They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Let us see what should you eat in breakfast for healthy weight loss. We’ll discuss if you can afford to miss breakfast. How you start your day and what you eat first thing in the morning determines your energy levels for the rest of the day. However, a lot of people tend to miss their breakfast while they do intermittent fasting. So, let’s see if skipping breakfast is good for you or not ?
Should you skip your breakfast ?
- There are a number of factors which decide if you should miss your breakfast or not
- Some of these are :-
- Activity levels (how active you are from morning to afternoon)
- Your stress levels / levels of your mental activity
- Your hormones play a very important role in deciding if you can miss breakfast
- People with high stress levels shouldn’t miss breakfast
- Your stress levels can further increase by skipping breakfast, you can also end up overeating in the later half of the day
- Missing breakfast for people with high stress levels can lead to major mood swings and even emotional breakdown
Who can skip breakfast during intermittent fasting for effective weight loss
- If you can focus and concentrate on work without eating
- If you can do short (10-25 minutes) high intensity workout without feeling dizzy or overtired
- If you can carry out 40-50 minutes moderate or low intensity workout / yoga without much issues
Some basics
- When the body doesn’t need to use glucose (carbs) for energy, it stores it in the liver and muscles called glycogen
- What are glycogen stores or tanks ?
- The amount of glycogen stored in the body, particularly within the muscles and liver mostly depends on physical training, metabolic rate and eating habits
- What are the real source of energy ?
- Once your glycogen stores are finished, the next available source of energy for your body is triglyceride stores in the adipose tissue for long term
- Why is it not suitable for everyone to go without food for long ?
- People with high levels of stress and hormonal balance find it difficult as their bodies are not yet ready to undergo the process of fat burning
- These people shouldn’t follow the standard 16 : 8 window of intermitent fastimg, rather, they should go for 12 : 10, 13 : 11 or even 14 : 10 window to start with
What should you eat to start your day ?
- It depends on the number of meals you consume in a day
- Options
- Start your day with some soaked raisins and almonds (handful)
- Start your day with some fresh seasonal fruits
Should you open your fast with protein shake or drink (post workout)
- It is better to open your eating window after a long fast with some good carbs source
- You can also add bananas to your protein shake
What should be the portion of your first meal ?
- Avoid whole grains in breakfast if your digestive health is poor
- If you feel tired after eating breakfast, it can be due to
- Wrong portion size
- Wrong food combination
- Wrong timing of your meals
Some healthy breakfast options
- Mix veg and peanuts poha
- Besan oats chilla
- Oatmeal
- Ragi oats chilla
- Idli with peanut chutney
- Mix veg and peanut vermicelli
- Oats upma
- High protein breakfast smoothie
- Moong dal toast
- Sattu smoothie
- Overnight oats
- Homemade granola
- High protein pancake