Food diary: Breakfast

It is said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and for those of us trying to lose weight it certainly is. It is most likely that you haven’t eaten anything in roughly 12 hours, so your body needs some energy to burn but don’t make the mistake of thinking that your body will burn fat if you don’t feed it first thing in the morning.

On the contrary, your body will think that it may never be fed again so it will hold on to those fat reserves, often burning muscle instead. However, if you feed the body with readily available energy, such as simple carbohydrates, it will gladly burn this for energy, then switch to fat reserves as your body thinks another meal is no more than six hours away.

Once you understand how your body works, it’s easy to work with it, rather than against it.

Part of the rules for my eating plan is to eat three servings of carbohydrates for breakfast, then stay away from carbs for the rest of the day. One of those servings for me is half a cup of rolled oats. In the winter I enjoy a nice warm bowl of porridge, but in the summer I soak the oats in milk overnight and eat them cold.

Cold porridge, you say? It’s surprisingly good on a warm summer’s morning, add in some sultanas and a little low fat yogurt and it’s very tasty. Also the yogurt and milk provide the protein for lasting energy throughout the morning.

After my cold porridge, it’s on to a couple of pieces of toast with either low sugar jam or Vegemite. It is worth nothing that anything you put on toast is likely to be of little or no nutritional value, for example honey is essentially pure sugar, while jams a high in sugar without any of the vitamins or fibre of fruit.

So that’s what I generally eat for breakfast these days, how about you? Any tips or suggestions?

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