by Ileana Trautwein, MS, RD, LDN
Just as a car needs electricity or gas to function, our bodies need food. And there’s no better time to provide that fuel than when you’re just starting the day.
Studies show eating within one to two hours of rising is optimal. After that point your body isn’t really “waking up” anymore, and lack of fuel starts to affect blood sugar. Hunger cues also will shut down, which can make you overeat later. If you’re not fueling up for the day, you’re living on reserves. Lots of things in the body fluctuate — hello, weight management — but our bodies prefer consistency. To keep blood sugar regulated, the body likes to eat within four hours of its last meal (links between our internal clock and digestion mean we don’t need nutrients during sleep). When you go longer without food, your body is stressed and tends to “hold on” to fat just in case you’re about to starve. Got an especially busy day planned? This matters even more.
People have a lot of reasons for skipping breakfast, one being they don’t wake up hungry. But you might be shutting down that response before you even notice it when you pour yourself a giant cup o’ joe. The liquid volume of the coffee is what’s filling you up, and caffeine gives you a short-term energy boost. But this is just briefly tricking your body: What you need is real food. A well-balanced breakfast includes a protein, carb and sensible fat — coffee and a Danish is not breakfast. If that sounds like a lot first thing, try smoothies or high-protein shakes. If liquids don’t appeal, think about things you could make the night before, like hard-boiled eggs or overnight oats. If it’s a busy morning, consider a grab-and-go option like a rolled-up pancake or an egg burrito. Have what you like: a grilled cheese sandwich on high-fiber bread, or a piece of string cheese and an apple.
If you think about it, the whole idea of “breakfast food” is kind of odd — half the world eats fish and rice for the first meal of the day, or whatever they like or have available. Agrarian societies ate differently than we do, sometimes according to church attendance (fasting before mass, for example). The Industrial Revolution introduced break time and lunch time as set periods, and meals started being more regulated. For most of history, humans ate what they could get; in 19th -century America that changed with the emergence of cereal companies competing to offer workers a cheap, healthy, nutrient-dense breakfast. Eventually high-carb, high-sugar products marketed to children born of the post-World War II baby boom took over. Historically, our idea of “breakfast” has been shaped by marketing, a mix of what people need and what sells. Today there’s a push for more protein — yogurts, for example — driven in part by the numbers of people taking GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.
Schools know that kids who have breakfast do better on standardized tests, one reason free breakfasts often are offered on those days and why younger grades have snack times. Refueling at breakfast matters especially for little kids, whose brains are nearly the size of adults’ but whose smaller bodies can’t take in as many nutrients at once. Pregnancy and breastfeeding demand a healthy breakfast to provide enough nutrition for mother and baby. Athletes in training especially need fuel; splitting that up into more meals is often helpful. And anyone can achieve better exercise performance by not working out on an empty stomach; even a small snack yields noticeably better output. One study found that those who skip breakfast can overeat later and still have an overall calorie deficit. This happens because the nutrition of skippers also tends to be lower quality — if you skip a meal, it’s hard to get all of the nutrients you need and affects your overall nutrition. Those trying to maintain a calorie deficit for weight loss sometimes skip meals or fast intermittently, but this is hard to sustain — even the conscientious tend to overeat by evening or the next day, because they’re hungry. Studies also show people don’t make the best nutritional choices in these cases, because the body has been in starvation state. This also can raise your risk of diabetes, because of insulin resistance. In order to keep blood sugar where it needs to be, it’s best to eat at regular times. And that starts with a healthy breakfast.
Orlando Health is pleased to partner with USA Track & Field (USATF) as Official Medical Network Partner. Through this partnership, Orlando Health will assist USATF to provide medical support to their athletes in our region. Orlando Health, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, is a private, not-for-profit healthcare organization with $9.2 billion of assets under management that serves the southeastern United States and Puerto Rico. Founded more than 100 years ago, the healthcare system is recognized around the world for its trauma care. It is also the site of an Olympic athlete training facility and operator of one of the largest and highest performing clinically integrated networks in the region. For more information, visit http://www.orlandohealth.com, or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X @orlandohealth.