When I was a little boy my grandma used to say that breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. That is because breakfast gives our brains and bodies lots of energy to start the day and function properly throughout the next several hours. My grandma also said that we should eat less for lunch and even less for dinner because we need less and less fuel as the day passes by. My grandma is a smart lady.
The older I am, the more inclined I feel towards the truths she has been passing down on me in my childhood. I very often find wisdom in conversations I have with the elderly being much more accurate rather than what I read in newspapers and on blogs written by people in their 40s and 50s. Maybe the older generation between my grandparents’ generation and my generation does not have that life wisdom yet.
Not listening to my grandma’s valuable advice, I used to skip breakfast when I had been in high school and throughout several years studying at the university. Somehow, I had better things to do than eating eggs, whole grains and fruits early in the morning.
But lately, I am going back in memory trying to recall all of the healthy habits I have learned from my grandparents, e.g. not drinking cold drinks for breakfast or eating more onions and garlic to boost immune system in winter. My grandpa could even eat the whole raw onion for lunch treating it like an apple!
Good reasons to eat breakfast
Healthy breakfast will give us a more complete diet – higher in nutrients and minerals. I love eating fruits for breakfast because they are packed with vitamins. I follow the motto ‘Different fruit different day’. Complete breakfasts obviously contain a balance of protein, fat and carbohydrates keeping blood sugar levels steady for hours.
Our abilities to focus will improve, so does performance in the classroom or in the workplace. Even though I do not encourage people to compete with each other in any form, thanks to eating breakfast we will solve problems faster and our eye-hand coordination will get better. We will have more positive reactions to difficult tasks and we will be able to sustain attention longer, have better memory and fewer signs of frustration when working on tasks.
We will have more strength and endurance to engage in physical activities. Eating breakfast can improve your endurance and willingness to participate in social life, decrease rates of tardiness and less absenteeism.
Our cholesterol levels will be lower. We will have better weight control leading to healthy lifestyle. If we miss breakfast in the morning, we will be more likely to overeat and have a lower overall diet quality than people who eat breakfast every day. The longer the amount of time between dinner and next meal, the more we will end up eating than what we should for lunch. This leads to increased body mass index, or BMI measurements
Finding time for breakfast
Make eating breakfast an important ritual of your day. We tend to forget what truly matters, what is important for ourselves as human beings.
In the busy world we all live in, we find it more difficult to find time to do such basic yet important things such as eating breakfast. We all rush to work, hurry up our kids, so they will not be late for the kindergarten classes and run to catch the bus or train.
I do not want this kind of life for my family and myself where we have less time to take care of crucial things. So now, I am taking my time to eat breakfast and encourage you to do the same.
