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Breakfast Really Is The Most Important Meal – Here's Why

For years we’ve heard why we should always eat breakfast in the morning. It’s not a new concept. However, for years I believed that I didn’t have to eat a full-course meal in order to start my day off right or to feel prepared for the coming day’s demands. I used to make tea and toast with peanut butter and fruit spread (with no added sugar) on it, and call it good. I’d often get a jittery feeling after eating this combination, and often I would get the sensation of my heart beating faster in my chest. I assumed it was just my physiology and dismissed it as nothing significant. Then of course within two hours, I was starving for something else to eat. When I started seeing my naturopath about my health issues after getting nowhere with my traditional doctor, she mentioned breakfast. The topic of protein came up immediately, along with whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. These are all common sense items to eat, so why hadn’t I been eating them? What was wrong with tea and toast with peanut butter and fruit spread?

The problem was this – to start, I was injecting my system with a shot of caffeine and no pure water. Caffeine automatically sends the body into hyperactive mode. Caffeine is also a diuretic which causes your body to urinate and lose more fluid. When you sleep, your body looses 2 to 3 cups of water. You have also deprived your body of needed fluid for the past 8 to 10 hours since you went to sleep the night before. Dehydration alone can cause all types of issues from lethargy, headache, heart palpitations, inability to concentrate, and constipation. Now let’s move onto the bread – the bread I was eating was a processed “whole wheat flour” product, not whole grains. The body will convert anything containing carbohydrates into sugar. Whole grain bread pieces usually have somewhere between 15 and 20 grams of carbohydrates – and they are the complex, good kind your body needs. Processed breads containing flour are simple carbs that are burned up immediately in your body and converted to sugar. Processed breads contain on the average of 25 grams of carbohydrates. Now add the 7 grams of carbohydrates from the peanut butter, and 8 grams from the fruit spread. How many carbohydrates do we have to protein? Forty grams of carbohydrates to 9 grams of protein from the peanut butter plus caffeine. This combination is a sure set up for disaster. Besides the other symptoms listed above, jitters, malaise, dizziness,and even nausea can result. Especially if this regimen is repeated day after day. Proteins and carbohydrates should be more balanced out. Yet, if you look on most packaged foods people eat, you will see a huge difference in the ratio of carbohydrates to protein — usually 4 or 5 to 1. This ratio is difficult to acheive if you are eating whole foods that have not been altered in some way – for example, two or three eggs with raw cheese and sprouted grain toast with real butter, tomatoes and apple or banana slices. To learn more about how sugars work in the body, visit The Weston A. Price Foundation web site. Think about it.

Eating breakfast provides your metabolism with the necessary support to keep your body’s other functions running smoothly and uninterrupted until snack or lunchtime. Skipping breakfast causes a plummet in bloodsugar levels which leads to binging on unhealthy foods throughout the day (carbohydrate cravings), makes your body feel less inclined to participating in some kind of beneficial exercise, and will contribute to your overall sense of feeling well. Many overweight people have found that just by changing their eating habits to eating a healthy breakfast in the morning, doing some kind of exercise everyday, adding more fresh fruits and vegetables to their meals, and eating a moderate amount of healthy fats such as meats, cheeses, nuts, and eggs, they have finally been able to lose the stubborn weight they’ve been fighting against for years.

I had always been too busy or distracted to prepare myself something to eat that required cooking. I had been doing the same thing with my son for several years. I am ashamed to admit that I used to just fix him a bowl of processed cereal (it did say organic, so it must be healthy, right?), milk and some fruit. Why not? I had eaten that many mornings as a child and nothing negative had occurred. Oh, right, but I had eaten that way for years, and now I was suddenly having trouble! The light finally went on. I had been reading some literature about different ways to eat breakfast and I came across a great book called “The Schwarzbein Principle” by Dr. Diana Schwarzbein. The book described how breakfast should be a major meal of the day and that it should include a large helping of protein, fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grains. This was the identical advice my naturopath had given me. I started preparing eggs and vegetables and fruits with whole, sprouted grain bread. Sometimes I’d have nuts along with and some herbal tea. Occasionally I’d allow myself some caffeinated tea, but I always drank plenty of water and took my whole food supplements. Within days I started feeling great again. That’s all it took. Just a little preparation and motivation to eat the right foods that my body was deprived of for so many years. I can say with absolute impunity that I have my energy back and have returned to a state of health. I’ll never look back again.

For more information on how to get on the right track by determining what fats are healthy and which are not, visit NewsTarget where you can learn about how to unclog your arteries without drugs or surgery.