I don’t know how many times I’ve reported
on studies that found that eating a good breakfast is an important part of
staying – or getting – healthy, but it’s a lot of times because common sense
says that the way you start the day will to a very huge extent determine how
the day goes.
Thus, if you eat a good breakfast, the way
nature clearly intended after what should have been at least an 8 or 9-hour
fast during sleep, you “set the metabolic table” for the day most obviously by
priming insulin levels appropriately.
Plus, if you eat a good breakfast, it
improves your mood (who doesn’t feel better after eating?), it gives you the
energy to do the exercise you know you should be doing later in the day (or at
least enough energy to be more active than you would be if you skipped
breakfast), and should you do what momma always said and sit down and chew your
food slowly over your morning meal, it probably lowers stress levels too.
And now there’s a study to add yet another
benefit to eating a good breakfast: it can help with weight loss.
In a terrific little Israeli study (193
obese patients), the researchers found that those people who ate a high-calorie
breakfast (although their overall calorie intake during the day was just 1600
for men, 1400 for women, in other words, they were still dieting a bit) lost an
average of 45 lbs. in 8 months, whereas those who ate a low-calorie, low-carb
breakfast had a mean weight loss of just 8 lbs.
So when it comes to weight loss, it’s not
just what you eat, it’s also when you eat and how you eat.
