Take the time to nurture yourself. Make eating a nutritious and healthy breakfast a commitment. Many studies confirm that doing so helps one to prepare for the challenges and activities that life brings. Coupled with a good night’s sleep, breakfast is the perfect opportunity to get the energy boost you need to take on the challenges of the day.
Over the past several decades, many scientific studies have been published confirming that children who eat breakfast on a regular basis generally perform better in school than children who forego that first meal. Studies confirm that not eating a healthy breakfast results in becoming more easily tired, distracted and stressed. Even more, there are a number of studies that suggest running low on fuel can have negative effects on your mood, impair your perceptions, and your ability to solve problems effectively.
A compilation of scientific data from the Breakfast and Dietary Balance: the enKid Study points to the effect of breakfast consumption on energy availability and brain function. Skipping breakfast, which prolongs the body’s fasting state, had negative effects on visual perception and work memory capacity for middle-school children aged 9-11, who were the focus of the study.
The same has been shown for adults too. Those who take the time to regularly eat a balanced, healthy breakfast are more equipped to handle tasks, perform better at various hand-eye motor functions and report feeling less stress as they deal with parenting, job responsibilities, and other challenges.
People who skip breakfast also tend not to get their daily quota of vitamins, minerals and fiber; important nutrients that help with literally all bodily functions.
Nutrients gained from a healthy breakfast help set the stage for optimum performance throughout the day. Interestingly, when you skip breakfast, it makes it harder for your body to process subsequent meals as well as to capture and use many nutrients.
A proper, nutritionally-balanced breakfast is also an excellent first meal for those targeting weight loss goals. It may not be clear at first, especially to those with an urgent desire to shed pounds quickly, but making breakfast the heaviest meal of the day in terms of calories can aid in weight loss. According to Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz, MD, author of the book The Big Breakfast Diet, big breakfasts help by making people feel fuller, thus reducing the chances of indulging in unhealthy cravings later in the day. And since breakfasting occurs at the start of your day, you have the opportunity to burn away excess calories as you go about your daily activities. When you skip breakfast, there is a marked tendency to overeat during subsequent meals due to a pronounced increase in appetite. This leads to eating too much near bedtime, which causes a number of challenges for weight loss, sleeping, etc.
When you make eating breakfast a habit, you definitely become more productive, more uplifted and best of all, more healthy.
Guys,
I recommend bringing your wives breakfast in bed. There will be no dispute about eating in the morning and you can avoid the refrigerator effect by controlling the calories.
And talk about earning some brownie points!
J.D.
I showed this article to my wife who is guilty of skipping breakfast and complains of being famished the whole afternoon and evening. I have to constantly badger her to eat in the morning but she always says there’s no time. She wakes up, runs to the shower, gives me a quick kiss goodbye and flies out the door to go to work. By 10 she is starving. By 3 she has eaten two bags of chips, a burger, a Slurpee, and a Snickers bar and yet she still feels that something is amiss. Well your article should serve as another gentle reminder for her to make the effort to wake up half an hour earlier to allow for that first important meal of the day. No more excuses!
Justin, in marriage you have to pick your battles. I prefer to pester my wife about other stuff!! But to be serious, you raise good points; everybody in America is guilty of skipping nutritious meals in favor of non-stop junk food snacking. Don’t believe me? Spend a week on vacation in China where most people are slim. Fly back home to the Heartland. Most people are about the size of a refrigerator.
You can’t beat drinking a healthy, fresh fruit smoothie and eating some whole wheat toast with jam (no butter!) for breakfast. It’s super convenient, fast, easy to make in your blender at home, it provides LOTS of energy quickly, and let’s you take your vitamins and health supplements without suffering the queasiness that comes with taking them on an empty stomach!
John, I told my wife that if she ever gets to be the size of a refrigerator, I would divorce her in a heartbeat. No excuses! j/k
My mom has been telling me this for years
“Eat breakfast, its the most important meal of the day”.
I never listened to her …
… and here I am, 30 years later saying to my kids with arms crossed (just like my mom) “Eat breakfast kids, its the most important meal of the day”.
Sigh, when they are old enough to read properly I’ll point them to your blog!
Now I know the reason why sometimes I feel restless…
Thanks to this article! It’s awesome!
I used to skip breakfast and to counterbalance, I need to have a mid-morning snack… But I realized that this is unhealthy because I tend to overeat junk foods as part of my snack which is more crucial to my health.