Sometimes it drives me crazy when people talk to me and ask about losing weight and my first question is always, 'what do you eat for breakfast?' and of course there is simply an awkward silence while they look at me with guilt.
Breakfast is so important it's the first step in any advice or discussions I have with people about their diet.
Let's switch it another way. Would you go 10 hours during the day without eating anything? Probably not. Then would you leave it about 14 hours between your meals? No, you wouldn't. So why would you do it overnight?
No matter how long you sleep for, calculate how long your body has gone without anything going inside. All night it has used what it had to repair, heal and restore your body as much as it can and THEN you make it carry on it's day only using what you had put in it yesterday.
So, it has been scientifically proven that those that skip breakfast are more inclined to be overweight. Why? Lots of reasons, but if you think that overnight your body essentially goes into a form of hibernation. It has to slow everything right down so that it can sleep and heal and restore. So it makes sense that it is still doing that until you wake it back up by eating.
The recommendation is that you should eat 2 hours from the point of waking up. It will wake your body up and kick start that metabolism into what I like to call 'day' mode. Not only that but your breakfast should contain approximately 20-35% of your daily calorie needs (we calculated that in one of the previous posts!).
What should I eat for breakfast?
This can depend a lot on what your day consists of but as a general recommendation, oats and natural cereals are great. By cereals I don't mean those things you find in boxes covered in sugar or honey or chocolate. I mean seeds and oats and mixed nuts, seeds and anything else we might call a grain or cereal.
If I exercise first thing, as I like to swim early, I will have a quick snack before I leave (usually my energy balls that I explained in a previous post) and then after I swim I will try and get some eggs, avocados, tomatoes in me, usually with a bagel or on gluten free toast. If I don't exercise first thing I often eat a homemade oats mix which I will post in a future blog post which will keep me full of energy for most of the morning!
I think for those who don't eat breakfast the key is to start getting some breakfast. I have a few recipe suggestions already with my baked eggs in avocados, smoothie and I'll post some more.
Remember, eat first thing!
Ciao for now x
