If I had to give one piece of nutrition advice it would be to eat breakfast.
Your mother was right. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You’ve been fasting all night (unless you happen to sleep eat) and it’s time to stoke the fire that is your metabolism. You need to add fuel to get it burning again.
Don’t believe me? How about thousands of people of who have lost weight (more than 30 lbs) and kept it off (for more than a year)? Breakfast is one of the top common traits of the participants in the National Weight Control Registry.
What happens when you don’t eat breakfast? Not only does your metabolism not get kicked up, you also get hungry. When you get hungry you make bad choices.
When I used to travel a lot for my job, I often traveled with a co-worker I will call Stacy. Stacy was not someone who took care of herself and she was noticeably overweight. I’ll never forget one trip in particular where she was the perfect example of what happens when you don’t eat breakfast.
One morning I went down to the hotel restaurant to find Stacy having her usual cup of coffee sans food. Nothing for breakfast, she would say, she was trying to eat a little less and lose some weight. I loaded up my plate with eggs, fruit and oatmeal.
After a full morning of working with the operations staff on the floor, helping them intake work and moving it through the process, we broke for lunch. Stacy, a few of the managers and I went to a pasta buffet lunch. I had some pasta with veggies, soup and salad. Stacy, extremely hungry at this point, had a huge bowl of pasta, bread and 3 desserts. Yes, you read right, she had 3 full desserts. Not nibbles, not tastes, but 3 dessert plates. So much for cutting back.
Don’t let this happen to you. Give your body the fuel it needs to start the day to keep your metabolism humming along and making good choices all day long.
