There are lots of studies and scientific evidence to prove that the common saying that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is true.
You should have also heard the common phrase “Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince and Dine like a Pauper”.
Many of these studies have shown that breakfast improves good health, it kick-starts your metabolism, it aids weight loss by helping you burn calories, it gives better memory and helps lower your risk for chronic diseases like stroke, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and high levels of cholesterol.
Modern lifestyles like going to work early, trying to catch up with one appointment or the other and other activities that take your attention and fill up your schedule as you wake up in the morning makes people overlook breakfasts and skip it most mornings.
When this (skipping breakfast) is done continuously over a long period of time, it leads to a lot of health problems and complications like weight gain and obesity, low levels of energy, moodiness and mood swings, low metabolism, and many more.
It disrupts the natural rhythm of fasting and eating of your body. Breakfasts enhance your health and improve your overall well-being in a lot of ways. Skipping breakfast also sends a signal to your body that you are starving, your body tries to conserve energy by storing fats.
When this happens, your metabolism slows down and you have low levels of energy. Note, that breakfast should not be eaten late but between two hours of waking up.
Your breakfast should not exceed 10:00 AM. Below are some of the health benefits of having breakfast every morning before stepping out for your daily activities.
Importance of Breakfast
It Boosts Metabolism
While you sleep at night, your body enters into a starvation mode, this is because it hasn’t eaten for over 12 hours and it starts storing fats.
A way to kick-start your metabolism to metabolize these stored fats is to make sure you break your fast, that is, have breakfast. A slow metabolism makes you slow and sluggish, taking breakfast jump-starts your metabolism at the beginning of the day and not in the afternoon after you have taken lunch.
It Increases Energy
When you wake up in the morning, your energy level is very low; that is why you feel sluggish and slow. Having breakfast at most two hours upon waking up increases the levels of your energy and energizes to start your daily activities.
It Aids Growth and Development in Kids
Healthy breakfast every morning help children develop well. It helps them focus well in class and improves their performances in schools. It prevents them from restless or cranky, and it fights childhood obesity.
A study showed that teenagers who had breakfast every day had a lower body mass index (BMI) when compared to those who skipped breakfasts or who ate breakfast sometimes.
It Boosts Cognitive Functions
Having breakfast in the morning increases the levels of glucose in your body; glucose is the main form of energy the brain depends on and utilizes.
80% of the glucose you consume goes to your brain while the rest of your body shares the remaining 20%. Having breakfast in the morning supplies your brain with a lot of glucose, this help boosts mental performance, improves cognitive functions and increase your concentration levels and help sharpen your memory and focus.
It helps you think clearly, it increases your mood and makes you happier, it lowers stress, and it helps critical thinking. Breakfast improves grades and behaviors of little children also.
It Fights Chronic Diseases
Prevention and treatment of chronic diseases is a long-term health benefit of taking breakfast every morning. It reduces the levels of bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein.
When you skip breakfast, you make your metabolism slow and sluggish, this leads to the storage of fats in your body for a long time, longer than usual.
This also increases your appetite and makes you overeat, this leads to overweight and obesity which comes along with high levels of LDL, the bad cholesterol which is the root cause of most chronic diseases today.
High levels of bad cholesterol in your bloodstream can block vessels and cause an obstruction in the flow of blood to different body parts. This can lead to heart attack, diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, or stroke.
It Fights Weight Gain and Obesity
Having breakfast when you wake up control s appetite and hunger and it prevents you from overeating during the rest of the day. This leads to hunger and eating lots of foods during the day, and the brain can demand foods that are high in sugar or high in fats to make up for the low levels of energy.
If you want to fight and get rid of stubborn weight, you should eat a large breakfast every morning and this breakfast should be more of proteins, fruits, vegetables, and fiber, while your lunch and dinner should be little. Eating a large breakfast help you lose stubborn weight and prevent you from gaining them back.
It keeps it off. It even prevents and fights weight gain, even belly or abdominal fats. Now that you have known the importance and benefits of a healthy breakfast, you should try and make it a must, even if you can’t eat it at home due to your tight schedules, you can pack it and take it with you to work. When you start your day by going hungry, you get tired easily and you will be less productive.
Your breakfast should not include junk foods but rather whole-grain cereals, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, unsweetened homemade fruit juices, smoothies, carbohydrates, and probiotics.
This will give you enough energy that you need to start your day and keep it going till lunch time. It controls your appetite and bestows more endurance and strength to those who engage in a lot of physical activity. You can make a simple breakfast, you don’t have to spend your whole day in the kitchen just because you want to eat in the morning.
They are simple breakfast recipes you can look up online; doing this daily will boost your health goals and improve your general health.
