Start Your Morning Right - EAT!

Whether you’ve taken on intermittent fasting this year or your goal is to get fitter, healther or leaner, or you’re taking on a new regimen just to shake things up a little bit there is no doubt about it - breakfast lays the foundations for your castles of success.

Often called ‘the most important meal of the day’, a good, balanced breakfast replenishes your supply of glucose, boosts your energy levels and levels of alertness and, as the name suggests, ‘breaks the fast’ from having not eaten overnight. Study after study has found that the health benefits of eating a bood breakfast are undisputed, and all major players in the fitness game will tell you that their morning start, is a breakfast start.



Now, as to the kind of breakfast you’re planning on, this will be determined by the kind of day you’re planning. If you’re the early morning workout or gym type, your breakfast will look a little different to those that have early morning meetings and are putting off working out or being active, until later on in the day.

So, why is breakfast so important?

Well assuming that you got a solid 6 or 7 seven hours worth of sleep, and your final meal was at least a couple of hours before that you’ve not eaten anything for around 8 or 9 hours. So breakfast replenishes energy stores and gives your system a much-needed ‘boost’ to start functioning the way you want and need it to. A healthy breakfast also helps to manage stress levels.

Remember that your body’s energy source is glucose which is broken down and absorbed from the carbohydrates that you eat. It is at this point that we have to say: calm down - we know we just used the C-word, but there is a reason that most no-carb diets end up in failure: simply put, we need carbohydrates. The kind of carbs and how and when we eat them, however, that’s up for discussion.

While you’re fasting, like overnight, your liver breaks down glycogen and released it into your bloodstream and it releases this as glucose so that you can keep your blood sugar levels stable overnight. Your brain gets just about all of its energy from glucose, so this is a pretty important process.

When morning comes, you may well have gone without food for as many as 10 - 12 hours and so your glycogen stores are super low. When you have used up all of the energy from your glycogen stores, your body has to break down fatty acids for its energy needs, however without carbohydrates, fatty acids are only partially oxidized and this can reduce your energy levels.

Breakfast reintroduces vitamins, minerals, and nutrients back into your bloodstream as well as your body and brain, which will boost your brainpower and help you control weight. Now, this doesn’t mean that you get to overindulge on pancakes with a years’ supply of syrup - a healthy, balanced breakfast is what we’re after.

Learn how to pasteurize eggs so that you can safely make a range of foods at home, as well as take time to research what foods work best for your lifestyle.

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