The meal to lose weight, gain brain function and prevent eating issues

Nancy Anderson Dolan BA Psych - Addictive Disordered Eating Clinician

Why is Breakfast the most important meal? Because it is a very specific request from your body and brain to service it. The vast majority of people, if they have not eaten late the night before, experience hunger in their bodies when they wake up in the morning.

Because of this breakfast, which was first observed and noted down in the Stone Age where they were eating the original “stone ground” porridge, helps your eating stay appropriately tied to your bodies signals and needs.

As a clinician treating compulsive addictive eating disorders, we see firsthand everyday how things go badly wrong when people ignore these body signals and “decide” how their body should be fueled based on fear of getting fat or trying to lose fat.

There is no shortage of research proving that people that eat breakfast perform better, have better mood stability, are happier, weigh less and score better on intellectual assessments.

This is because the brain doesn’t like it when its’ orders for the required input for optimal survival don’t get processed. The brain is the executive director and will start issuing other orders when it doesn’t get the action it wants.

The orders become more insistent and creative until people are tricked, bullied or otherwise comply. So if you don’t eat breakfast, you are more likely to overeat later to make it up, developing some nasty side effects like reduced concentration, headaches, a slower metabolism or obsession with food.

If you have an imbalance in brain chemistry to begin with, as most eating disordered people do, the effects are disastrous. The anxiety, cravings and distorted thinking escalate as the cycle of resisting eating and negative outcomes repeats.
Even for those that are not eating disordered breakfast is a useful tool in keeping their brains and bodies balanced.

In much of the developed world breakfast is either considered expendable because nobody has “time” for it or an excessively high fat and highly processed sugar laced meal that leaves blood sugar soaring.

Breaking the fast doesn’t have to be either time consuming or health diminishing. WiseHeart Wellness suggests that you make it ahead so it is easy to access and that you include grains, fruits or vegetables and protein. Get creative, eat dinner for breakfast or see how you can preplan. See below for a recipe suggestion.

The adage “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper” by early nutritionist author Adele Davis is a great guideline to get your body inline for its normal “break the fast” cycle.

When you go to bed with a lot of food in your stomach, not only can it disrupt your sleep, but it also disrupts your body’s maintenance schedule when it needs to be producing brain chemicals and repairing body structures instead of digesting your late night grazing.

So prioritize that breakfast meal to lose weight, gain brain function and prevent eating issues.