How important is breakfast to your diet and overall health?  We’re always told the best way to start the day is with breakfast, but how true is this?  I bet you know several people, maybe even yourself, who regularly skip it.  Maybe it’s due to lack of time or the idea that meal skipping will help you to lose weight.  Some people just find that they are unable to eat much food in the early morning.

Regardless of your daily routine, having a bit of breakfast is important for everyone.  Think about what the word means.  It’s the breaking of a fast, in this case the first meal of the day after fasting for several hours throughout the night.  When you wake up in the morning, your last meal may have been 10-12 hours ago (often even longer for children).  In order to function, your body requires energy to do everything from thinking and breathing to walking and talking.  This energy is provided from the glucose in the foods we eat.  By skipping breakfast, your body will provide enough energy to function, but not to flourish.  You’ll feel sluggish, tired, dizzy, irritable, and your concentration will be poor.

While it may seem like common sense that skipping breakfast will help to lose weight (fewer calories overall, right?) it is actually the opposite.  You’re body needs nourishment in the morning to sustain itself.  The longer you wait to eat, the hungrier you will be.  This is bad news for several reasons.  When you’re very hungry, it’s easy to appease your hunger with a quick snack of something unhealthy like chocolate or biscuits at tea time.  However, this will provide you with little nutrients and empty calories.  If you do manage to wait until lunchtime, you’ll be so hungry you could end up eating twice as much as you normally would.  This giant mid-day meal will make you feel tired and drowsy as your body works to digest it during the afternoon.

It’s also important to pay attention to what you eat, not just when.  People who begin the day with a cup of strong, sweet coffee or orange juice may feel that they are off to a good start simply because they have something in their stomach.  However, the caffeine and the sugar in the coffee will hit your system very quickly as liquid is digested much faster than solid food.  Equally, while the juice has important vitamins, a cup of orange juice has the calories and sugar content as two whole oranges.  The orange also has the added bonus of fibre, which is great for your digestive system.  The fibre will help to keep the orange in your stomach for longer which will mean the sugar slowly enters your body as opposed to in one quick rush.

Some great examples of easy breakfasts that can keep off the calories are yogurts, toasts from seeded breads, whole fruits, and porridge.  If time is of the essence, then consider keeping some of these items on hand in your workplace so you can have something to eat before you start the workday.   Research has shown again and again that eating breakfast can help you to lose weight and maintain your current size.  It turns out it’s true what they say: breakfast is the most important meal of the day.