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Do you find that shortly after breakfast you are hungry again? If so, you are probably consuming the wrong foods.
Many people are often confused about what are and are not healthy breakfasts.
In various media you often hear different pieces of advice from experts about what a healthy breakfast should look like.
The mistakes most often mentioned are these:
- lack of protein
- little fiber
- no fat
- too little food
- eating breakfast too late
Many of these are justified. However, what they do not focus on at all may be the biggest breakfast mistake of all. And that is having breakfast itself.
Skipping breakfast can bring many health benefits. Starting with improved insulin sensitivity, up to shifting your metabolism into a mode where you burn fats instead of sugars.
However, before we go into this topic in more detail, let’s take a closer look at the five points mentioned above.
If for any reason you decide not to change your eating habits and continue to eat breakfast, these recommendations will at least help you avoid feeling hungry shortly afterward.
Common mistakes at breakfast
The most common mistake people make at breakfast is that they eat typical breakfast foods. Most of them are highly processed and full of sugar.
Examples are cereals, pastries, baguettes and other grain-based foods. These are among the worst things you can eat for breakfast. They may temporarily quiet your hunger, but they set you up for metabolic disaster, weight gain and health problems associated with obesity.
There are thousands of well-documented clinical studies pointing to the effects of sugars on your health.
Unfortunately, many experts recommend the need for more protein, but forget about the unhealthily high level of sugars and carbohydrates.
They also forget to point out the problems associated with pasteurized dairy products, including yogurts. In addition, they have no idea that commercially produced yogurts are full of sugars!
Regardless of whether they are full-fat or low-fat (the latter are even worse), these commercial pasteurized yogurts are not a good source of either protein or fat.
Another problem with many experts’ recommendations is that they excessively promote the importance of protein.
Nowadays there is an emerging consensus that large amounts of sugars are unhealthy. However, all they do is replace them with protein and completely ignore fats.
This is a serious mistake!
When removing sugars from your breakfasts, it is good to consider partially replacing them with some of the following healthy fats. It will even help you transition from burning sugars to burning fats.
Healthy fats and oils:
- olives and olive oil
- coconut and coconut oil
- butter made from unpasteurized milk from grass-fed cows
- raw nuts, especially macadamia
- egg yolks from organically raised hens
- avocado
- meat from animals raised on fresh grass
- palm oil
- unheated organic nut oils
So what to have for a healthy breakfast?
Again, I am not convinced that breakfast as such is healthy.
However, if you are in the transitional phase of eliminating it or for any reason want to continue consuming it, eggs from organically raised hens are an ideal breakfast food.
And the fewer you cook them, the better, because many nutrients in the yolk are heat-sensitive and destroyed by heat.
Therefore soft-boiled eggs are ideal. Alternatively, another option is to eat for breakfast the same foods that are commonly served for lunch or dinner. You can also make use of leftovers from the previous day’s dinner.
Why is it good to skip breakfast?
An interesting fact is that at the same time as breakfast the cortisol levels of the cycle usually peak. Cortisol is a stress hormone that affects insulin secretion.
If you consume sugar at the peak of such a cycle, it then leads to rapid insulin production and subsequently to a sharp drop in blood sugar levels. This effect is much more pronounced when eating in the morning compared to other times of the day.
If you are healthy, your blood sugar will not fall to dangerous levels typical of hypoglycemia. However, it can drop low enough to trigger hunger.
Therefore, despite general recommendations not to skip meals, skipping breakfast will help you keep cravings and the feeling of hunger under control throughout the day.
In addition, there are many other reasons to skip breakfast. We’ll talk about those soon.
First, however, it is appropriate to point out that skipping breakfast is a process, not a one-time action. You cannot simply stop eating breakfast one day and simultaneously gain all the other benefits associated with it the next day.
It is a commitment that will bring some discomfort for a certain time. The full transition usually takes a few weeks. After it is completed, your body’s metabolism will change, with burning fats replacing burning sugars as the primary energy source.
How to do intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting, also known as time-restricted eating, does not necessarily mean avoiding food for a long period.
Rather, it involves dramatically reducing the amount of calories or narrowing the time window in which you eat each day. Some sources recommend reducing calorie intake by half. However, you can certainly eat as little as 500 to 800 calories.
A second option is simply to eat only during a few hours each day.
An ideal window is 6 to 8 hours during which you consume food. That means each day you fast for 16 to 18 hours, which is sufficient for your body to switch into fat-burning mode.
The best part is that this works regardless of the number of calories you consume during the “eating” window! That window could be, for example, from lunch at 12:00 to evening at 18:00.
As mentioned earlier, it is a gradual process. You usually start by not eating three hours before bed. That gives you a head start in the intermittent fasting process.
Then, if you sleep 8 hours, when you wake up you already have 11 hours of fasting behind you.
The next step is to wait to eat as long as you can. Initially this may be one hour after waking. Gradually you extend the time by 15 to 30 minutes each day. And after a few days you will have your first meal around lunchtime.
The length of time it takes for your body to adapt to the new regimen will depend on how dependent your body is on burning sugars for energy.
The greater this dependence, the longer the adaptation process will take.
Modern research has confirmed that when you reach the stage of primarily burning fats, several health benefits will follow.
They mainly include these:
- Normalization of insulin sensitivity. This is key for your health because insulin resistance is a primary factor in almost all chronic diseases from diabetes, through heart disease to cancer.
- Normalization of the hormone ghrelin (the hunger-stimulating hormone produced by the stomach).
- Support of human growth hormone (HGH) production. It plays an important role in supporting health, performance and also slows the aging process.
- Reduction of triglyceride levels.
- Suppression of inflammatory processes and reduction of damage caused by free radicals.
- Temporary several-hours-long fasting also suppresses so-called mTOR signaling within cells. New research shows that this process plays an important role in aging.
Hyperactive mTOR signaling suppresses apoptosis of damaged cells, which can eventually lead, for example, to cancer.
For a long time there have been studies showing that restricting calorie intake in animals has extended their lifespans by up to 50%.
More recent research shows that intermittent fasting can offer the same benefits as permanent calorie reduction.
Permanent calorie restriction is often only possible temporarily, because the basic human instinct to drive away hunger can only be suppressed for a certain time. Its long-term suppression would be impossible.
Intermittent fasting and morning exercise
This system works particularly effectively with morning exercise.
The only exception when it is recommended to consume some food is if the workout is focused on building muscle.
Then it is good to provide the body with some protein so it has material to build muscle. Ideally, consume protein powder 30 to 60 minutes after exercise. Not too much — about 20 grams or one scoop is sufficient.
Also remember that our ancestors did not have access to food 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as we do today. It therefore makes sense to assume that our genes are set up for intermittent fasting.
It takes the body about 6 to 8 hours to burn through all sugar stores. After this period you begin burning fats.
However, if by regularly eating every 8 hours you replenish the body’s used sugar stores, it is then much harder for the body to burn fat.
This is because sugar is the body’s easiest accessible energy source.
Why bother burning fats when it can much more easily get energy from sugars?
But what is most interesting about the whole thing is that it not only shifts you into fat-burning mode and reduces hunger, but it also almost completely eliminates cravings for unhealthy processed foods.
When this happens, you no longer need a lot of discipline or willpower to stick to a healthy diet, because your desire for sweets simply disappears.
One could say it is a little miracle.
Is intermittent fasting right for you?
If you are already interested in healthy eating and fitness, intermittent fasting may be what pushes you to the next level.
However, you must be very careful with it, listen to your body and your energy levels. This applies especially to those who are overweight, diabetic, hypoglycemic, or if you are pregnant.
Keep in mind that a properly nutritionally balanced diet becomes even more important in this situation.
So you don’t need to focus only on the fasting itself, but primarily on what you consume during the time when you are not fasting.
Common sense suggests that fasting combined with denatured, highly processed food full of toxins will probably cause more harm than good.
Then you are not providing your body with the right fuel to thrive.
To achieve a nutritionally balanced diet, our products can help significantly (the e-book Nutritional Values of Foods, the Nutrition Calculator and the Vegetarian Guide).
A. Hypoglycemics, diabetics and people under stress
If you have hypoglycemia, diabetes or you are pregnant or currently breastfeeding, it is better to avoid any fasting or time-restricted eating.
And preferably until your blood glucose and insulin levels are normalized, or until delivery or the end of breastfeeding.
We recommend: Natural treatment for high blood pressure
Other people who should avoid this type of diet are those who live in permanent stress, have cortisol imbalance or adrenal fatigue.
B. Pregnant and breastfeeding women
In the case of pregnant and breastfeeding women, I do not think fasting is the right choice.
Your baby needs a lot of nutrients during pregnancy and after birth. There is no reliable research that justifies fasting during this period.
On the contrary, some studies claim that fasting during pregnancy is contraindicated because it can alter the breathing rhythm and heart rate of the fetus and also contribute to the development of gestational diabetes in the mother.
Fasting during pregnancy can even trigger premature birth.
Personally, I don’t think it is worth the risk. During this important period I would recommend improving the nutritional quality of your diet.
A diet rich in organic, biodynamic foods and foods high in healthy fats, supplemented with quality proteins will give your child a good start in life.
Also make sure your diet includes enough fermented foods to optimize both your microbiome and your baby’s microbiome.
How to build a lifestyle plan that works
Are you actively paying attention to your diet, have you removed sugars and highly processed foods from your menu and replaced them with healthy fats like those mentioned in the table above?
Then intermittent fasting can contribute even more to weight loss and offer additional health benefits.
Also, if you are strength training and have hit a plateau, this system can help push things forward a bit.
If you decide to try it, remember that you must not eat any food 3 hours before sleeping. Then start slowly in the mornings. Postpone the first meal a little more each day by a few minutes until you reach 16 to 18 hours without food.
During the remaining 6 to 8 hours consume your daily calorie allowance. And don’t forget to listen to your body!
Also be mindful of a tendency to hypoglycemia if it occurs. Because the longer you stay without food, the more dangerous balancing your blood sugar levels can be for you.
Conclusion
In my opinion based on experience, breakfasts are not the most important meal of the day as is often said.
No matter how you set them up, they can cause more harm than good.
Skipping breakfast can be the simplest way to switch your metabolism to a fat-burning mode for primary energy production.
Once you make this shift, your desire for unhealthy foods will almost magically disappear. And as a bonus, you won’t need extreme self-discipline or strong willpower to stick to a healthy diet.
What more could one wish for? Three birds with one stone — weight loss, healthy eating and no great self-discipline …
Will you try it too? If so, be sure to share your experiences with us and other readers.
