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You crawl out of bed, drag a comb across your head, and sprint to work. Who has time
to eat a healthy breakfast, anyway? And why bother?
Breakfast just doesn’t get any respect. But if you’re smart (or aspiring to be) don’t
miss it. Breakfast is critical for your well-being for the rest of the day. Here’s why:
Break the All-Night Fast
When you wake up, you’ve been fasting for 8 to 12 hours. Because of this lengthy
starvation time, your muscles are depleted of the glycogen (fuel) they need to get
you through the day. If you start the day without breakfast, you’ll be running on
empty. Liver glycogen stores are low too, meaning by midmorning, your fuel tank will
be near empty.
The BMR Factor
During the night, you burn a significant number of calories due to metabolic action.
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate at which you burn calories to fuel simple
bodily functions like breathing and involuntary muscle contractions. If your BMR is
1400 calories, you’ll burn 500 to 700 while you sleep. That’s a big deficit and a
hearty breakfast helps close the gap.
Brain Drain
It’s not just muscles that are dependent on carbohydrate and the glucose that your body
makes from it. Your brain can burn only glucose, and, after a long night’s fast,
you’re critically short. That disoriented feeling some people get when they wake up—dizziness
and blurred vision—is often the result of low brain glucose. The cure—a healthy,
high-carbohydrate breakfast.
Delayed-Action Gluttony
Many people don’t eat a good breakfast because they don’t feel hungry. Then, a few hours
later, they’re ravenous. They end up eating many more total calories during the
rest of the day—much of it unhealthy high-fat food—than they would have eaten had they
started with a sensible breakfast to blunt their hunger early in the day before it got
out of control.
Snack Attack
The best way to fuel the body is to eat small meals every two to three hours—say, three
light meals and three snacks—rather than two or three big meals. Why? You want to keep
your blood glucose steady because a big load of sugar can lead to a heightened insulin
response. You’ll be flying with a sugar-rush one minute, dragged out and tired the next.
Several small meals help avoid that negative pattern and a good breakfast is the best
way to jump-start this habit each day.
So what should you eat for breakfast? Given our busy lives, something simple and fast
works best. Here’s a sample:
- A carbohydrate source. Try cereal, nonfat milk for some protein, and a
banana for one or two of your daily fruit servings (4–8 serving per day are recommended
for active individuals.)
- A small glass of juice. Limit juice servings to 4 to 6 ounces. Fruit juices
contain lots of simple sugars but no fiber, so small servings work best. If you want
more, eat the fruit rather than the juice so you get the benefits of the fiber, too.
Or cut the juice with water.
- Toast or a bagel. Add jam and a light spread of cream cheese but don’t
slather it on. Be moderate.
- Fluid. Coffee or tea is fine in moderation—1 to 2 cups of coffee for
instance. Don’t forget water because you don’t want to start out the day dehydrated.
Drink about 16 ounces of water with breakfast and keep a bottle on your desk so you
can continue to drink all day.
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