If there is one think I could do to improve my health, it would be to make a better effort at eating breakfast. I’ve resisted breakfast for as long as I can remember. I’m not hungry. I feel a little nauseated early in the morning. About all I can do is get a cup of hot lemon water down, or perhaps a little bit of kefir.
And every time I turn around, there is another study that recommends eating breakfast in order to experience the very best of health. Eating breakfast supports weight control, it fuels the body starting from the minute we wake in the morning, and is likely to help us to not eat late at night when our bodies are more likely to store that excess fuel as fat.
Breakfast, or “breaking” the “fast” fuels our muscles, the very key to our metabolism. As we age, our weight slowly begins to increase. Eating breakfast starting in our youth is undeniably the best way to start our morning, but as we age, it becomes even more important because we have more trouble building muscle and increasing our fat stores comes far to easily.
According to a recent study, muscle building is 25 percent greater in people who eat a breakfast that includes protein compared to people who eat less protein in the morning, a little more at lunch, and the majority of their proteins at dinner. All this is persuasive, and I’ve gone from eating nothing for breakfast to having lemon water and kefir. This can be a good thing for me because kefir has a nice balance of protein, carbs, and fats.
For those of you who don’t mind eating breakfast, but find you don’t have the time to eat it, here are a few suggestions that might help you to eat a better breakfast every day of the week.
Hardboil a dozen eggs on Sunday, and have eggs throughout the week. You can eat them just as hardboiled eggs, turn them into a savory egg salad, mix them with guacamole, pesto, tomatoes, or even with some quinoa or brown rice. For many people, eggs define breakfast. Now you can have eggs for breakfast no matter how pressed for time you are.
Leftovers. In this way, you can have dinner for breakfast. There is no rule that says you have to eat what is only on a breakfast menu at your local diner. Many people have found that they make extra food for dinner just so that they can have it for breakfast the next morning. Pizza is a very common breakfast food for college students, and if it is thin crust with lowfat cheese and healthy meat (chicken) then it is likely a good choice.
Smoothies. These are also an excellent breakfast food, but if you have no time in the morning you may feel that this is a choice better left for the weekend when you have more time. Wrong! Instead of making your smoothie in the morning, make smoothie packets on the weekend and every evening before you go to bed, run the smoothie ingredients in the blender, place in a to-go cup with a lid and grab it in the morning and drink it either on the way to work, or at your desk when you get there.
Snacking for breakfast. To my surprise, I have been doing this, but because the foods were “snacks” I never gave myself credit for eating breakfast. I was just having a snack. But when you put together veggies and hummus, you’re eating an excellent breakfast. Even a trail mix made from oats, quinoa, flax seed, nuts, and a judicious amount of dried fruit can be an excellent breakfast to eat with that cup of coffee in the morning.
The point is this, it doesn’t have to “look” like breakfast to properly fuel your body. As long as you put food in your body in the morning, it is considered breakfast. I feel better about that small handful of macadamia nuts and carrot sticks with hummus that I never called breakfast before.
