The Importance of Breakfast for Weight Loss

Many people tend to skip breakfast or just have some snack on the run. Have you ever heard a saying: "Eat breakfast by yourself, share your lunch with your friend, and give your dinner to your enemy." It applies very well when you are trying to diet - you should go easy on your dinner, but you should go heavy on your breakfast. You will not gain fat from any foods eaten at breakfast, and breakfast is the meal that will keep you up all day. Having a good breakfast is the most important in dieting!

Additionally, it is important to make a good choice of what to eat for breakfast. Eating right proteins, carbs, and fats for breakfast will benefit your weight loss.

Waking up in the morning, your body has not had any food for 6-8 hours. That means that it has probably been in the starvation mode, unless you took casein before going to bed. Even if you took casein before bedtime, your metabolism still has slowed down over the night. Eating the breakfast first thing in the morning (within 20 minutes of waking up) will jump-start your metabolism, and give your body an impulse to start burning calories instead of putting them in your body.

Eating a good healthy breakfast will give you more energy throughout the day. Your body uses food as a fuel, and fueling your body in the morning is crucial. Imagine trying to drive a car without putting gas in. Would it run? No. The same goes with your body. If you don't eat breakfast in the morning, your body tries using your muscle as a fuel. And nobody wants that, right? Once you eat a good breakfast, your body will have energy to sustain itself throughout the day; therefore, eating complex carbs, such as oatmeal, is important.

Another benefit of eating good breakfast is that it will keep you less hungry throughout the day. Your body, generally, prefers food over muscle or your body fat as an energy source. If your body has to use itself to get energy, it will keep giving you impulses to eat. The longer you will go without a meal, the more likely you will be to overeat, once you have that meal, what will lead to the fat gain.

When you eat breakfast, you eat it to get energy for the rest of the day. What provides energy better than complex carbohydrates? Eating some complex carbs for breakfast is necessary. The examples of complex carbs are sweet potatoes, whole grain, or oatmeal. Oatmeal is the best choice of carbohydrates for breakfast. However, if you are a cereal addict, nowadays, there are plenty of different kinds of cereal that provide you with whole grain and fiber. Therefore, having cereal for breakfast is not necessarily a bad choice. If you decide to eat cereal for breakfast, keep in mind that you should also look at the amount of sugar content as well as calories in the particular type of cereal. Some examples of low-sugar cereal are Kashi GoLean, Fiber One, or Special K.

Eating simple carbs for breakfast would not have as bad effect as eating it any other time in the day (except post-workout). If you have a huge craving, you can eat that morning toast. Additionally, fruits are the ideal choice of simple carbohydrates for breakfast. Not only do they provide you with energy, but also they are full of vitamins.

Protein is the second most important macro nutrient for breakfast. Since you body has not had any food throughout the night, you want to stop your body from being catabolic (burning muscles) and make it anabolic (building muscles). Proteins are building bricks for muscles and amino acids prevent them from being used up for energy. Try get some quickly digested protein for breakfast, such as whey. However, if you cannot get whey, add some milk to your breakfast as well, since it has some whey. Egg whites could do the job as well. It takes about 2-3 hours for the to be digested.

Cottage cheese is a good choice of protein for breakfast as well. It can provide you with casein, what is slowly digested protein. Therefore, you would have protein being digested in your body for the next seven hours.

If you want to eat fats for breakfast, try eating healthy fats. Peanut butter would be an ideal choice of fats for breakfast. It will provide you with healthy fats as well as some protein.