Breakfast

It really is the most important meal of the day 🥇

You’ve probably heard before that breakfast is the most important meal of the day ⭐️. When it comes to women’s health, I couldn’t agree more! I also know a lot of women struggle with having an appetite in the morning. We’re going to uncover why that might be and why breakfast is so important for our health in the short and long term.

---

---

Breakfast literally means breaking a fast. The idea being that you’ve slept through the night and fasted for at least 8 hours (ideally 12). That means that our bellies are empty and our blood sugar is extremely susceptible to whatever we consume first. What we eat in the morning sets the foundation for how our blood sugar is going to react for the rest of the day. Understanding this is essential to understanding why breakfast is so important. What you eat in the morning doesn’t just affect how you feel, your energy levels, your mental clarity, etc. for that morning. It affects how you’re going to feel for the rest of the day! Of course eating blood sugar balancing snacks, lunch and dinner is also important but it’s just harder to recover and get off the blood sugar roller coaster if we start our day on the wrong foot🎢.

Additionally, cortisol peaks in the morning (it’s what wakes us up). Cortisol is a stress hormone and although it’s perfectly healthy in our awakening response, we need to make sure it’s mitigated relatively soon after waking. If we delay or skip breakfast our nervous system starts to panic thinking there is no food and in response to that releases even more cortisol 😩. This is something we don’t want because it leads to a chronic state of stress.

And this leads me to the topic of not being hungry in the morning. There are various reasons as to why this might be the case. Perhaps you’re someone that looses their appetite when they’re stressed. You can probably recognize this in more acute or extreme cases. But if you regularly have no appetite in the morning it could be because of a poor cortisol awakening response (CAR). Additionally, it could be that you ate too much for dinner or snacked before bed. Having a healthy morning routine and breakfast actually begins the night before 🥱!

Breakfast basics

• ❌ Stop eating at least 2-3 hours before going to bed

• ⏱️ Eat breakfast within 1 hour of waking

• 🍳 Make sure your breakfast contains at least 25 grams of protein

• 🍄‍🟫 Fiber and healthy fats 🥑 are also great at breakfast

• 🍌 Be careful when consuming carbohydrates (sugars and starches) at breakfast

• 🏃‍♀️ Never exercise in the morning on an empty stomach (even just having a boiled egg or half of an apple with nut butter and then consuming your bigger breakfast after the workout will do)

So many foods we think are healthy breakfast options are actually the exact opposite of what we want to be consuming on an empty stomach. Smoothies, oatmeal, cereal, etc. are generally carb dominant and contain very little protein, healthy fat and fiber. If have to have them make sure you’re adding protein and heathy fat through things like pea protein powder, nuts and seeds. Better yet is to have the piece of fruit, smoothie or small bowl of granola after you’ve eaten your protein, fiber and healthy fat.

What does your breakfast routine look like 👀?

Warm regards,

Donelle