5 Reasons to Eat Breakfast
Do you find yourself dipping in and out of consciousness by midmorning? Suddenly, your boss starts to sound like one of the adults from Charles Schulz's Peanuts and, for the love of God, you can't seem to keep your eyes open. The funny thing is, you got plenty of sleep last night, so why are you so tired? Well, if you skipped breakfast, you might have set yourself up for a day of failure.
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"Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper," is an old saying that rings true to this day. Often, we ditch the breakfast routine in order to catch an early train or to cut back on the calories. Some even find it hard to will themselves to eat that early in the day. But hear you me, friend: Breakfast is not the enemy.
Skipping breakfast not only completely ignores your body's needs, but it also deprives it of so many positive benefits. Eating later in the day can ruin your body's chances of burning off unnecessary fat, consequently putting yourself at risk for obesity, heart disease, and robbing your brain of intelligence. It really is that serious.
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Now, of course, in order to reap all of the benefits of breakfast, which include radiant skin and a better immune system, you can't go shoving breakfast pastries down your throat whilst running out the door. Even sweetened, sugary cereals aren't going grant these benefits. To start the day off right, breakfast should be a complete meal with whole grains, protein, and fiber.
1. Enhance Immune System
To fight the common wintertime colds and flus, you need to sit down and eat your breakfast. A study in the Netherlands showed that eating a substantial breakfast boosts your body's gamma-interferon, a natural antiviral that directly activates immune cells. Skipping breakfast caused a 17 percent drop in gamma-interferon.
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2. Improve Your Skin
Eggs, the incredible and popular breakfast food, do way more than fill you up. No matter how they are prepped, eggs are fantastic for your skin. Lutein, a carotenoid antioxidant found in eggs, helps to preserve the skin's elasticity and protects skin cells from free radical damage. Just one egg a day can boost your lutein levels by 26 percent. There are plenty of other breakfast foods that will do the job as well, like oatmeal, walnut pancakes, and breakfast smoothies.
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3. Keep Yourself Thin
While eating breakfast alone will not help you magically shed the pounds, it may help your emotional relationship with food (and that invariably affects your weight). Prolonged fasting can increase your body's insulin response, which increases fat storage and weight gain. Breakfast also helps to prevent overeating and attempts to sate desperate hunger with quick fixes like doughnuts and vending-machine snacks.
4. Stabilize Energy Levels
A balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fiber is the key to any healthy breakfast, and eating foods with these components will increase your energy levels. Breakfast replenishes your glycogen stores, which supply muscles with immediate energy. Breakfast was found to supply around 25 percent of people's daily energy expenditure, thus leading to a high-functioning day.
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5. Live Longer
An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but a healthy breakfast may keep the reaper at bay, too. Studies show that people who lived to be 100 years old were consistent breakfast eaters, or consumed breakfast more often than non-breakfast eaters. Also, those who eat breakfast regularly are less likely to develop fatal habits like smoking and excessive drinking. And thanks to all of the benefits of breakfast, the body has an increased chance of warding off disease.
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-Lauren Gordon, The Daily Meal
