Breakfast

You wake up in the morning, and get all prettied up. Grab your back pack and try to catch bus, or maybe you drive to school. When you get to school, you find yourself falling asleep in each class. Well the problem isn’t that you didn’t sleep enough. The problem is that you didn’t eat breakfast. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. Fasting, or a fast, is when you do not eat for an extended period of time. That is what happens every time we go to sleep. We go through a period of five to eight hours that we do not eat anything, or drink any water. Over time, that begins to wreak havoc on the body. Body builders have realized this and wake in the middle of the night in order to give their bodies the nutrients it needs in order to perform. That is why they can get to be so massive. So by eating in the morning you are “breaking” the fast, do you get it?

People that go on diets usually think that breakfast is unneeded and only adds to the total amount of calories that you ate that day. In actuality, not eating breakfast will make you gain weight! That is the truth. When you skip breakfast, you are not igniting your metabolism to begin the calorie burning process.  In order to make up for the lack of nutrients, your body begins to take glycogen and other sugars from your muscles in order to function properly. That results in your constant fatigue.

All of this happens because you didn’t eat breakfast. It gets worst. The next meal that you eat will more likely to be stored as pure fat, probably around your stomach.  Your body is responding to the fact that it has been deprived nutrients for an extended period of time. It is preparing itself to go another long span of time without food.

However, you can’t just eat anything for breakfast. Yeah, you can scarf down a sugary pop-tart on the way to school, but that isn’t going to make a difference. Breakfast should easily be the largest meal of the day. Not only should it be the largest, it should also be the most well-balanced. Breakfast should be a mix of whole grains, carbs, proteins, fats, and a variety of sugars. Though most people do not know which foods encompass all of that.

Based on my knowledge, here is a very generic, cost effective breakfast that we can all eat. This breakfast can be modified to fit your dietary needs, taste, or how much you can actually eat.

1)      One package of instant oatmeal. This accounts for whole grains and provides four grams of slow digesting protein. Personally, I like to add an extremely large scoop of peanut butter, some honey, and sprinkle in a layer of ground cinnamon. Peanut butter is a great source of protein and healthy fats. I add cinnamon because I recently learned that cinnamon actually helps the body burn more fat. Honey, because it is a simple sugar and begins to be digested immediately, resulting in an energy boost. Eating a full serving of this alone might be enough to fill you up in the morning.

2)      Eggs. The amount of eggs can vary from person to person. I personally recommend 2-3 eggs for an athlete. Eggs provide a meat protein and calories that our bodies will begin to use almost immediately. You can add a myriad of things to eggs such as vegetables or other meat sources.

3)      A full glass of milk, or another source of dairy such as yogurt. This provides healthy fats and what is called casein protein. Casein protein is digested very slowly and effective for curbing your appetite later in the day to prevent over eating.

4)      Vitamins. Now this can generally mean anything that provides a large amount of vitamins. It could be orange juice, a banana, a multi-vitamin pill, etc.