Is Breakfast The Most Important Meal of the Day? Why you should avoid skipping breakfast?

Healthy Breakfast is often referred as “the most important meal of the day” so avoid skipping breakfast. It is essential for breaking the overnight fast your body experiences while you sleep. It helps to replenish the glucose level of your body for the day. Various clinical studies have shown that breakfast helps to increase metabolic activity & improves your concentration level. Also, it helps you to make better nutritional choices throughout the day. 

A healthy breakfast is an essential part of a balanced diet. It is packed with essential nutrients such as iron, calcium, and magnesium. It delivers a little over a quarter of the nutrition you need for the day. This helps to regulate your nutrient absorption levels for the next 24 hours. So if your body doesn’t get these essential nutrients right after you wake up, it will be less efficient at synthesizing nutrition for the rest of your day. Overnight oats , oatmeal, cereals, porridge, granola bars, bircher muesli, and egg toast are some of the healthy morning breakfast foods.

Nutrition surveys conducted in 2018 concluded that almost five out of ten women are guilty of skipping breakfast. The common reasons such as lack of appetite, lack of time, or trying to lose weight.

The formula to get the best breakfast or a healthy breakfast for weight loss is to make a healthy diet plan combining the four essential healthy breakfast food groups, which are:

• Whole grain Cereal – like ragi, jawar, and bajra

•  Lean proteins – such as eggs, lentils, and nuts

• Low-fat dairy products – such as milk, yogurt, and paneer

• Fruits And Vegetables

Let’s take a closer look at why a healthy breakfast is a must and what impact it has on your body.

6 Benefits Of Breakfast

Having a nutrient-rich breakfast first thing in the morning can have several important benefits for your health. The most important 6 of them are mentioned below:

Healthy Morning Meal Improves Cognitive Function:  

Various studies have shown that eating healthy foods such as rolled oatmeal for breakfast is essential for enhancing cognitive ability and skills. Since you’ll be consuming them first thing in the morning, nutrients like vitamin B12 and Omega-3 fatty acids will be better absorbed by your body, which improves oxygen flow to the brain and helps reduce oxidative stress.

Healthy Food Keeps Heart Healthy: 

A healthy breakfast is important for a heart-healthy diet. It helps in lowering bad cholesterol and triglycerides levels, which reduce the oxidative stress exerted on your heart. A nutritious breakfast is also rich in fiber, which reduces the risk of overeating and developing diseases such as type-2 diabetes while maintaining healthy blood pressure. You should include heart-healthy foods such as leafy vegetables, avocados, whole grains, fatty fish, beans, walnuts, etc. in your diet.

Healthy Breakfast Is An Immunity Booster: 

Immunity makes sure that your body resists harmful microorganisms from entering the body and is immune to disease. Humans mainly have two types of immunity — innate and adaptive immunity. Adaptive immunity develops gradually through a person’s lifetime whereas innate immunity is acquired naturally by the body.

A nutritious breakfast is an immune system booster and can reduce the risk of falling sick. It strengthens the immune response. It helps in increasing the production of interferon-gamma in the body, which is a natural antiviral designed to strengthen the immune system by stimulating the production of white blood cells. skipping breakfast is associated with a seventeen percent drop in gamma-interferon levels in the body. Many supplements like vitamins may be used to boost the immune system but they shouldn’t be used as a replacement for a healthy lifestyle.

 Morning Meal Paves The Way To Lose Weight Fast

Most people have the misconception that having breakfast causes weight gain. Contrary to popular opinion, breakfast actually helps to reduce your weight. It’s a metabolism booster and that’s the reason why breakfast is a part of all healthy weight loss diet plans – it helps to improve your body’s insulin response and kick-start the process of burning stored body fat. Therefore, it is best to have a high-protein & low-calorie breakfast that will keep you full for a long time, rather than skipping it.

Nowadays, people are looking for the fastest ways to lose weight. For this, weight loss supplements such as fat burner are getting more and more popular. However, the effectiveness of fat burner supplements is still questionable as there’s not a lot of evidence that shows their effectiveness. Instead, it’s better to follow a healthy diet plan for weight loss, join weight loss programs, exercise regularly, eat fat-burning/ weight loss foods, and drink loads of water. 

Breakfast Helps In The Treatment of Metabolic Syndrome: 

Studies show that consuming a healthy breakfast on time & not Skipping breakfast helps to reduce the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. It does this by reducing the risk of developing abnormal metabolic outcomes and helping to lower low-density lipoprotein levels. This helps in the treatment and elimination of metabolic syndrome disease.

Breakfast Keeps Blood Sugar Level Normal:

A healthy breakfast is important for maintaining blood sugar levels throughout the day make sure you avoid skipping breakfast. It helps to reduce insulin resistance, which prevents the risk of developing type-1 diabetes. Eating a filling breakfast has also been observed to help reduce insulin drops and spikes. This has been beneficial in preventing mood swings, anxiety, and depression. Blood sugar testing is an important part of diabetes care. If you have diabetes, having a self-diabetes test can be an important tool in managing it. You can use a device called a glucometer. 

 Is it OK to skip breakfast?

Well, it’s not. There can be several negative effects of skipping morning meal on your body. Such as –

Not Eating Breakfast Slows Down Metabolism:

You fast all night while you sleep and skipping breakfast makes the fast even longer. It reduces the body’s ability to burn calories. This leads to a decrease in metabolic activities and increased fat storage in the body. Many people believe in skipping breakfast for weight loss and cutting down belly fat. However, to lose weight and get a flat belly, it is important to actually eat breakfast, not skip it.

Skipping Breakfast Triggers Hair Loss: 

Hair loss has become more common than ever. Alopecia areata, telogen effluvium, receding hairline, male pattern baldness, etc. are some of the most concerning problems for today’s youth especially men. You can’t always prevent hair loss , but taking some preventive measures may slow down the process and help in the treatment.

Skipping morning meal will cause a drop in protein levels. This harms ketamine, a protein that is essential for hair growth and maintenance. This ultimately leads to hair fall, hair loss, thinning hair, and stunted hair growth. Eating a protein-rich breakfast may help in hair fall control.

Skipping Early Meal May Cause Migraine: 

Skipping breakfast causes the body’s sugar levels to drop, leading to hypoglycemia (high blood glucose), a condition characterized by migraine headache and elevated blood pressure levels. Instead, use breakfast as a way to eat healthy foods at the start of the day itself. It will contribute a lot to your migraine treatment. 

Also, people who skip breakfast eat weight-gaining foods around noon which is really unhealthy for your overall health. Limitless easy and healthy options/recipes are available on the internet. Try the ones that are best for you & never skip your first meal of the day.

For more health related blogs stay tuned to our journal section at Body Fuel.