Mum was right, Breakfast is important

Why is breakfast so important? And why don’t we have any time for it?

While you are sleeping, your digesting process slows down and your body goes into repair mode which is why we sometimes wake up not feeling hungry. Unfortunately people who are struggling with weight issues get rather excited by this lack of hunger and attempt to ride it for as long as they can thinking by eating less it will help them lose kilos. In fact it is the worst thing we can do to our bodies.

If you wait too long to eat your first meal, you body will increase its insulin response to the carbs in your meal which will store fat. The fast has sent messages to your brain saying “not much food around, next time you get some store it just in case”. So in fact you are increasing your chances of gaining weight by not kick-starting your day with a good breakfast. By waiting too long your brain is telling your body to make more fat.

Metabolism needs to be jump-started in the morning to get all your juices flowing and to begin creating and using the right amounts of energy. To do this you need to eat stuff to refuel your glycogen stores that supply blood sugar and energy.

Personally, I think there is more to the skipping breakfast phenomenon than all of this, we live in a world where it is just acceptable to be “too busy”. It can take weeks of diarizing these days to see your best mates for dinner. We have become so caught up in this culture of doing too much it has got in the way of a good meal. Our minds are telling us it’s ok to skip breakfast if we are too busy.

I’ve been timing some really great healthy breakfasts this week and the best one so far has been steaming some Quinoa whilst I’m in the shower.

You take half a cup of Quinoa to one cup of water, throw it on the stove with a lid on medium heat for 20 minutes. Which for me is about the time it takes to have a shower, moisturize and put my clothes on. Then all you do is stir the Quinoa with a fork and it’s all done and warm, perfect for this time of year. This morning I opened the fridge and tore some spinach off with my hands and grabbed an egg. I heated a pan threw the spinach and egg in it, sprinkled some water on the spinach and by the time I had put my shoes and socks on it was all done.

So in reality it’s a farce we don’t have the time, you can cook things while you are doing other things. All in all this great nutritious breakfast which is high in protein and will set me up till lunch took 30 seconds to put the Quinoa on the stove and another 30 seconds to crack an egg and tear some spinach. Yes, I have two pots to wash but I can do that when I get home. Ok, I can force my partner to do it.

By Dee Coleman