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Eat breakfast to lose weight

Wednesday, 18 May 2011 16:26

Most people might find it counterintuitive that you must actually eat more in certain instances to lose weight. However, there is a reason for the saying that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." Hardly an old wives tale or an antiquated axiom, breakfast is the most medically important meal of the day, especially for someone who wants to lose a few extra pounds.

How?

After a healthy night of sleep (you are getting a healthy night of sleep, aren't you? This is crucially important to weight loss and overall health as well), your body wakes up basically starving. If you continue to starve it with the misguided notion that skipping breakfast will somehow eat away more fat, you will find yourself sorely mistaken.

When the body is starving, it goes into conservation mode, a sort of hibernation, just like a bear. And just like a bear, in this hibernation mode, the body stores more fat. So skip breakfast and starve the body, and when you do eat, your body will store all of the fat it can because you have actually trained it to expect less meals.

Eating breakfast keeps the body out of this starvation fat conservation mode.

Eating breakfast also speeds up the metabolism, which is essential to weight loss. Those wishing to lose weight should actually eat six small meals a day, with breakfast being the biggest, because of the starvation phenomenon explained earlier.

Think of breakfast as exercise for the metabolism and the digestion system. If it is exercised, then it can more readily expunge any unwanted substances.

Another factor is what is eaten for breakfast. Put the Pop Tarts away and forget the quick bars. Wake up 30 minutes earlier if you have to, but eat a good breakfast with lots of raw fruit or vegetables. Raw things from the ground are like high intensity workouts for the metabolism. They are harder to digest, so they get the gastrointestinal system in shape faster than any processed quick food could ever do.

Imagine what getting rid of the starvation phenomenon and giving your metabolism a workout in the morning would do for your weight loss efforts. Actually, there is no need to imagine, because this is exactly what eating a good breakfast in the morning does for your body. So stop the unhealthy habits that your friends probably heard from their friends and go with science. Breakfast = weight loss.