12wk Health Blitz Challenge - Week 9

The Breakfast Club

The reasons for eating breakfast far outweigh the time saved walking out the door on an empty stomach. Eat breakfast everyday. Breakfast kick starts your metabolism, helps you to concentrate and perform better at work and aids in weight loss.

Eating breakfast is simply breaking the fast. We haven’t eaten for up to 12hrs and need to refuel. Think of your stomach like the petrol tank of your car. You put petrol in the tank of you car after it has used up a tank of fuel so that it keeps running. Why wouldn’t we do this for our body?

This week’s challenge is to eat breakfast everyday. Here are the top 8 reasons why we should eat breakfast:

Top 8 Reasons to Eat Breakfast

1. Better focus and better productivity at work, school or at home. Studies on those who work at labor type jobs have shown that those who do not eat breakfast are unable to work as hard until lunchtime and studies on children reveal that they are unable to complete schoolwork.

2. Maintaining healthy weight. People who skip breakfast are shown to choose less nutritious and fast foods choices to curb their appetite. Poor eating habits lead to eating throughout the evening. This is the worst to eat because calories are stored in the evening as the metabolism slows down. Calories stored = fat.

3. Setting an example for your children and helping them develop healthy eating habits at an early age that they can carry on throughout their lifetime. If they see you eat breakfast, they are more likely to as well.

4. Essential nutrients. Many of us do not meet the essential nutrients such as vitamins and minerals needed daily. i.e., calcium, iron, fiber and Vitamin B1. Skipping breakfast guarantees we will not meet these essential nutrients.

5. Lowers cholesterol, which reduces the risk of heart disease. Research has shown that people who eat breakfast consume less dietary cholesterol then do people who don’t eat breakfast. If you eat oats it will lower your cholesterol.

6. Increase your metabolic rate. People who skip breakfast have a slower metabolism rate than normal, which may lead to weight gain of 3.6kg per year!

7. Eating breakfast can have long-term effects and prevent Obesity, High Blood Pressure and Diabetes.

8. Breakfast foods are delicious! Avoid the processed, fatty foods. Skip the breakfast burgers and you will prevent yourself from consuming 560 calories and a whopping 32 grams of fat! That’s not even including a coffee and a hash brown. Why not eat something healthy such as a fruit smoothy, oats or add fruit to fruit free muesli? (Carmen’s is my favourite)

Topic: Breakfasts of champions

Fact 1: Eating first thing in the morning stimulats your metabolism through a process called Thermogenesis

Fact 2: A 2005 study found that participants who consumed a high protein breakfast had enhanced feelings of eating satisfaction, fullness and lower food intake compared with those eating a low-protein breakfast.

Fact 3: Cereal is the number one food bought in supermarkets today. A vegetarian created the first breakfast cereal in 1863 in New York.

Healthy Eating Tip: If you cannot stomach solid food for breakfast try drinking smoothies

Motivational Tip: Change your language! We use negative language to keep us stuck and re-living the same results. Try replacing negative words with positive phrases such as the word “Can’t” with “I choose not to” and “Too Hard” with “its unfamiliar”