Importance of Breakfast

‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.’

During the span of our sleep, our body has been fasting and therefore, the first dose of food that enters the body after this long fast can make or break our health. To understand why eating healthy for breakfast is important, here are a few reasons:

• Weight Regulation

Some people often skip this most important meal of the day and that has been found to influence weight. It is essential to consume foods that are rich in proteins or fibers as these foods are easier to digest and help to keep you full for a longer time. Fruits and Porridge are also a good breakfast option to meet these nutritional requirements. Dieting must involve consuming every nutrient/meal in moderate proportion and not skipping any of them completely. If you fail to eat a proper breakfast in the morning, it is likely that during the day you might get hungrier and grab onto anything that is easily accessible, nutritional benefits no bar, and thus cause weight gain.

• Cognitive Function

Cognitive function is sensitive to short-term variations in nutrient supplies. Skipping breakfast interferes with cognition and learning. Breakfast replenishes the carbohydrates that are essential for brain function. Studies indicate that consuming a healthy breakfast can display marked improvement in memory, accurate performance on mental tasks and concentration levels. It can also help lowering your stress levels and improving your mood. A lot of studies have been conducted on children to find the link between breakfast and cognition and all of them have pointed out that there is a strong positive correlation in consumption of breakfast and good grades. Therefore, eating a healthy breakfast can help fuel a healthy brain.

• Long Term Health Effects

Eating a healthy breakfast helps reduce belly fat and keeps diabetes and blood pressure in check. Skipping breakfast might make you prone to obesity and might make you less likely to lose weight as breakfast is very essential to determine your eating capacity. Remaining in a fasting state for long may cause undue stress to the body and it is forced to work harder resulting in heavy metabolic changes. These changes raise the plaque build-up in the arteries linked to the development of heart disease, few years down the road. Diabetic patients are advised to eat every two hours and when you skip breakfast, it can cause irregular glucose uptake of the body, aggravating the diabetic condition. The theory here is that blood sugar irregularities that occur due to long hours of fasting followed by splurge in food intake promotes insulin resistance in the body.

• Energy Levels

Working out might be a bad idea when you have skipped breakfast as that will leave you feeling very drained out. Especially if you are a gym freak, your breakfast must be high on proteins, otherwise the workout will make you sluggish for all the other tasks of your day. Starting the day on a hungry note leaves you feeling tired the whole day, thereby leading to low energy levels. It is, thus, advisable to consume a balanced meal, first thing in the morning, with a blend of protein, fats, carbohydrates and minerals as well.