Importance of Breakfast
The importance of breakfast is essential to understand for optimal health, energy levels and overall well-being. Many people believe that skipping breakfast is a great way to cut down on calories and to lose weight, but in reality the opposite is true! Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day, it gives you the energy you need to get going in the morning.
There are many health benefits tied to eating breakfast:
- Fitting more nutrients, vitamins and minerals into your diet
- Weight loss
- Improving your concentration and performance during day to day life
- Increasing your strength and endurance during physical activities
Food is also required for energy production; if you skip breakfast you are going to feel sleepy during the morning. If you aren’t hungry immediately when you wake up that is ok, this is an excellent time to hydrate, but it is a good idea to eat something within an hour of waking up.
Importance of Breakfast for Weight Control
One of the biggest diet myths is that skipping breakfast will help you lose weight. Countless studies have proved the importance of breakfast and that this is simply not true. There are two theories as to why this is the case.
One theory is that people who skip breakfast tend to snack on high calorie high-fat foods to starve off the hunger sensations. They also tend to eat a much more at lunch and generally throughout the day.
Another theory is that breakfast is the meal that jump-starts your metabolism and keeps you from starvation eating (eating high-fat high-calorie foods) later in the day. Eating a healthy breakfast has also been shown to help you make healthier choices throughout the day. If you skip breakfast you end up fasting for 15 to 20 hours. During this time your body goes into starvation mode and is not producing the enzymes you need to metabolize fat and lose weight.
High Protein Breakfast
Eating a doughnut or something high in sugar and carbohydrates for breakfast is going to spike your sugar levels and leave you feeling hungry and tired an hour later. If you want to keep your energy levels high throughout the morning, aim to get 15 to 20 grams of protein in your breakfast. Protein is the most satiating food; a high protein breakfast will leave you feeling full and satisfied for hours.
High protein Breakfast Ideas
- Smoothies – For less than the price of a latte you can grab my eBook Holistic in the City 21 Days of Smoothies
- Breakfast Quinoa
- Eggs over sautéed greens, an omelette, Broccoli Cornbread Quiche or Gluten Free Quiche
- Chia cereal with unsweetened Greek yoghurt and 1 Tbsp honey or maple syrup
- Homemade granola with milk and protein powder
- Leftovers from dinner
I hope you are now able to understand the importance of Breakfast and why skipping it is bad for your health.
A lot of the information about breakfast being important comes from the food industry that wants to sell as much food as possible. A guy did a TED video and knew all the above. He did not have time for breakfast and had to skip it and he was prepared for all the above to happen. But none of it happened. He felt fine. So he skipped breakfast the next morning to see if it was a fluke. The same thing happened. So kept doing it for a month and he felt better and lost.
I do not have any of the above problems and for over 20 years I only eat one meal a day– dinner. I wrote an article about it on LinkedIn and checked to see how odd I am. But I found that one of the most beautiful women in the world, Megan Fox, only eats one meal a day since she hates cooking. Also a 60 year old retired general only eats one meal a day. Then I found that this was normal for the Greeks and Romans. They do all the work during the day and then relax in the evening and eat dinner. I have never been overweight but I went 22 days without eating anything. I fasted 22 days only consuming pure water.
There is one thing that does happen when skip breakfast. You do not break your fast (break-fast) until later. So people who sleep are forced to fast daily. Americans eat too much and do not get enough sleep.
I agree with what Chuck Bluestein wrote. In India, there is an Institution named IASS
( International Association for Scientific Spiritualism) who advocates on the principle of skipping breakfast & having only one meal a day in order to keep healthy disease free body.
What ever may be the good points about eating breakfast as an essential dietary regime, the above said Institute negate it and has proven results of its’ regime. A journal is also published by IASS with wide circulation. You may perhaps like to contact the concerned persons of the Institute (rather I will like you do).Their E-Mail ID – [iass@iass.info] and the website is -[www.iass.info] . – Dr.S.K.Gour
Thanks for sharing your insights Chuck Bluestein and Dr.S.K.Gour, it appears we share opposite opinions. Here are some studies you may find interesting.
Skipping or irregular eating of breakfast was a risk factor for obesity in girls. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25395938
Eating breakfast daily, frequent family dinners, and bringing lunch from home were associated with higher odds of consuming at least three healthful foods or beverages. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25372239
For both junior and senior high school students, the percentages of those who felt unhappy at school were significantly higher among those who did not eat breakfast every day. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25369261
So he felt better and lost weight. Forgot to mention “weight” at the end of the first paragraph. Here is my article on eating one meal a day but it is not on LinkedIn. It saves me a few hours a day. I have more important things to do than spend that time eating. Also Buddha ate only meal a day. http://hub.me/aiU9q
I like reading studies and finding flaws in them. For example did you know that a U.S. government study shows that what religion someone is, is genetic just by applying their logic to something else. The government found that more children of overweight children are more overweight than the children of thin people so that means that it is genetic. Since more children of Buddhists are Buddhists than children of others then that would make that genetic.
In the above studies they are all done with children. So say there is a Christian, God-fearing society. Then the better parents are more likely to be God fearing parents and to also teach that to that kids. Or say there is a KKK community. The closer the families are, then the more likely the kids are to be KKK. Say your parents are KKK and you hate them. Then you are more likely to hate KKK, not because the KKK is bad, but because of the psychology of A, B and C. A and B are people and C is a thing. So if A and B both love C (say it is worshipping the devil) then that makes A and B love each other more and the opposite is true. If they start to hate each other then the more likely one will love C and one will hate C. Here is a famous example of that– don’t you think that Katy Holmes knew before she married Tom Cruise that he was really into Scientology. Then when she dislike Tom, she also disliked Scientology.
So I would say that the closer a family is, the more likely the kids would have breakfast with their parents, if the parents ate breakfast. Whereas the more segregated the family is, the less chance of that. We do know that love makes people thinner. A guy lost 150 pounds doing yoga. Does yoga burn more calories than other exercises? It does not matter since they found that exercise cannot make one thinner. This fat guy hated himself (I saw the video clips) and did not care if he lived or died. But the female yoga instructor (wife of the male instructor) did care about this guy and wanted the guy to be healthy. So she convinced him against his will (tongue in cheek) to like himself and that is what made him lose 150 pounds. It was surprising that this teacher loved this guy like he were her own child (well he was like a orphan since no one loved him). Fat Bastard (on Austin Powers) says that he eats because he is sad and is sad because he eats.
Now I will use a quote from the 3rd study that you gave to show that it is a matter of how close the family is. “who had not yet decided on their future life course, who did not participate in extracurricular activities, did not eat breakfast every day, went to bed late, had used tobacco or alcohol in the previous 30 days, and had poor mental health compared with others.” This sounds like a child that had problems with his parents, right?
As far as extracurricular activities and the family’s closeness, my mother threatened me because she loved me (not saying this was right). My mother was very good at gymnastics and taught ballet at Jouliard’s. Now I started doing yoga and martial arts at age 12 so that was my shtick (Yiddish word– I was brought up Jewish).
My mother said that she knew I would be great at gymnastics and would love it so I should join the gymnastics team in high school. I said “no.” She said that since I live with her, she is the boss so I will try it for one month and if I don’t like it, I can quit. So I agreed since I can be miserable for a month.
I tried it and loved it and became co-captain of the team. Then I also loved teaching it summer camp. Now I wonder, if I would have gotten into ballet, would I have been another Mikhail Baryshnikov?
Growing up I never ate breakfast since to eat it meant waking up earlier and missing sleep. They now know that the longer that you sleep, the less that you weigh. Also the very biggest health problem in America is that people eat too much and sleep too little. That is why they get colds and flus that force them to get more sleep and eat less. Many years ago, Americans ate 10 times the food that a Chinese person ate (on average).
Now after Thanksgiving and Christmas, people are the heaviest and sickest since they eat so much. Of course what you eat is much more important then when you eat.
As an engineer you know a lot of physics! Before Einstein, physics was a science that contradicted itself. That is fine for a religion but not a science. It was a fact that the speed of light was constant. But experiments showed that the speed of light changed. So what was wrong?
Einstein found that they had assumed that time moved at the same rate everywhere and that objects stayed the same length. He tested it and found that the faster something moved through space, the slower it moved through space. I told my Jewish cousin this and he understood what it means, but could not comprehend this.
Also the length of something contacted when it moved faster. So my point is, isn’t it much simpler to have wrong ideas than to know the truth. Most problems in the world today are caused by greed and stupidity (like saying someone’s religion is genetic). Also many studies are ruined due to stupidity. Einstein says “There is a limit to genius, but there is no limit to stupidity.”
Jesse, you are very smart and need to watch out for a lot of stupidity that appears to be valid. That guy Madoff, who ripped off Americans for millions of dollars was investigated by the FBI and they found he was doing nothing wrong. He only got caught when he came forward and admitted it. Maybe he came forward to just to show how stupid Americans are including many famous actors. He is Jewish. Many schools have tried opening later and closing later and the students benefitted.
Correction: The faster that something moves through space, the slower it moves through time. In fact this is kind of out there, but if something moves at the fastest speed, the speed of light, then times stops moving for that thing. But since mass increases as you go faster, the only thing that can go at the speed of light is something with no mass.
Sorry, Jesse, what I said about not eating breakfast while growing up was not entirely accurate. I had 2 lives growing up– the one I was forced to do and the one I wanted to do. My brother, mother and I lived a block from my rich grandfather. School was 9 months of the year and not enjoyable. Then the summer started and we all moved into a fancy hotel on the Atlantic City Beach for the entire summer! About 6 AM we woke up since we were so excited to go onto the beach. So my grandfather brought us onto the beach and we would be the first ones on it. My mother continued sleeping.
At that time all the seagulls were eating broken shelled clams that had crashed onto the beach. I do not care about birds, but I love seagulls and the sound they make. Then a few hours later our mom woke up and we all ate breakfast at a fancy restaurant. Then we all went back to the beach until lunchtime. Then we ate lunch and spent the afternoon at the pool overlooking the beach. All our meals were at fancy restaurants since my grandfather was going to enjoy his wealth. Then we would go on the boardwalk and sometimes go on amusements. Then dinner was in there someplace. If it rained then it was like hell since we stayed inside the hotel at their inside playground.
Although now I know about the benefits of getting plenty of vitamin D from sunlight and from grounding by walking on the beach with bare feet or being in the ocean that is the best way of grounding (getting rid of excess electricity in the body). So I had an ideal childhood. I learned how to swim at age 4. My grandfather and brother were my best friends. My mother smoked and that made her uptight but she loved me a lot.
I am sorry for the omission – “growing children below 18 years of age require more proteins and richer nourishment and therefore skipping breakfast is not suggested for this group. The Regime advocated by IASS (which has impressed me) is mostly meant for Adults who are prone to develop Diabetes & Hypertension and then suffer the related consequences. I shall be happy if you make contact with IASS through e-mail or through their website.
I do not disagree with the two relevant studies you have mentioned.