvester Graham, of cracker fame, promoted his high-fibre, additive-free wheat flour as a remedy for the dyspepsia epidemic of the time, which he felt was caused by the meat-centric, multi-course American breakfast: an extravaganza of pancakes, biscuits, eggs, bacon, fried ham, salt pork, and potatoes. Sixty years later, John Harvey Kellogg, who breakfasted on graham crackers and apples himself, also peddled grains, in the form of the first flake cereal, as a vegetarian cure for digestive trouble.
This is a great thing, considering that eating cereal has been linked to lower BMI and increased fibre intake.
Many studies have confirmed that eating a bowl of breakfast cereal in the morning can play a role in maintaining a healthy body weight.
A Harvard study of more than 17,000 men found that those who frequently ate breakfast cereal consistently weighed less than those who rarely or never ate breakfast cereal.
Another study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, evaluated the diets of adults and found that breakfasts of ready-to-eat cereal were associated with lower BMIs in women than other, higher-fat breakfast meals.
But not all grains and cereals have the same affect. The right grain can have a favourable impact on the Metabolic Syndrome or Insulin Resistance- a catch-all name for a condition involving severe risk of Diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. It was previously not known that certain whole-grain products have this effect all day. If you eat the right grains for breakfast, such as oatmeal, whole-grain barley or rye, the regulation of your blood sugar is facilitated after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
A recent study published in the journal Food Nutrition Research in 2008 investigated the issue of breakfast composition by comparing subjective appetite and voluntary energy intake after consumption of rye porridge breakfast and pasta lunch made from whole grain was compared to meals made from refined cereals: wheat bread breakfast and wheat pasta lunch. Both breakfasts contained the same number of calories. Guess what happened? Whole grain rye porridge at breakfast has prolonged satiating properties up to 8 hours after consumption compared to refined wheat bread, but did not diminish subsequent food intake.
Experiments also showed that the blood sugar increase following breakfast can be moderated in a similar way by eating the right grain products the night before. Barley and oats evinced clearly the best results. Boiled grains and whole grains in bread take longer to be digested than the grains ground into porridge. This is because milling destroys the key structures which hold the seed together and lowers the amount of Resistant Starch. In other words, when you eat the grain whole your stomach has to do the job of this refining.
A 2003 paper published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition claimed that individuals who consumed ready-to-eat or cooked cereal, and even “quick breads” like waffles, pancakes, pastries, had lower BMIs (Body Mass Index which determines whether you are more rounded than what is healthy) than those who ate meat and eggs or abstained from breakfast entirely.
While eating carbohydrates for breakfast is important, a wholesome meal is not complete without added protein.
Proteins and Eggs
Not everyone agrees on high carbohydrate choice for breakfast. Oddly enough, a 2007 study found that people who began their day with high-quality protein over carbohydrates were able to lose more weight and have reported higher levels of energy throughout the day.
A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that timing of dietary protein intake affects feelings of fullness throughout the day. When Purdue University researchers tested the effect of consuming additional protein from eggs and lean Canadian bacon at breakfast, lunch and dinner, or spaced evenly throughout the day, they found that the feeling of fullness was greatest and most sustained when the additional protein was eaten at breakfast. All the participants lost about 18 pounds over the course of the study, but the group eating more protein - about 30% of total calories – lost the most fat and kept more lean muscle than the group who ate the same number of calories but less protein. This is important because lean muscle mass is more metabolically active, and thus helps with weight management.
Wayne Campbell, study author and foods and nutrition scientist at Purdue, points out that most Americans typically consume a relatively small amount of protein at breakfast — only about 15% of their total daily protein intake.
Another study, reported in Obesity Research, found that women who added a little lean protein to their breakfast (in the form of a slice of Canadian bacon added to an egg sandwich made with an English muffin) felt less hunger during the next four hours than those who ate a breakfast without protein.
The Nesting Miracle Food
An egg is one of the most complete and versatile foods available. When it comes to healthy eating, few foods have sparked as much debate as eggs. While the previous saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” still holds true, the latest research suggests that an egg a day keeps your hunger at bay. And if you eat that egg for breakfast, you’ll boost your odds of losing weight.
Eggs are packed with two types of protein, fast-digesting egg whites and slow-digesting egg yolks. Plus, these orbs are loaded with other essential nutrients you can't get anywhere else. Eggs are a rich source of thiamine, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, folic acids, vitamin B12, biotin, vitamin D, vitamin E, and phosphorus. Eggs are the richest source of lecithin, a naturally occurring phospholipid that is required by every single cell in your body. Membranes, which handle the flow of nutrients in and out of the cell, are composed largely of lecithin.
Our brain is approximately 30 per cent lecithin. The insulating myelin sheaths that protect the brain, spine and thousands of miles of nerves in in your body are almost two-thirds lecithin. It plays a major role in almost all biological processes - including nerve transmission, breathing and energy production. These valuable constituents of lecithin are vital for the proper functioning of many metabolic processes. Besides being involved in brain activity, lecithin keeps fats "in line" by contributing cholesterol-lowering polyunsaturated fatty acids, inhibiting intestinal absorption of cholesterol, increasing excretion of cholesterol and bile acids, and positively affecting the overall lipoprotein profile.
A large egg contains 75 calories, 6 grams of protein, and 212 mg cholesterol. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), healthy people can eat an egg a day.
If you eat two eggs packed with protein for breakfast instead of a carbohydrate-rich bagel every day for two months, you could very well lose weight. That's the word from a new study conducted by researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center's laboratory of infection and obesity, a part of the Louisiana State University system. In this study overweight women ate either two eggs or a bagel for breakfast daily for eight weeks as part of a low-fat, reduced-calorie diet. The two breakfast meals were identical in calories and volume. As compared to the bagel-fed counterparts, the egg eaters have lost 65% more weight, reduced waist circumference by 83% and had no significant difference in their blood cholesterol or triglyceride levels, despite the high cholesterol content of eggs.
Researchers at The Rochester Centre for Obesity Research and Wayne State University in Michigan focused on satiety of breakfast, not just on carbs, proteins and fats. Without knowing the study's true purpose, 30 female overweight or obese volunteers ages 18 to 60 ate the breakfasts on two test days, two weeks apart. The first breakfast consisted of a bagel, cream cheese, and yogurt (339 calories). Second option was two eggs, toast, and jelly (340 calories). The women were told they were studying the effect of breakfast on blood pressure and alertness, but the researchers slipped in a few questions on satiety and monitored what the women ate at lunch and for the next 24 hours.
The results were just what the researchers expected - those who ate eggs for breakfast felt more full and stayed full longer than those who ate the bagel. That in turn prompted them to eat less at lunch, on average 568 calories for the egg eaters vs. 732 calories by the bagel eaters. The satisfying filling power of protein-packed breakfast lasted all day with the egg eaters consuming 1,761 calories on the test day, compared with 2,035 for the bagel group. In addition, the number of calories consumed was lower until noon the day after the test for the egg group. This study suggested that the egg breakfast "induced greater satiety and reduced energy intake at lunch by 29%." The study findings were presented in Las Vegas at the North American Association for the Study of Obesity's annual scientific meeting.
Like most prescriptive studies, these two must be taken with a grain of salt (or, in the case, a few granules of sugar): Kellogg funded the studies on cereals; the The National Pork Board and the American Egg Board supported the research on bacon and eggs. You know the fraud - industry-funded studies tend to find industry-favourable results.
How To Break The Fast – The Healthy Way
Let's get inside of our own bodies and make a final conclusion from all we know about feeding the body and the mind. Your body constantly cries for the highest quality fuel with all the nourishing essentials. Ideally, every meal should contain a good source of protein, complex carbohydrates and fats, and breakfast is no different.
Now, I'm not your mother, so I have no idea how you are made – whether you are a morning lark or night owl, whether you work out in the morning or after long day at work. I'm just trying to give you a general idea of where you want to be, nutrition wise. Try to get a feel for a good nutrient composition, watch what and how you eat throughout the day, monitor your appetite with goals and use the guidelines in figuring out the breakfast mystery.
The size of your breakfast should be decided by your body size and overall caloric needs. If you're dieting, the concept of power breakfast might feel kind of ridiculous. However, when you're bulking up and try to add some muscle to those arms of yours, king-size is key.
So, every morning, you're faced with a choice. Seductive foods seem to lurk at every turn, especially when you’re trying to lose weight. But many foods that have gotten a bad rap aren’t so terrible after all. To get the most out of a quick breakfast, follow the A.M. fuel rules:
- Anything is better than nothing
- Mix it up
- Fill up on fibre and protein
- Useless calories from sugar and fat make you feel sluggish
- Eating is fun - start your day with a smile
- Lean and light starts your morning right
A quick rule of thumb:
Breakfast should be a high-fibre, high-protein affair based on complex slow-digesting carbohydrates. Include:
- Vegetables and fruits (but not juices—the fibre is in the pulp and skin)
- Lean proteins such as dairy and eggs
- Whole unrefined grains that retain the bran and germ, its nutrient- and fibre-rich components and cereals that are low in sugar.
This combination allows your blood sugar to rise slowly and steadily feeding cells with the much needed energy to keep you going. Nothing too exciting, but then, breakfast is all about business – essential nourishment. If you’re looking for thrills, try dinner.
Can Breakfast Be Fattening?
It sure can. In fact, this first morning bash may be the most fattening meal of the day depending on what you eat.
Just because breakfast is the most important meal of the day doesn’t grant you permission to go into a feeding frenzy. But that’s exactly what many of the country’s most popular breakfast joints are setting you up for, by peddling fatty scrambles, misguided muffins, and pancakes that look like manhole covers. Look no further than your typical “healthy” Granola cereal, McDonald's and Burger King's new line of hash brown-stuffed wraps and Jimmy Dean's popular breakfast bowls for proof.
Remember, breakfast is not dessert. Proper nutrients – a combination of amino acids from protein-rich foods and carbs from nutrient-dense grains is what helps muscle tissues to grow, keeps your hunger at bay and prevents overeating. Eating plain sugary corn flakes ain't gonna do that. On the other hand, fibrous grains, wholegrain breads, legumes, hearty porriges, eggs or cottage cheese (my best selections) will stay in your tummy for hours. How can you eat more when you are stuffed? Most muffins and bagels made of processed white flour are out, as are those sweet toaster waffles and Pop Tarts. Many breakfast bars and cereals which claim to be “whole grain” are in fact based on refined carbohydrates, have a lot more unhealthy fats and sugar than fibre, complex starches or protein. These foods catapult your blood sugar, sap your energy levels, and tell your body to store fat.
Skipping Breakfast – Excuses, Excuses, Excuses...
Breakfasts are everywhere, but no everyone eats them. At least not always. For most of us, mornings are the most hectic hours. We are so much bitten by this ‘hurry sickness’ bug to get our chores done that we don’t mind skipping breakfast.
Many people say that they are not hungry first thing in the morning, which makes it difficult to eat breakfast. This is especially true for people who drink coffee or smoke cigarettes, as caffeine and nicotine suppress the appetite.
Consumer research by the International Food Information Council shows that 92 percent of Americans cite breakfast as the day’s most important meal. Yet, only 46 % eat breakfast every day.
If you are typically not hungry in the morning, try cutting back on the amount of food you eat at dinner, skip the coffee you drink and the number of cigarettes you smoke, and see if that makes a difference. For others who don't have much of an appetite in the morning, begin the habit of eating breakfast by starting with something very small, such as a half a piece of whole grain toast with nut butter or a small bowl of whole grain cereal (with no added sugars!) with milk. As your body gets used to digesting food in the morning, you might notice a bigger appetite in the morning.
The reasons to skip breakfast are few and mostly unsubstantiated:
Not enough time: "I need my sleep!"
One word of advice - surrender the snooze button. If you're anything like me, not a morning person, you'd prefer to sleep a little later rather than get up earlier to prepare a meal in the wee small minutes. I know how hard it is to resist that snooze button, but surrendering to the annoying noise will pay off for hours. As the day will progress, you'll know that those 10 blissful moments of laziness were not worthy. After all, you can always go to bed 10 minutes earlier. Once you build in the habit, you'll find that working in a good breakfast will give you much more energy to face the day than spending a few more moments under the covers ever could! Plus, thousands of breakfasts take less than 5 minutes to prepare.
I don't like breakfast!
Because you haven't tried a good one. Check out these yummy sensational suggestions which take minutes to make!
Cereal with milk is a good all-around meal, perfect for a quick breakfast. Remember - low or no sugar is what you want. Oatmeal with some milk,1 scoop of your favorite protein powder, a spoon of Flaxseed oil, a handful of berries and a teaspoon of chopped pecans is yummy!
Try a new egg sandwich or an old-fashioned toast (beat the eggs, dip the bread and drop on a skillet for a minute per side). You can put cheese or ham on yours. Use your imagination, these are really fun to make. Be creative.
Scrambled eggs with extra whites, a cup of cooked porrige topped with yogurt and banana is a power-punch.
If you are making an omlette as part of your morning meal, try adding some canned salmon as well to give a little extra protein and well as healthy fats. Vegetables, such as capsicums, tomatoes, mushrooms, olives all go in here. Have it with a grainy bagel and a glass of juice.
Pancakes are great from time to time. Choose buckwheat or wholegrain variety. Try to get yourself one of those griddles that you don't need to add fat too. That way you’ll be able to eat these pancakes more often. To cut down on calories and to add the protein nourishment, instead of using butter and syrup, put fresh fruit and cottage cheese on yours.
You can make your own pankakes by mixing 1 cup of Oatmeal, 5 eggs, 1 packet of sugar free jello. Stir together in a mixing bowl and cook on a frying pan.
Not a milk-and-cereal type person? Mix low-fat cottage and/or ricotta cheese with all natural yogurt, add a few strawberries or banana slices, a teaspoon of honey, sprinkle with toasted oatmeal for nutty crunch – and breakfast diet dessert voila!
Fruit salads can be great for breakfast. Just throw your favorite fruits together, mix it with cottage cheese and yogurt, top with mueslie and call it a meal!
Drink juice with pulp instead of coffee when you have breakfast! Trust me, you can get morning energy without the caffeine. And you don't have to worry about getting the shakes if you drink too much of this juice.
Seriously, I am trying to loose weight and need to eat less.
Then why are you slowing down your metabolism? Try exercise and good nutrition instead of starving yourself to the point when your “eyes are bigger than your stomach” and you generally eat everything in sight. Haven't we covered this issue already? If you want to eat less, do so at night.
Eat less food more often, that'll bring your weight loss goals closer to reality.
There you go.
Enjoy it, and make sure you show your friends this wonderful meal.
Breakfast Habits of Americans
According to the web-site www.MrBreakfast.com, now we know a bit more about the breakfast habits of Americans. The survey, conducted by Zogby International in association with Jimmy Dean Foods (released on February 11, 2008), analysed the breakfast-eating habits of over 6,000 Americans in 25 major U.S. cities.
Rank City Eats Breakfast Every Day Never EatsBreakfast Weekend Only
1 San Diego 73% 4% 9%
2 San Francisco 68% 1% 5%
3 Miami 66% 9% 9%
4 Las Vegas 65% 7% 7%
5 Detroit 64% 7% 12%
6 St. Louis 63% 14% 9%
7 Los Angeles 61% 5% 7%
8 Phoenix 60% 4% 14%
9 Dallas 59% 8% 8%
10 Tampa 59% 8% 16%
11 Cleveland 59% 9% 11%
12 Boston 59% 10% 12%
13 Houston 58% 1% 16%
14 Pittsburgh 57% 7% 13%
15 Philadelphia 57% 11% 13%
16 New York 54% 6% 16%
17 Washington, DC 54% 6% 12%
18 Minneapolis 53% 7% 16%
19 Chicago 52% 6% 8%
20 Seattle 52% 4% 13%
21 Portland, OR 52% 14% 9%
22 Atlanta 48% 11% 8%
23 Denver 47% 5% 21%
24 Orlando 46% 11% 18%
25 Sacramento 46% 14% 17%
A press release about the survey also reported the following findings:
* Surprisingly, Las Vegas placed the most importance on eating breakfast as a family. 37% of Vegas respondents said they make breakfast a habitual family affair. On the other end of the spectrum, only 7% of Atlanta respondents reported eating breakfast regularly with family.
* Of all the cities included, San Francisco reported the highest incidence of eating breakfast in the workplace (33%). The combined nation-wide percentage for breakfast in the office was 11%.
Nearly 50% of all respondents said they enjoy eating breakfast foods during evening meals.
References
- Leidi HJ, et al. Increased dietary protein consumed at breakfast leads to an initial and sustained feeling of fullness during energy restriction compared to other meal times. British J of Nutr, published online September 2008.
- Vanderwal JS, et al. Egg breakfast enhances weight loss. Int J of Obesity, published online on August 5, 2008.
- Leidy H, Carnell N, Mattes R, Campbell W. Higher protein intake preserves lean mass and satiety with weight loss in pre-obese and obese women. Obes Res. 2007;15:421-429.
- International Food Information Council. 2008 Food & Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes toward Food, Nutrition & Health. Published online at: http://www.ific.org/research/foodandhealthsurvey.cfm
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