Breakfast Breaks and Makes Your Day
Breakfast literally breaks your overnight fast, making this first meal of the day critical for a healthy and vital life. If breakfast is loaded with the good stuff, it sets you off on the right rhythm to feel your best all day long. But if it’s not intentional and doesn’t contain the good stuff, then there’s no bound to the havoc it can wreak.
Breakfast of champions
So what's the good stuff? It's simply:
good quality protein AND
good quality fat
Both fat and protein must be from real, whole-food sources. Think nuts, seeds, meat, poultry, fish, yogurt, eggs. For a few good breakfast ideas, I shared recipes last month for my Seed-Stuffed Overnight Oats, Sesame Coconut Parfait, Chocolate Protein Smoothie and more.
Fruits and vegetables are good, but a breakfast built just on these is insufficient in most cases. As a baseline, we need protein and fat. Combined, they have a gentle impact on your blood sugar. Notice that sugar and refined grains are nowhere to be found in the “good stuff” rule.
Why care about blood sugar in a nutshell
Combined, protein and fat have the gentlest impact on your blood sugar. Blood sugar is a key energy source for your body’s cells. When this energy supply is off balance, the result can be mitochondrial damage, oxidative stress, inflammation, aging, and chronic disease. Additionally, your hormones are affected by swings in blood sugar, impacting mental and reproductive health.
Now that you’re thinking about blood sugar, you might guess what I think about toast, cereal, pancakes and waffles. They’re tasty, but they’re like rocket fuel catapulting blood sugar imbalance. Expect a day chasing fatigue, struggling to focus, craving more sugar, and feeling moody. No one has time for that, so it’s best to make a little time for a good breakfast.
Make breakfast work for you
In Breakfast Before Busyness: a free 5 day challenge, reclaim your morning to discover how good you can feel all day long. Your choice of breakfast, savored for 15 minutes, creates ripple effects throughout your entire day.
You’ve heard Annie Dillard’s, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” and I’ll add, how we spend our breakfast time is how we spend our lives.
Read more and register here.
