Choosing foods for any meal that your body will digest slowly will sustain your energy over a long period and help prevent fatigue and hunger. Proteins and fats in general take longer to process in the body. The breakfasts that are higher in carbs will quickly turn into sugar in your bloodstream and cause the hormone insulin to spike. Insulin is the hormone that directs fat storage in your body. If you are trying to lose weight, these will not be the best choices for you. Look below to see how your choices stack up:
A bagel with cream cheese: Sounds hearty, right? It will certainly fill you up for the moment but is definitely not your healthiest choice. This breakfast is loaded with highly processed grains that have a “high glycemic index”. This means they turn into sugar in your bloodstream pretty quickly, cause levels of the hormone insulin to shoot up, and get stored as fat. Looked at by itself (off the bagel), the cream cheese you added may not be so bad. But in this scenario it goes along for the ride (with the refined wheat-turned-sugar) and gets stored as fat as well. Double trouble. When hunger strikes again pretty soon after eating such a “substantial breakfast”, you may be wondering why. While this meal is very high “energy” (aka calorie-dense), it gets tucked away in your storage cells (as fat), and is no longer available as an energy source to meet your body’s needs. So your brain will then direct you to get up and go find more food long before “lunchtime”. A similar scenario is true for choices like toast with butter and jam, donuts and danish. And adding a glass of OJ to this breakfast would be like drinking a can of soda to wash it down.
A bowl of cereal with skim milk: Now this sounds like a healthier choice, right? Nope! This has a few things wrong with it. First, the same applies to what happens when you eat these cereal carbs as when you ate the bagel. Carbs→Sugar quickly gets into the bloodstream→ Insulin spikes→Sugar gets stored as fat. But isn’t skim milk a healthy choice? I will categorically state that “low fat” anything (unless it’s a food that’s naturally low in fat) is always a poor choice. First, how was that “food” processed to make it low in fat and in the process how much of the good stuff was removed? And, second, it’s the lactose in dairy (still very much present in skim milk) that many people have trouble digesting, not the fat. Without any milk fat to mitigate the effects, this breakfast will leave you feeling empty even before your bagel with cream cheese.
Yogurt: While really good quality yogurt (from grass fed cows or full fat organic coconut yogurt) with some seeds and nuts sprinkled on the top could be a good breakfast choice, the most commonly accessible yogurt is definitely not this! I surveyed the offerings in my local grocery chain store and found some shocking information. This “healthy food” on average has 19g of carbs (the body breaks it down like the wheat above) and 17g of sugar (more than half added in on purpose after the yogurt is made). Did I mention quick insulin spikes? Then there are the added yummy other ingredients like chemical preservatives and thickeners that will not help your overall wellbeing.
Fruit: Fruit has fructose as its main sugar. Fructose is processed exclusively by your liver, where it is pretty much turned into fat. If you are a “fat adapted” individual, you won’t be so concerned about this because your body can pull this fat out of storage and use it for energy. If you are like most people, though, and have conditioned your body to need sugar by eating an excess of carbs, this will not be the case. The “most important meal of the day” (which I don’t necessarily agree with) is going to wind up on your hips. Are you still planning to eat a big bowl of fruit with that yogurt?!
Bacon and eggs: Bingo! Protein and fat with very few carbs. This breakfast is going to be digested slowly and keep hunger away, help you stay focused and keep insulin from racing to the rescue. When insulin stays low, your body is able to release stored fat and use it to fuel your body during the day. Remember, you just “fasted” all night while you were asleep and, if you choose a “break”-”fast” that’s high in fat and includes protein, you can actually burn fat instead of storing it. Tip: To make this a really healthy breakfast, cook this at home in healthy fat (butter, coconut or avocado oil), use whole eggs (the yolk gives you the most nutrition) from pastured chickens and bacon that is free of nitrates and sugar (not so hard to find these days).
So protein and fat are the clear winners when you break your fast in the morning. Speaking of “fasting” there is another option I will leave you with. If you are trying to lose weight, you might also consider something called “intermittent fasting”. In my next blog I will explain what it is and how to do it safely.
