Why You Shouldn’t Skip Breakfast in 2020
There are many benefits to eating breakfast – from cognitive functioning to weight control to energy levels! Here’s our top reasons for why you don’t want to skip this meal!
Let’s be honest, how many of us actually eat breakfast? You know, the meal that comes with a fantasy of being served in bed, with a ray of sunshine coming through a window? We have been told for years that it’s the most important meal of the day yet almost none of us seem to either care or can find the time. In reality breakfast is the last thing on our minds. Instead, we worry about what we are going to wear, what the traffic to work will be like, and wonder why we are so tired in the morning. If we can remember to put on our make-up and grab our cellphones before we head out the door, then why can’t we find at least five minutes to set the day in the right direction with a healthy meal? Skipping breakfast can affect the day in more ways than we could count – so we’ve summed up our top reasons to not skip.
Do you ever wonder why you can’t seem to focus? What about your changing mood or high stress levels? These are all the effects of when you skip breakfast! Eating regularly helps to maintain your glucose levels which not only helps your brain function properly, it can also help to prevent diseases like Type 2 Diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Many don’t realize that skipping breakfast could have dire effects on our health long term. When we skip meals, we cause our glucose levels to rise and drop which can lead to insulin sensitivity which in turn can cause diabetes and weight fluctuations. All of this makes us more susceptible to cardiovascular and other chronic diseases. In fact, a recent study found that those who didn’t eat a morning meal were 27% more likely to develop heart disease than those who did.3
When you wake up in the morning your body has used up all the stored nutrients and energy from the yesterday's meals. So, for those of us who skip breakfast, we're telling our bodies that no more food is coming anytime soon, and it needs to conserve any energy it already has. At this point your body's metabolism starts to slow down1 and you’re essentially running on fumes. A lot of us think skipping breakfast is the key to losing weight but news flash - it can actually cause us to gain weight by increasing our hunger hormones (which leads to snacking and overeating later in the day). When our bodies get breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the digestive system works faster to burn those calories, which helps our metabolism function properly.
Not only does skipping breakfast slow down our metabolism, but it also affects the mind. Breakfast plays such an important role in supplying our brain with the energy and nutrients that are critical to get us through the day2. It has been proven that eating breakfast will improve your short-term memory, ability to focus, and cognitive function. When you eat a well-rounded breakfast, you set yourself up for success.
Whether you wake up at 4am or 9am, eating breakfast yields a higher chance of success for the whole day! By consuming a high-quality breakfast, our memory and concentration levels improve, not to mention the lifting mood and lowering stress (a.k.a. being hangry)4. Breakfast is a necessary meal for our bodies and minds to function properly. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s 2020… time to step up and start taking care of ourselves!
Jess Dukhnitskiy
Retail Customer Service | Erin Baker's
Love this Post? Be sure to subscribe so they come straight to your inbox!
Resources:
