Breakfast is a highly debated topic. Many experts advocate for eating breakfast every day, while there are just as many who encourage avoiding it at all costs. Whether or not to eat breakfast is a health decision that will be different for everybody. Skipping breakfast, which is often done by someone participating in intermittent fasting, works wonders for some people. 

Unfortunately, I am not one of those people and you may not be either. For those of us who are either breakfast lovers or need to eat in the morning to feel our best, let’s dive into how to approach our first meal of the day in ways that will help promote health. 

Our first meal of the day is crucial to our overall health and it dictates how the rest of our day will go. Whether our first meal is at six o’clock in the morning or at noon, what we put in our bodies is very important and something we should pay attention to. 

After not eating for many hours, our bodies are ready to absorb whatever we give it quickly, and some foods will set us up for an energized day better than others. 

When we think of breakfast foods, the first thing that comes to mind is often something sweet and full of carbohydrates, like cereal, a bagel, or toast. While there is nothing inherently wrong with these foods, eating them for our first meal is setting ourselves up for a struggle all day long. 

When we eat a lot of carbohydrates first thing in the morning, we are overloading our system with sugars. These sugars get broken down by our bodies and absorbed into our bloodstream very quickly. This causes great amounts of insulin and cortisol to be released, causing a short-lived spike in energy followed by an unfortunate crash. 

This overload of sugar as our first meal sets us up to be very tired and hungry for the rest of the day, inhibiting our ability to make health-promoting decisions. 

Instead of going for typical, carbohydrate-rich breakfast foods or avoiding it all together, we can set ourselves up for success by eating a meal that is savory instead of sweet. We want our first meal of the day to be high in protein, contain healthy fats, and ideally consist of some vegetables as well. 

If we can shift from a high-carbohydrate meal to a low carbohydrate meal, we will allow our bodies to break down food at a more beneficial rate, which won’t cause a spike in blood sugar and a crash to follow. 

In turn, we will be less hungry and more energized throughout the day, helping us feel more productive, capable of making challenging decisions, and better-able to make health-promoting food choices for our meals that follow. 

In order to optimize this meal even more, consider changing the order of foods consumed to also promote blood-sugar stability. To do this, start off your meal with some vegetables. Vegetables prepare your system to absorb nutrients of everything you eat afterwards more slowly, allowing your body to handle the meal well. After veggies, eat your protein next, followed by healthy fats, and finish off the meal with any remaining carbohydrates. Lastly, consider avoiding caffeine until after you eat and drink water.

There are many benefits to eating a meal to balance blood sugar in the morning including more consistent energy throughout the day, less crashes after eating or in the afternoon, fewer hunger spikes or “hangry” moments, and better decision-making. 

Paying attention to the first meal of the day is one step toward helping maintain or achieve our desired body composition as well. 

Changes to our way of eating can be challenging to make, but the benefits of this one will be felt immediately.