Breakfast! Do you know why breakfast is even called ‘Breakfast’? It is because ‘breakfast’ helps you break overnight fast and gives you energy to start a new day. Starting the day with a healthy breakfast kick-starts your metabolism, helping you burn calories throughout the day.

During busy mornings, it’s often easy to let breakfast fall low in your list of priorities. We often become so busy accommodating other chores that we overlook and ignore having breakfast, one the most important part of our daily life. But skipping the morning meal is definitely not a good idea, as it can throw off your body’s rhythm of fasting and eating. When you wake up in the morning, the blood sugar needed by your body to make your muscles and brain work their best is usually low. Well, a healthy breakfast helps replenish it. Thus, breakfast is often described as the most important meal of the day. As you continue reading the article, you will come to know why it is mentioned as the most important meal of the day.

Starting a day with a lavish breakfast buffet spread like a king is kind of impossible. But having a healthy breakfast consisting of foods with the necessary nutrients can make a huge difference. Starting the day with a healthy breakfast comes with amazing health benefits. This includes promoting physical health, boosting mental health, controlling appetite, assisting weight loss, improving immune system, and many more.

Here are a few good reasons to start including it in your diet-

 1. Give a good start to your day:

Start your day with a healthy breakfast to ensure a good start of your day. A healthy breakfast includes protein, carbs and other nutrients necessary for our body. Besides nutrition, the carbs give your body energy to get started and your brain the fuel it needs to take on the day. Try including all the necessary nutrients that our body needs. You can include milk, proteins (eggs, turkey sausage, grilled chicken), nuts (almonds), legumes, whole fruits as well as fruit juice, yogurt, cheese, whole grains (cereal, oatmeal), bread and some vegetables in the breakfast which will provide you with the most energy and dietary benefits. Try different combinations to make your breakfast enjoyable and better health benefits.

2. Boosts your brain:

We all need to consume food items that benefits our brain as well as encourage to concentrate better. You will be glad to know that having breakfast works as a brain booster. You should have breakfast enriched with minerals like potassium, selenium, and magnesium. Having a healthy and enriched breakfast will improve your memory and your ability to concentrate. So, it is highly recommended to manage time and prepare a well-balanced meal for breakfast. Therefore, consuming brain nourishing foods on a daily basis will improve your overall psychological health.

3. Get a better mood with lower stress level:

Continuing your day even when you skip meals, you may experience fatigue or headaches from low blood sugar levels. It is difficult to work, or perform regular activities when you are not feeling in tip-top shape. Starting the day with a healthy breakfast helps your body function properly and improve your mental well-being as well. The energy gained from a healthy breakfast, will let you experience a lower stress levels more in control as you perform your daily activities. This certainly helps you to be in an improved mood.

Moreover, by feeding your brain the right foods, like fruits and vegetables, you will also stabilize your blood sugar. Stable blood sugar means you will feel less tired and cranky with a good breakfast than skipping or having an unhealthy one. This will result in less mood swings.

So, make sure you start your day with a healthy breakfast and ensure a great mood!

4. Assist weight loss and management:

Some people have a misconception that skipping breakfast will help them avoid calories. But it is better not to live with that misconception. Cutting calories by skipping meals, specially breakfast, will certainly not going to work.  Moreover, studies have shown that breakfast skippers will be more likely tempted to grab fatty and salty/sugary snacks due to mid-morning hunger or even eat more at lunch or dinner.

So, to lose or maintain your body weight, you need to consume meals with more nutrients and fewer calories. Furthermore, including vitamins, proteins, and omega-3 fatty acids will not only boost your metabolic rate, but also curb appetite which necessary to shed extra pounds over the time.

As skipping breakfast will leave you hungry during the whole day and more vulnerable to cravings which will neither help you to cut calories or lose weight, it is therefore highly recommended that you start your day with a nutrient rich healthy breakfast.

5. Strengthens bones:

Our body needs plenty of calcium to sustain the bone health. As mentioned earlier, a healthy breakfast includes all necessary nutrients including calcium, vitamin D and protein which helps you get stronger bones. It is believed that, including milk, egg whites, cheese, and or yogurt into your breakfast can strengthen you’re your bones alleviating the onset of age-related bone diseases. So, make some effort everyday to start your day with a healthy breakfast to get stronger bones.

6. Enhances memory:

The fuel your body needs to recall information comes from glucose. After dinner you don’t eat anything for a long period of time. Thus, your body needs to restore glucose levels to function at its best after the good night sleep. And the only way to do that is with a nutritious breakfast. Studies show that, children who ate breakfast outscored those who did not on memory and verbal fluency tests.

A healthy breakfast is the first fuel you can give to your brain to start the day. It is said that, a bowl of oatmeal topped with blueberries works great as a mega memory booster. moreover, oatmeal is absorbed more slowly than other types of food by your body, which makes you feel fuller for a longer period of time and gives a lower rise in blood sugar.

7. Promotes hair health and skin:

Hair needs protein to grow. On the other hand, a nutrient-dense diet is one of the secrets to achieve youthful and shiny skin. A healthy breakfast can help you in this context effectively. Breakfast could become in ideal time to consume protein other nutritious foods to enhance the health of your hair and skin. It is considered that, nutrients absorbed via natural sources are more beneficiary than supplements to boost hair health. Moreover, vitamins, minerals and protein are the nutrients that promote collagen and skin elasticity which are essential to prevent premature aging.

8. Reduce the risk of colon cancer:

Studies have shown that the consumption of yogurt and fiber rich foods help you reduce the risk of colon cancer. So why not including it in breakfast, the most important meal of the day?

9. Other physical benefits:

Dietary fiber is a nutrient necessary to regulate your irregular bowel movements and stomach inflammations alike. Consuming breakfast filled with dietary fiber will help treating your indigestion.

A breakfast with healthy choices low in cholesterol and saturated fat will protect you from many chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. Atherosclerosis is when your arteries narrow and harden because of the build up of plaque which can lead to heart attack and stroke. Studies say, people who skip breakfast are more likely to have atherosclerosis.

10. Fuel for morning workout:

Starting your day with a healthy breakfast provides the fuel for your morning workouts.

Researchers found that, eating breakfast before exercise increases the speed at which your body digests, absorbs, and metabolizes carbohydrates that you might eat after exercise, compared to skipping breakfast. They also found that, carbs during the workouts burn at a boosted rate for those who eat breakfast before workout than who don’t. Having breakfast also increases the rate your body digest and metabolize food after a workout as well.

So, don’t skip your breakfast if you want to get a better result from your workouts.

11. Help your kids do better:

Most of the times children don’t feel like eating in the morning. But it is important they do, because their body need the nutrients and fuel to give their best throughout the day.

Kids who do not have breakfast, certainly have a harder time focusing, and become more tired in school. They may also feel cranky and restless. It is not just their moods that can suffer, but their performance too.

Therefore, it advisable to encourage kids to have a healthy breakfast every day. Otherwise, they more likely tend to eat junk food throughout the day and be overweight.

If your kids don’t like to eat in the morning at home before leaving for school, pack something that they can have on their way to school or between classes. Just make sure it doesn’t contain just empty calories like French fries, chips or similar foods. Pack something nutritious. Give the best to them, they will definitely give you their best.

Healthy breakfast choices:

While choosing what to eat for your breakfast, try choosing foods that are full of nutrients. Because filling your stomach with foods containing empty calories will only harm your body. Choose cereals and oatmeal. These are low in sugar but high in fiber. To limit sugary cereals, try to avoid white bread, and other highly processed foods. Choose lean protein (nuts, peanut butter, eggs, lean meat), low-fat dairy (skim or low-fat milk, yogurt, cottage cheese), fresh or frozen fruits, fruit juice without added sugar, smoothie packed with fruits and vegetables. Try to keep variations in your breakfast menu to make it enjoyable so no one feels like skipping the very first meal of the day.

Most importantly, it is essential to keep in mind that you stay hydrated throughout the day to help your body organs function most effectively. Therefore, do not forget to add enough fluids to your breakfast to help you stay hydrated. Read here, why you should stay hydrated to live better.

Hence, it is worth the time and effort that takes to enjoy a healthy diet. It will help you get a better mood and make you feel better all around. Breakfast is an essential part of a healthy, balanced diet, and its various benefits are the ones you are the ones you would like to miss out on. Having breakfast is not only a healthy habit, but also an occasion when the whole family can sit and eat together. This strengthens the bond between the family members. Therefore, a healthy breakfast will not only result into a healthy you, but also it can help build healthy relationship in the family.