I’ve always been a grand advocate of eating breakfast. There are lots of benefits to starting your day early, and there are even more benefits to powering your early start with a good breakfast.
It’s so important to me, in fact, that I am dedicating an entire blog post to the benefits and importance of breakfast, as well as how to convert yourself to a breakfast-person if you’re not one already!
If You’re “Not a Breakfast Person”
First, I totally understand where you’re coming from, especially if you’re expected to get to work or class early. Eating at 7am doesn’t always sound exactly appetizing, especially if the night before you had a hard time sleeping or if you’re feeling under the weather.
The good news is, there are lots of ways to ease your body into enjoying food in the morning. For starters, don’t eat dinner super close to when you go to bed. The more time you give yourself to digest your dinner before you sleep and then through the night, the more likely you are to be hungry the next morning. So stay away from the late-night snacks, and who knows, you might even find yourself craving a good breakfast the next morning!
Also, if food in the morning generally is difficult for you to stomach, there are both supplements and baby steps you can take to getting to a point that food in the morning is a digestible concept. Blessed Thistle is a fantastic herb to put in tea that can help regulate digestion, along with bringing tons of other health benefits like improving your wound healing abilities and overall respiratory health. I would also recommend starting your breakfasts’ light, such as with Naked Juice smoothies or over-night oats.
Breakfast Combats Jet-lag
Not only does breakfast help you jump-start your day, it can actually help you combat jet-lag when you’re traveling! I recently had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Dr. Jerome Menet, who does research on circadian rhythms in mice at Texas A&M University. Many of his recent studies have shows (along with countless others) that mammalian circadian rhythms are not only dictated by when we wake up, go to sleep, or what type of light we are exposed to, but also when we eat and how much we eat.
He explained to me that actually eating in the morning allows our bodies to start our metabolism at the same time that we have to start functioning, both mentally and physically. He then told me that this was why, on international flights, guests are often served meals according to the time of their destination city, not where they were coming from.
“It helps get your body on track. Even if you have to wake up to eat food at the right time in a new time zone, do it! It will help your body better understand when it is supposed to wake up and go to bed,” Menet explained.
I also asked him if he thought that, overall, breakfast was an important meal.
“Obviously!” he responded. “People are not lying to you when they say, it is the most important meal of the day!”
Breakfast Aids in Weight Loss
As many of you have probably heard, breakfast can also help aid in weight loss. Breakfast helps your body turn-on metabolism faster, which means you have more hours of the day that you body is looking for calories to burn!
Breakfast also replenishes the supply of energy you lost during the night before. In order for your body to start burning fat, you need carbs or glucose to start your body on the using-energy-train so that eventually it will start using some of your fat stores to keep you going as well.
Breakfast also helps keep you feeling full throughout the day, and when you feel well-fed from the start of your day, you’re more likely to make good choices as the day goes on about food and exercise practices!
Breakfast Food is Fun
Honestly, this section is just going to be tempting photos of breakfast food because TRULY there is something for everyone!
