Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. How many times have you heard that or repeated that to your children? It rattles off the tongue, but when last did you stop to look at what you are eating for breakfast?
A well balanced meal is vital to help you through the day, so let us take a look at three mistakes you could be making every morning.
1. You are skipping breakfast
During the night your body rests and recovers, preparing you for the following day, but if you are like most people, by the time you wake up the last time you would have eaten would have been about eleven hours ago at dinnertime. Eating something in the morning provides your body with the required energy to allow you to perform your tasks, exercise well and focus at work. Many people find that they don’t have an appetite when they have to get up before dawn or simply just don’t have the time to eat. The good news is that breakfast doesn’t have to be an enormous meal. All your body requires is a little something to kickstart it so you could start the day with an apple or hardboiled egg and then eat something more substantial a little later on when you feel hungry or when you have the time.
2. You are eating an unbalanced meal, very high in sugar
Re-examine what is normally labelled as a healthy breakfast: muesli with yoghurt, an orange juice and a bran muffin. These items are not bad foods, but in combination they give you a lot of sugar in one go. Store-bought muesli can be very high in fat and sugar so be sure to read the labels and opt for a lower sugar version or use raw oats. Sweetened yoghurt is also very high in sugar; rather opt for a plain, low fat version. Orange juice contains sugar and usually no fibre, so have a small amount or choose to squeeze your own, add the pulp back in to up the fibre intake and dilute it with water. A muffin, even if it’s bran, usually contains a lot of sugar and butter – bake your own, or choose a low GI bread instead and opt for a topping of cheese, eggs or sugar-free nut butter instead of butter and jam.
3. You call coffee breakfast
Coffee is a wonderful addition to any morning routine, but relying on cups of caffeine to get you energised and keep you energised is the wrong way to go about it. Caffeine can make you feel as if you are full even though you are not. And what happens when the caffeine wears off? You realise just how hungry you are and then you reach for foods that will give you a boost (generally high in sugar) or for more coffee, this time with sugar added to it. This puts you in a cycle that’s difficult to get out of, it interferes with your ability to feel when you are hungry and full and also negatively affects your sleep patterns. So enjoy a cup or two a day, but rely on wholesome food to provide you with the energy you need.
Try to make use of wholesome, natural ingredients for your breakfasts, just as you would for your other meals, and take the time to find something that works for you in terms of being satisfying, energy-giving and flavourful. It’s worth varying your breakfasts too as each day’s energy requirements are different; this way you also get a range of nutrients throughout the week’s early mornings.
Sources
www.webmd.com
Sound Bites Nutrition course material