Balanced Existence

photo credit: mOOrango*
I’m sure your mum told you to eat your breakfast, probably because her mum told her to. Whatever the reason breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It literally means to break your fast. And for anyone who has gone on an extended fast would know, how you break it is as important as the fast itself.

Western countries such as the United States and Australia are leading the way in terms of overweight and obese people. Roughly half of the population does eat breakfast. But 90% of those that do eat breakfast eat the wrong thing. In fact it has been shown that eating breakfast away from home, like so many of us do, increases your risk of obesity by a whopping 137%! If you belong to the other 50% of people who do not eat breakfast at all then you are increasing your risk of developing obesity by, wait for it, 450%!

You’re probably wondering how that is possible. Well, here is a little about what is going on in the body of a person who skips breakfast. If you last ate at around 7pm or 8pm the night before and then skip breakfast your first meal will be lunch at around noon or 1pm. That is around 16 hours without eating. Now it takes between 7 and 21 days for your body to adjust to any sort of new habit. So within as little as a week your body kicks into starvation mode. Which means your body is going to hold onto everything you eat and store it as fat. All because the signals it’s getting are telling it that there is a famine or you’re lost without food. Bottom line – you gain fat – even if you eat relatively healthy.

What then if you do eat breakfast? Lets take a look at what you are eating shall we? Probably some form of cereal (carbohydrates), or pancakes (carbohydrates), fruit (carbohydrates), waffles (carbohydrates), yogurt (minimal protein), juice (carbohydrates), and a granola bar (carbohydrates). Seeing a pattern? If this sounds like your breakfast you are probably feeling rather tired by mid morning and reaching for the coffee or energy drink. What you are experiencing is a blood sugar crash from all the carbohydrates you ate at breakfast. It might interest you to know that your children’s cereal is close to 50% sugar. If your children have behavioral problems and struggle to pay attention then perhaps you should consider what they are running the bodies with. You probably find it hard to pay attention at work to when your body is going through a blood sugar crash. You also probably get irritable and bad tempered.

The solution is simple and it does not require medication. By this I mean neither coffee nor the drugs your family doctor is peddling to your child in the name of profit. Eat a breakfast that has a ratio of 1:1 carbohydrates to protein. The only way you will get that is by eating some sort of lean meat as part of your breakfast. That’s it! When I was studying I would have to re-read long wordy paragraphs from textbooks and sections of legislation because I was falling asleep. Once I made this change and started to eat protein with every meal the result was phenomenal. So were my university results and the speed in which I completed my degree.

In fact I recently did a 12-hour road trip by myself into the wilds. I only stopping briefly for fuel for the car and to eat and I did it without any coffee, candy or energy drinks. I made sure I ate a large breakfast with plenty or protein and had protein with every meal whenever I stopped to get fuel. The results speak for themselves. Try it for yourself. You have nothing to loose by experimenting and learning about your own body.