The Connection Between Breakfast and Losing Weight
If you are like most of us, you may find yourself rushing through your morning routine in order to get out of the house on time. Sometimes the time crunch makes it tempting to forego breakfast. Some people are just not hungry that early in the morning. Unfortunately, the missed breakfast may have us missing out on vital nutrients, may jeopardize our health and may also not be good for our waistline.
There are plenty of good reasons why skipping breakfast is not a good idea. If you are dieting in hopes of losing weight, skipping breakfast is a bad idea because food first thing in the morning helps to speed up our metabolism after a night of fasting. A revved up metabolism is important when it comes to losing weight. Breakfast is a very important meal because of how it starts your metabolism for the day and because it allows you to start your day with nutrients that your body needs in order to function properly. Breakfast is therefore an important tool for good health and for losing weight.
If you skip breakfast you will also tend to be hungrier at lunch and have a tendency to eat more than you would normally eat had you had breakfast. There are actually studies that show that those who are the most successful at dieting eat a healthy breakfast. Not only can breakfast help you to lose weight, it can also improve your focus, which will help you to do better at work or school.
A good breakfast for someone interested in losing weight might be one that is high in protein, or high in fiber and definitely one that contains plenty of vitamins and minerals to help your body perform well and maintain proper health.
It is not however a good idea to eat a breakfast that contains sugar, such as a sugary kid cereal. Sugar may give you energy temporarily, but that energy level will drop after a few hours and there are so many better food choices that will give your body what it needs. If you give your body the nutrients that it needs right from the start of the day, your body will be healthier and leaner over time.
It is important to understand that breakfast should not be a license to binge and skip meals for the rest of the day. Only eating one large meal early in the day is not a good idea. Your body loses weight much more efficiently if it can burn fuel consistently over the entire day by eating many smaller meals 3 to 4 hours apart. In order to have energy your body needs to have food consistently throughout the day.
Eating breakfast is a habit that you can develop over a two-week period if you are not already in the habit of eating a nutritious breakfast. It is important if you are just starting out in the “eating breakfast habit”, that you start out with at least eating something even if it is just a small piece of fruit or a piece of toast, get into the habit of eating something and then increase the amount of food you eat until you are eating a normal, nutrient filled breakfast. It is important to take time to actually sit at the table eat a well-balanced breakfast. Eating breakfast every morning should get you off to a great start for losing weight.