What you eat when you wake will make or break the rest of your day
Of all the day’s meals, breakfast is the most predictable. Pick up a menu at almost any restaurant and the choices are pretty much the same. At home, we sit down to the same bowl of cereal or pop a piece of bread into the toaster. Yet somehow the morning meal manages to spark ongoing debate. Evidence suggest that skipping it, as millions of Brits do every day, sabotages your health. But what passes for breakfast in most households isn’t much better—if your day-starter is nothing more than a sticky pastry, for example, you could be forgiven for abstaining until lunch.
Here’s the catch: Breakfast does more than simply provide the day’s first dose of calories. It also kick-starts your metabolism, regulates your weight, supercharges any exercise—and can even lower your risk for heart disease and diabetes. In fact, experts say breakfast wields more authority over your body’s systems than any other meal.
Brain Food
“By the time you wake up, you’re in a fasted state,” explains Cara A. Marrs, RD, a nutritionist and endurance athlete in the USA. For six to 12 hours—a long stretch, given that most people eat every four hours while awake—you ingest no energy. Yet your body is hard at work rebuilding muscle and processing the information you took in during the day. It powers these efforts by tapping into your stored energy. But by morning you’re operating on a calorie deficit—and your brain takes the hit.
Studies have shown that fuelling up in the morning improves mental acuity and coordination. “It fuels your body and your brain,” says Roberta Anding, RD, director of sports nutrition at Texas Children’s Hospital. “That lets you make smart decisions and react quickly to situations.” Conversely, research has shown that not eating breakfast can dim your mood and mental function.
Weight Game
When it comes to weight control, the role of breakfast is complicated. Skipping it has been associated with a higher risk for obesity. But according to a recent Cornell University study, some people who passed on the morning meal actually consumed 400 fewer calories by day’s end. However, that savings doesn’t always translate to weight loss. “Skipping breakfast can lead to a decrease in your ability to burn calories efficiently because your body is used to conserving energy stores,” says Marrs. That may explain why breakfast eaters tend to be slimmer than skippers. Researchers at Israel’s Tel Aviv University found that women who ate half their daily calories at breakfast lost almost 20 pounds on average over 12 weeks, while those who ate more of their calories at dinner lost just eight pounds (even though all participants consumed 1,400 calories a day). The 2013 study also reported that those who ate a bigger breakfast dropped more inches from their waistline and lowered their body-mass index nearly twice as much as those who skewed their calories toward dinner.
So get up and eat up!
Thank you for reading.
By Kelly Bastone and Wendy O’Hare