In a day, it is recommended for an individual to eat three meals; breakfast, lunch and supper. This ensures that we supply our body with its fuel, food. Among these three meals, breakfast is considered the most important. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day because the energy stores of the body needs refill after embarking on an involuntary fasting during the night. Starting the day on low energy can make us to easily lose concentration, lethargic, irritable etc. Breakfast also provides us the energy to sustain us till lunch reducing the number of times we will go for snacks, mostly unhealthy snacks. Additionally, eating breakfast will help an individual to make the right food choices during the day as they will not be desperately hungry to choose just anything to eat.
Unfortunately, people miss out on the benefits derived from breakfast due to reasons such as not having an appetite for breakfast, not having enough time, not having food around, not knowing what to eat, forgetting to eat breakfast, to save cost and wanting to lose weight. If you experience any of these barriers, below are tips to help you overcome them.
- Develop an appetite for breakfast by starting with light bite such as a finger of banana each morning. Overtime, your appetite for breakfast will increase.
- Prepare and/or pack your breakfast the previous night, if your mornings are usually busy and you do not have time for preparing or eating breakfast in the morning. The prepared or packed breakfast can thus be eaten at home or at the workplace.
- Stock your stores at home and at the office with easy to grab foods (such as fruits, nuts) or a box of cereals, respectively. This way, you are assured of having food available in the morning.
- Include any food; fruits, vegetable, cereals, grains, other starchy food, milk, meat, egg etc. as well as eat any dish for breakfast. The key thing is to eat something in the morning and not to eat specialised food or dishes in the morning. So choose the breakfast that works for you but make sure you do not eat more than you have to. A simple way to know this is that you should feel hungry after 4 or 5 hours of eating a meal. If you do not feel hungry after hours of eating, it could mean you over ate or your food consumption is above your energy usage.
- Go for cheaper breakfast options as you can include any food or eat any dish for breakfast. Additionally, spending a part of the lunch budget on breakfast will ensure that one does not overeat during lunch time.
- Put breakfast on your to-do list or as a reminder, if you are one who forgets to eat breakfast. This way, you have something to remind you to eat.
- Eating breakfast as mentioned above helps us to make healthier food and eating choices in the day. This thus makes it important for one seeking to lose weight.
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Written and reviewed by: Irene Danquah, ANutr
Last page review: 23/12/2021
Next page review: 31/12/2024