Cayley Boylan: Fitness

Why You Should Eat Breakfast

Lately i've been feeling quite shocked at the amount of people who skip breakfast!

I have always loved breakfast and enjoy experimenting with different healthy options so the thought of skipping it hadn't even crossed my mind.

When I asked my friends and family why they skipped breakfast, the answers ranged from "I don't have time" to "I'm not hungry" to "So I can lose weight".

I'm sure you've heard the saying before that breakfast is to 'break the fast' because it is!

When we sleep, we are essentially fasting, so the idea of breakfast is to refuel with a healthy meal to energise you for the day ahead.

Basically, when we wake up our bodies are fuelled by nothing so we need to eat a breakfast full of vitamin, protein, iron and fibre to give us energy for the day. Without breakfast you will feel lethargic, experience brain fog, struggle with your exercise, snack up to lunch, eat a lot more at lunch, crave sugary foods, experience headaches and many more symptoms.

It may seem like an array of negatives but if you are on to skip breakfast and think about these symptoms, I guarantee you will experience a few off the list.

Research shows that those who skip breakfast are generally heavier than those who eat it as they have poorer eating habits (they regularly snack and crave sugar). Skipping breakfast also results in poor food choices throughout the day and reduces mental performance, which is not ideal as most of us work, go to school/uni, study, attend important meetings etc.

Breakfast also restores our glucose levels. Glucose is basically where our body gets energy from and overnight, without food, these levels become very low so your body begins breaking down fatty acids, which don't provide the same energy levels as carbohydrates. So restoring your glucose levels will increase your energy throughout the day and kickstart your metabolism.

Therefore, the idea of skipping breakfast to lose weight is actually not a very good one. Your metabolism will be running very slowly, you will lack energy and therefore skip workouts or resort to quick fixes for your meals and you will crave sugar and again, opt for the unhealthy sugar fuelled snack/meal.

If you aren't hungry in the morning, get into a consistent routine of waking up at the same time and eating breakfast at the same time, your body will start to get used to the idea of breakfast and you'll start to look forward to eating it.

If you think you don't have time, plan ahead. Make some sugar free granola on the weekend, whip up some chia seed puddings overnight, get a bircher muesli in the fridge the night before or set your alarm 15 minutes earlier and make the time to eat it.

Breakfast is by far my favourite meal of the day so get in the habit of eating it and you will notice a massive difference in your performance and energy levels. I personally love to start my day with oats (porridge is my favourite) as it kickstarts my digestive system and gets my body fuelled with energy. If you're not used to eating breakfast, start by munching on a piece of fruit, then begin making smoothies full of fruit (and a bit of veg-spinach, kale etc.) and eventually you will feel motivated to prepare more extravagant meals to start your day.

Just don't opt for store bought cereals and juices as these are packed with sugar and have little nutritional value. You want something mostly homemade and packed with fibre, protein, good carbohydrates and vitamins.

This is a little image to show you how fibre works and why its so important to include fibre in our diet.

This will also help you distinguish between good carbs and bad carbs.

Breakfast Ideas

Chia pudding topped with fresh fruit

Overnight bircher muesli with almond milk

Banana, berry and spinach smoothie

Homemade granola and almond milk topped with coconut yoghurt

Coconut yoghurt and fresh fruit

Buckwheat pancakes topped with banana

Porridge made with almond/rice/coconut milk topped with fresh fruit

Banana, cacao, almond milk and date smoothie bowl topped with fresh fruit and oats

It is also a good idea to start your day with a big glass of water. I drink about 500ml of water with my breakfast to get my body hydrated for the day so switch that glass of juice for a big serving of water in the morning.

Have fun with breakfast as there is such an array of options you can choose from that will get you ready to tackle your day.

No comments

, by Cayley Boylan

Fitness

Rice Paper Rolls

No comments

, by Cayley Boylan

Fitness

Deliciously Ella Oat Banana Biscuits

No comments

, by Cayley Boylan

Fitness

Banana Blueberry Smoothie Bowl

No comments

, by Cayley Boylan

Fitness

Sugar

I remember when I was younger, I used to read food packages and see low fat and pop it in mum's trolley because if it was low fat then it HAD to be good for me. Looking back now, I can't believe how naive I was but at 12/13 years old, I generally believed everything I read and the food packages kept telling me that I was eating low fat and low calories.

Now I rarely purchase processed foods, however, I always find it interesting to look at food packets and discover that the low fat, less than 100 calorie granola bar contains 15g of sugar. Insane! It's no wonder that parents are being fooled into purchasing these products thinking they are helping their children and instead doing them a disservice.

To simplify the problem, we are eating too much sugar. WAY to much sugar.

It began when the world began realising that there were a lot of obese and overweight people getting around. In fact, worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980. There are an array of alarming statistics available from the World Health Organisation. Perhaps one of the most frightening statistics states that in 2014, 39% of adults over 18 years were overweight and 13% were obese!

As these statistics continued to rise, Governments tended to the problem and thought "well we are getting fat, but why?". Simple, they thought! We are eating too much fat and not moving enough. They were on the right track and campaigns began encouraging everyone to move, be active and avoid fatty foods. Soon, everyone was afraid of fat and moving more but obesity rates were still rising and no one could work out why.

The key word here is fat. Everyone was brainwashed to fear fat because fat makes us fat, right?! Well yes too much fat makes us fat but as everyone was afraid of fat, food companies had to remove the fat from their foods in order to continue making money, however, taking the fat out of the foods leaves their products tasting pretty bad. So what did they do to make their foods taste nice? Added sugar, and lots of it.

Some products more than doubled in sugar but were advertised as low fat, so customers were purchasing these products presuming they were eating healthy.

What most people didn't realise was that all this sugar was making them fat. In simple terms, our body can not digest excessive amounts of sugar so the high levels of sugar people were intaking had no choice but to turn to fat. This was why the obesity rates were rising despite the 'health' phenomenon of low fat consumption.

Studies have also shown that sugar is just as, if not more, addictive than cocaine!

When we think about how much sugar people were eating in their yoghurts, their muesli bars, their breakfast cereals and even in their pasta sauces, it is safe to say most people would have been and still are addicted.

Hey Sugar!

Even now that the issue has been acknowledged, many people will find it hard to avoid sugar as it is EVERYWHERE and if you're not aware of what you're eating, you would be surprised how much sugar you consume each day.

Sugar hides under various names as well, which makes it tricky for us to identify ingredients in our foods that are actually sugar, but easier for companies to fool us.

Happy Sugar Habits

I am by no means an expert on this matter and this is a collation of the knowledge I have gained over time, however, when I think of how easily i was fooled by the packaging, I wonder how many other people are falling for the trap too.

I now avoid sugar as much as I can. It's not easy but it starts by going back to basics. Make as much as you can from scratch, avoid packaged and processed foods, read the ingredients, look at how much sugar is in what you are going to consume.

To educate yourself further, I have linked a few resources I found super helpful to understand just why sugar is so bad for our bodies and how we can avoid it.

Do yourself a favour and continue learning about sugar from the experts. I can assure you that you will be overwhelmed and alarmed by the statistics and the damaging affects of excess sugar consumption.

Resources