Why You Shouldn’t Skip Breakfast

Did your mother or grandmother always insist you should eat breakfast, and that it was the most important meal of the day? Turns out, they could well be right!

Lots of people choose to skip breakfast, either because they are too rushed in a morning, they don’t like eating when they first get up, or because they think they’ll save calories that way.

A good breakfast can keep you full until your mid-morning snack or lunchtime, keep your blood sugar levels stable, and help stop you bingeing and overeating. Here are personal trainer Kami Price’s top three reasons never to skip breakfast.

Feeling Hangry?

Being hungry can make you feel miserable, irritated, frustrated and annoyed at everything and everyone. There’s a name for this, and it’s hangry!

Eating cures a case of hanger, but you don’t usually crave healthy things when you’re hangry. Most of the time you’ll find yourself reaching for the crisps, chocolate, cakes or other sugary and calorie-laden things.

Breakfast can help you avoid falling into this trap. A good, filling but balanced breakfast will lessen the chances that you’ll be suffering from a bad case of hanger by mid-morning. Low blood sugar also contributes to this condition, and if you haven’t eaten breakfast, the chances are that your blood sugar will be pretty low.

Snacking

Not everyone gets hangry, but everyone knows that compulsion to eat something –anything! -between meals, and the choices are rarely healthy ones.

You need to be prepared for the snack attacks by having a healthy, filling breakfast, and by having tasty but low calorie snacks ready and waiting for when you get that urge.

Overeating

Often, skipping meals can lead to a huge binge session later in the day. Some people like to skip meals in order to ‘save up’ their calorie allowance to have a big dinner, but this isn’t the healthiest way to try to lose weight and live well.

Eating breakfast fills you up, levels your mood and lets you think clearly. When we have starved ourselves all day, we aren’t thinking clearly, and this is when we are likely to binge eat sugary, salty and fatty foods.

Breakfast Ideas

Most people don’t want to have to prepare food that takes up time and makes a mess in a morning, so the simplest breakfast ideas are the best. Some suggestions are:

• Eggs – boiled, scrambled or poached with toast

• Oatmeal – regular or microwave oats

• Greek yoghurt with berries or nuts

• Bircher muesli – prepare the night before

• Healthy granola with berries

• Breakfast smoothie