The benefits and harms of breakfast for the body

A typical human eight-hour sleep is quite a long period of time. All this time the body does without water and food. It is completely normal to wake up in the morning from a long sleep and feel hungry. But the lack of hunger in the morning may indicate a violation of the optimal diet and metabolism.

Or maybe not talk about it. Not the entire scientific world is unanimously inclined towards the idea of the unconditional benefits of breakfast and its special necessity. For example, Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics from Indiana, has not eaten in the morning for most of his life and is quite happy with his health. The only reason he doesn’t eat is that he feels hungry only around lunchtime, and he thinks that this is normal - why eat if you don’t want to?

Of course, there are various studies on the connection between morning meals and general health and the incidence of various ailments. But most of them are observational studies (observation without intervention), and, according to Carroll, their results can be interpreted differently. Also, the results of commissioned studies from large companies producing breakfast cereals raise doubts. However, the harm of breakfast has not been proven either.

What are the benefits of breakfast?

In the morning, the whole body feels rested, and the digestive system functions with maximum efficiency. It is in the morning that you can allow yourself some dietary liberties if you are on a diet. All the food you eat in the morning will be broken down and converted into energy.

Research by nutritionists has shown that when a person does not eat in the morning, but eats the same amount of calories throughout the day, excess weight gain occurs 50% faster! Breakfast is beneficial for humans because it stimulates the synthesis of gastrointestinal hormones, which are involved in the intensity of appetite. This was led to by the observation that a person who regularly eats heavily in the morning experiences a feeling of fullness for a longer time and eats less during the day.

Breakfast time

Time intervals for morning meals may vary. According to standards, the first breakfast is at 7.00-8.00, the second - 10.00-11.00. It is not necessary to take food in 2 meals; you can skip one meal depending on your hunger and daily routine. Some people do not eat at all during these hours, which in most cases is not harmful to health.

Doctors recommend drinking warm drinks (tea, but chicory is better) and hot food for breakfast. Sometimes a glass of warm water is enough. The high temperature of food promotes a comfortable start of the digestive system and prepares the organs for the subsequent intake of nutrients.

The harm of not having breakfast

After a long sleep, blood sugar levels drop significantly. It is necessary to replenish your carbohydrate supply as early as possible, otherwise it can negatively affect intellectual activity and ruin your whole day. Lack of a regular breakfast causes problems in children with attention span, short-term memory and decision making. The child behaves inhibited and has difficulty learning.

Scientists from Harvard believe that skipping a morning meal can cause serious health problems - the risk of cardiovascular disease increases by 27%. If you eat too much before bed, the risk of heart disease increases by as much as 55%. And as a result, not eating in the morning and overeating at night in 82% of cases leads to serious health problems.

The benefits of breakfast

Doctors say that the benefits of breakfast for the human body cannot be overestimated. For many centuries, our ancestors considered the morning meal to be the most useful and important. Modern research confirms this opinion, which has developed over centuries.

Beneficial properties of breakfast:

Helps thin the blood. During night sleep, blood movement slows down, which leads to platelets sticking together and forming blood clots. As a result, the risk of developing myocardial infarction increases. According to statistics, a heart attack in 70% of clinical cases is diagnosed in the morning. Breakfast prevents pathological thrombus formation and is a method of preventing myocardial infarction.
Increases the speed of metabolic processes. Breakfast activates metabolism in tissues and “accelerates” metabolism. This prevents the gain of extra pounds and the development of obesity.
Normalizes calorie expenditure. Breakfast fills the body with the energy necessary for physical and mental functioning. To maintain health, most of the calories should be expended in the first half of the day, and this is facilitated by the morning meal.
Supports a rational diet. To improve health, there should be short temporary breaks between meals (3-5 hours). If you refuse to eat in the morning, the breaks between meals lengthen, which leads to stagnation of bile and the development of cholelithiasis. In addition, eating late usually shifts the time of dinner, which contributes to overeating and poor sleep at night.
Promotes the entry of glucose into the blood, which is the main source of energy for the brain. This improves mental performance, normalizes mental activity, and protects the nervous system from the destructive effects of stress.

According to WHO recommendations, breakfast should be nutritious but light. The calorie content of the morning meal should not exceed 35% of the daily diet. Typically, people's first meal consists of eggs, oatmeal, sandwiches, cottage cheese, yogurt, pastries, tea, coffee or juice. But is it right to eat this way in the morning?

How to get used to eating breakfast

How to train yourself to eat every morning?

First, you need to accustom yourself to a stable sleep schedule. Chronic lack of sleep can negate the benefits of any balanced diet.

Learn to get up at least an hour and a half before school or work so that you can leisurely do all your morning chores.

A glass of water, a contrast shower and light exercise will finally wake up your body and stimulate your appetite.
Prepare your food the night before and you won't have to waste time on it in the morning.
Make yourself a list of dishes and try to stick to it. Noticeable benefits from a proper diet will only be achieved with a balanced selection of food products.
If you have no appetite at all in the morning, then try to move your dinner to an earlier time, drink more water and divide your morning meal into several small meals. Within a month, the body should get used to and adapt to the new diet.
Among the foods that are considered healthy, choose those that seem most delicious to you, and do not force yourself to eat what you do not like. In this case, the need to have breakfast will not cause you mental discomfort.

Where is the truth?

Proponents and opponents of breakfast give a lot of arguments in favor of eating in the morning or avoiding an early meal. It can be difficult to understand this issue in order to finally join one movement or another. In my opinion, the truth lies in the individual approach. We need to listen to our body, which often gives us the right clues.

If you feel hungry in the morning, then eating is necessary. It is important not to ignore your body’s requests and not skip breakfast. Otherwise, metabolic processes are disrupted and the risk of developing digestive tract diseases increases. If there is no feeling of hunger, you do not need to force yourself to eat, otherwise you will greatly harm your body. Remember, the body has not yet woken up and is not ready to work to digest food. You can limit yourself to just a cup of tea, chicory or drink juice. For some people, the first meal should be no earlier than 2-3 hours after waking up. You need to make time for brunch at work or take food with you.

Separately, I would like to say about the benefits and harms of a hearty breakfast. No expert will advise you to take fatty and heavy foods on your stomach after waking up. A set lunch can be dense, which involves taking first and second courses. And this is physiologically justified. By the middle of the day, the body needs to replenish the calories expended for people who work according to a standard schedule.

An early meal should not be excessively high in calories and volume. “Heavy” foods can minimize the beneficial effects of morning meals on the body. Eat a light breakfast that does not overload your stomach and liver. It is useful to have breakfast with cereals, such as oatmeal, semolina or millet.

What to have for breakfast

If you don’t adhere to a specific diet, here are some universal options for a tasty and healthy breakfast:

Yeast-free bread - yeast is a very questionable product of the food chemical industry, and its consumption can be harmful to health.
Cottage cheese - contains calcium and phosphorus, necessary for healthy hair, nails and a strong skeleton.
Omelet – Eggs contain vitamin D and vitamin A.
Vegetables.
Fruits are a good source of both vitamins and fast carbohydrates.
Porridge – oatmeal, wheat, buckwheat, barley. It is best to cook porridge with milk, but you can also use water. Add fruits and berries for taste.
Corn and multigrain flakes, but always without sugar. Sugar is replaced with honey. The cereal can be consumed with milk or yogurt.
Sandwiches with boiled chicken breast and boiled beef will replenish iron and B vitamins.

Skip breakfast for your health

If you do not have diseases of the digestive tract, serious problems with the body, and even more so if you lead a healthy lifestyle, then giving up an early breakfast will have a beneficial effect on the entire body, will give you a lot of energy, and increase your performance for the entire next day. Tested from my own experience.

According to my feelings, in the morning the body is not ready to digest food, and if you have breakfast, especially heavy food, you will spend a lot of energy, which will be difficult to replenish later. I suggest you watch this video, where the author also confirms the beneficial effects of not eating breakfast on the body and energy. What do you think about this?

Why it is necessary and important to have breakfast: the benefits of a healthy snack

Imagine your body after sleep - metabolism slows down, and it urgently needs to be brought back to life. To do this, we need to eat something healthy and nutritious - this will allow us to prevent hunger in the pre-lunch hours and speed up our metabolism.

Now let’s remember how most of us see breakfast - sausage and bun, greasy scrambled eggs and ham with the obligatory mug of coffee and other joys of life. The first meal of the day should not be like this - this is a real blow to our body, which will not saturate it, but only irritate it. The result of such an ineptly planned snack is heaviness in the stomach and a quickly arising feeling of hunger.

In order to be healthy, strong and slim, it is important to start eating healthy - it is not as difficult as most of us think. The benefits that regular breakfasts bring are enormous:

Losing weight instead of gaining weight - the facts remain facts: the metabolism of those who eat in the morning is better and faster than that of those who do not eat anything in the hope of a quick snack before lunch. Those who fast in the early hours have a metabolic rate that is 5-6% slower than it should be. Think about it: you yourself are causing your body to work incorrectly, but you could help it. Many will object - how to force yourself to eat something if you don’t even want a drop of poppy dew? However, the “carbohydrate hangover” is only our fault. Try to stop being content with “elephant” portions for dinner, start your day with a proper breakfast and see what happens.

Taking care of the health of the cardiovascular system - your heart also needs the necessary supply of vitamins and amino acids. Researchers say that a proper and healthy morning breakfast is good not only for weight loss, but also for reducing blood cholesterol and platelet levels. So starting the day right will be an excellent protection against heart attacks and strokes. Brew yourself oatmeal, cook aromatic buckwheat, a delicious omelet or eat a fruit salad - such an awakening will allow you to remain full and energetic for a long time.

Helping our brain - the specialists of the Slavic Clinic know the answer to the question why breakfast is so important - the energy received from food helps us concentrate and better absorb information. The performance of a person who skips a morning snack will be much lower than that of his colleague who preferred aromatic oatmeal to the empty stomach a few hours after sleep. Do you want to perform your own responsibilities more efficiently? Eat breakfast right and you will quickly achieve success. The ideal option would be “complex” carbohydrates – whole grain bread or cereal.

A shield that protects us from stressful situations - if you eat right and eat only healthy foods for breakfast, you will not have to worry about any difficulties that await you during the day. The body will find the strength to cope with them if you give it the necessary recharge.

Strengthening the immune system – eating a morning meal containing prebiotics and fiber helps fight off infections and keeps our immune system in good shape. We recommend starting the day with cereals; be sure to choose not sublimates in bags, but fully cooked porridges. Add to them sources of essential coarse fiber - seasonal fruits. That's all: your delicious and healthy breakfast is ready.

A unique way to wake yourself up - the body, having received a recharge in the form of a healthy breakfast, will start working much earlier, and it will be easier for you to wake up and get ready for the work day.

In addition, regular meals in the morning are also a real key to beauty and health. Timely satiation protects us from sudden attacks of hunger and accumulation of calories, and amino acids and vitamins obtained from food prevent premature aging - along with the desired slimness, you receive a charge of youth and strength.

But in order to have breakfast correctly, it is important not only to realize the need for an early snack, but also to understand which foods can be eaten in the morning and which cannot. For example, many people’s favorite scrambled eggs with fatty sausage or bacon are not the best start to the day. How to create a menu without annoying mistakes? Come to us. The Slavyanskaya Clinic employs a nutritionist of the highest category who is ready to help you create a healthy diet aimed at overall strengthening the body and reducing body weight. At the same time, we do not force you to give up your favorite foods - we give you the opportunity to lose weight simply, effectively, without breakdowns and hatred of a new diet.

Should you eat breakfast in the morning to lose weight? Yes, and you won’t get any other answer to this question. A hearty and healthy snack will help you avoid the hunger that you may feel at work, and will also eliminate the desire to buy a unhealthy hamburger or fries before lunch, which will further distance you from your goal. The result of regular and proper nutrition according to the programs offered by the Slavic Clinic is freedom from overeating and new kilograms, refusal of fast food products, a new healthy and slender life. Come to us to lose weight without harming yourself, and we will tell you which dish will be an excellent start to the day.

Healthy and light breakfast

Oat pancakes

To prepare these wonderful and delicious pancakes you will need:

1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 glass of kefir (can be low-fat)
1 egg
salt, sugar and cinnamon to taste

Preparation:

1. Initially mix all the dry ingredients: flour, cereal, salt, sugar and cinnamon.

2. Then beat the egg into the mixture and add kefir. Mix everything well. Add baking powder.

3. Heat the frying pan, grease it with oil and spoon out the dough. Fry oat pancakes on both sides until golden brown, 3-4 minutes.

4. You can serve pancakes with honey, jam or fresh berries.

Fried toast with egg

You will need:

bread for toast (1 slice per person)
eggs (one egg for each toast)
salt, pepper, herbs

Preparation:

1. Heat a frying pan and grease it with a little oil.

2. Take bread for toast and cut out the core (as in the photo). Place the toast in a frying pan and fry it a little on one side.

3. Turn the toast over, the bread should fit snugly to the bottom of the pan. Drive an egg into the middle of each toast, add salt and pepper and add herbs on top. Cover with a lid and fry for 3-5 minutes until the egg inside the bread is ready. Study the calorie content of bread and choose the type that suits you.

The benefits of having breakfast in the morning: looking for the ideal option

For those for whom it is vitally important to get a boost of energy and vigor throughout the day, to help themselves lose excess weight and regain a lost sense of lightness, the specialists of the Slavic Clinic offer the best option - a breakfast rich in carbohydrates, which are commonly called “complex”. They are the most useful for us, especially in the first half of the day: they give a long-lasting feeling of fullness, trigger metabolic processes in the body, help our intestines, and cleanse it. We recommend the following option: porridge with pieces of fruit, light protein omelette with steamed broccoli. You can even prepare your favorite tender casserole from childhood from low-fat cottage cheese and complement it with a juicy salad of berries and fruits.

Don’t be afraid to have a hearty and satisfying breakfast - if you correctly calculate the calorie content of a portion, a morning snack will not harm you, but will only help you lose weight correctly and with pleasure. To ensure that everything works out for you, contact our specialists - we will create a menu for every day, calculate the optimal daily caloric intake, and tell you how to use a food diary to monitor yourself and what you eat.

Look at our Clients' Acknowledgments and Success Stories - View

With us you will receive advice from a qualified nutritionist who knows how to make breakfast not only tasty, but also healthy for your figure. We will help you create a balanced diet and give you recommendations that will help you get rid of the problem of excess weight and start a new life - with slimness and self-confidence! Come to us for an individual weight loss program - an effective and safe way to say goodbye to extra pounds without harm to your health.

You don't have to have breakfast!

Most Americans consider breakfast the most important meal of the day. A hearty, hearty breakfast is considered the cornerstone of a healthy diet. If you skip breakfast, you will lose your mind from hunger and will overeat throughout the rest of the day.

Although it seems to us that this is the case all over the world, this tradition is unique to North America. For example, the French drink coffee in the morning and that’s it. The French equivalent of the word "breakfast", petit dejeuner (small lunch), seems to hint that this meal should be modest in size.

If we turn to the etymology of the English word breakfast, “breakfast”, consisting of two words break, “break”, and fast, “fasting, fasting”, then literally its meaning can be conveyed as “food that breaks (break) fasting (fast) " Fasting in this case refers to the night, that is, the period of time when we sleep and do not eat. If your first meal occurs at noon, then you can “break your fast” with a salad with grilled salmon, there is nothing wrong with that.

It is absolutely not necessary to pounce on food immediately after waking up. We imagine that we need to refuel before the work day, but in reality our body prepares for the new day on its own.

Every morning, just before waking up, in accordance with the natural circadian rhythm, our body is charged with an explosive hormonal mixture: growth hormone, cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine (adrenaline) enter our blood. This cocktail stimulates the synthesis of glucose in the liver, so that nutrients are present in the body by the time you wake up. This process was first described several decades ago and was called the “dawn phenomenon.”

Many people don't feel like eating in the morning. The natural increase in cortisol and adrenaline levels creates a slight “fight or flight” effect that activates the sympathetic nervous system. In the morning, our bodies are completely ready for decisive action, and not for eating. All of the hormones listed above promote the release of glucose into the blood to quickly provide additional energy. We are already fully “refueled” and ready to go. There is no need to refill with sugary cereals or muffins. Morning hunger is a habit that is instilled in us since childhood.

What happens if you don't have breakfast in the morning?

The World Health Organization cited its disappointing statistics, according to which people who skip early meals:

more often suffer from diseases of the cardiovascular system - due to metabolic disorders, blood flow slows down and blood clots form;

accumulate excess cholesterol in the blood;

gain weight easily;

provoke the development of hypertension and atherosclerosis.

The picture is sad - there are plenty of risks. That is why it is important not to play with your health and make it a habit to have a proper early snack as part of a balanced diet.

Healthy Breakfast Options

Oatmeal + toast with avocado and lightly salted fish
Mushroom omelette + vegetable salad with olive oil + two whole grain toasts
Toast with avocado and egg
Scrambled eggs with vegetables and cheese
Curd cheesecakes + two whole grain toasts with avocado and flax seeds
Oatmeal pancake stuffed with cottage cheese and fruit + a handful of almonds (6-8 nuts)
Omelette with herbs + two toasts + chicken liver pate
Whole grain toast with ricotta and mango
Roll with egg, spinach, avocado and cheese
Poached eggs with asparagus and parmesan

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Our excuses: why we don't want to eat in the morning

We don’t want to overpower ourselves and get out of bed earlier - this is the first and most common excuse of those who don’t want to start the morning with a good breakfast. And if you have to boil an egg or porridge, getting up feels like real torture. It is especially difficult for owls, but larks easily face the new day. How to force yourself to eat if you don’t even want to get up? Remember that breakfast will help you drive away sleep and get rid of the treacherous grumbling in your empty stomach on the way to work. This is a good motivation to get up fifteen to twenty minutes earlier than usual and cook yourself something tasty and healthy.

There is simply no appetite - in the morning it seems to turn off. This is due to excess and poor nutrition in the evenings and before bed. Imagine your usual dinner in detail: what you prepared and how, what the portion was, did you take extras. Don’t think that your stomach can work for three people - it simply doesn’t have time to cope with what was thrown into it. The result is a reluctance to eat, when it is difficult to even lift a spoonful of porridge to your mouth. Stop eating before bed, eat on time (3-4 hours before you go to bed) and remember that dinner should be light, and the daily caloric intake should not be exceeded.

Breakfast does not relieve the feeling of hunger - this is what those who prefer exclusively fast carbohydrates in the first half of the day say. They really do not allow us to feel full: they cause a sharp jump in blood sugar levels, and after that the same sharp decline, accompanied by a rumbling stomach and complete confidence that we have not eaten anything. Store-bought buns and muesli with honey are not the best option for a healthy snack. To get to work without the desire to buy a unhealthy sandwich on the way, exclude monosaccharides from your morning menu. Instead of junk food, take sources of protein - dairy products, eggs. Add a handful of nuts to your usual porridge. This will help get rid of persistent feelings of hunger and make early meals much more enjoyable.

I don’t want to run to work, because if we make breakfast, we will definitely be late - these are empty excuses. If you are unsure of yourself, get up earlier than usual. You shouldn’t skip the very first snack: it is the key to our strength and vigor throughout the day. However, you shouldn’t eat on the run either - you need to eat slowly, chewing your food thoroughly.

We don't eat breakfast for fear of gaining weight - this is another excuse that is very popular. But the specialists of the Slavic Clinic confirm that it is not those who regularly eat breakfast who recover quickly, but people who keep themselves on a starvation diet. If we skip our morning snack, we force the body to store more than it spends. So don't be surprised that the number on the scale is constantly growing - the problem is that you're not eating right. It is important to wake up not only yourself, but also your metabolism. To do this, we do not need an alarm clock, but ordinary healthy and tasty porridge, homemade muesli with dried fruits, and steamed omelet. Want more recipes to start your day? Then come to us to start moving towards harmony.

If in the morning you eat a salad of ripe fruits with low-fat cottage cheese, a tender casserole or pudding, eat right, take care of yourself by contacting our clinic, you will not have to complain about problems with your figure - it will be slim and beautiful. The main thing is not to overdo it - you should not allow yourself too heavy or unhealthy food. Give up simple carbohydrates and replace them with complex ones, stop eating on the run, buying sandwiches and burgers at fast food restaurants, instead of a milkshake, brew yourself green tea. Remember that in the morning our metabolism just wakes up. If you slow it down from the very beginning of the day, it will definitely remind you of the mistake you made - with abdominal pain, a feeling of heaviness and bloating, and a day or two later - with excess weight that appeared when you didn’t expect it at all.

A hearty breakfast: benefit or harm

It's time to remember: for health and slimness you need to eat in small portions. The more abundant the food you consume in the morning, the higher the risk of becoming addicted to overeating and filling your stomach to capacity instead of giving it only the essentials in accordance with the norm.

The ideal breakfast dish is not greasy scrambled eggs with sausages, but porridge rich in fiber, vitamins and microelements. It contains a lot of “slow” carbohydrates, which allow us not to feel hungry for a long time. In addition, this distribution of calories allows you to evenly divide the remaining calories into subsequent meals - it will turn out much more honestly and healthier than if you overeat in the morning and then refuse lunch and dinner.