Eat Your Breakfast!

I think that just about everyone knows you’re “supposed” to eat breakfast.  That breakfast is the way to start the day.   It’s sort of like everyone knows they’re “supposed” to exercise, but not everyone does.

Until the fall of 2011 I was one of the countless, who despite what they know about the importance of breakfast, still don’t eat it.  I just about never ate breakfast…or sometimes I’d eat a piece of fruit or something small at my desk around 10am when I realized I was hungry, but that it was too early to eat lunch and so I’d call that breakfast. 

Beginning to eat breakfast at the start of the day was a sort of game-changer for me.  It really surprised me, too.  I don’t know why.  It seems so obvious.  Why start a trip on low fuel and see how far you can go before running out?  Why not just fill up the tank at the beginning of the trip to ensure things run smoothly throughout?

I feel livelier now, especially in the morning.  I have more energy throughout the day.  I don’t need a mid-morning snack and a mid-afternoon snack (which was more like a mini-dinner before real dinner) because my belly is full from the meals I should have been eating all along.  I thought I needed those “snacks,” but I think now that they were just my meals being shifted about in compensation.   Starting the day on full has made a huge difference.

 Memory can be faulty, and people can change, but as I remember it at least half of my immediate family was (or is) breakfast skippers.   We, in general, weren’t a breakfast eating family.  When I did have breakfast during my school days it was never much and never very varied—a quick bowl of cereal or a toaster strudel maybe—and then only if I woke up in time to fit it in before school.  (That was junior high and high school.  I don’t recall breakfast prior to that, but it is possible that when I was very young I did eat breakfast.)  As far back as I can remember though I’ve always been that way—a non-breakfast person.  I just didn’t feel hungry right away in the morning and by the time I was hungry lunch seemed close enough to wait for.

I don’t even remember why or when eating breakfast started for me.  But, I do remember my shock at waking one morning in this past January with my stomach growling for breakfast.  I wasn’t even awake for five minutes before I declared we needed to make breakfast because I was very, very hungry.  That had never happened before.  I’ve never been the type to be hungry right off.  Like most things though, with a little reconditioning I changed what I thought was just the unalterable way things were.

I started small, which is the ticket to success with lifestyle changes if you ask me.  I started with a smoothie.  It is fast and easy to make with variations as endless as your imagination.  It was easy to get down, even when I wasn’t very hungry.  It made me feel good to start my day with cups of fruit and milk.   If I didn’t eat another piece of fruit all day at least I had that.  Nowadays I have a smoothie with the rest of my breakfast, not as a stand-alone, but it was a great way to start conditioning myself to eat in the morning.  I like to mix it up now and have found a number of quick, easy, and satisfying breakfast options—oatmeal, hash browns, fruit, cereal, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes, yogurt, scones, waffles, vegetable hash, etc.

I can’t say I never skip breakfast.  In fact that is what spurred on this post.  A few days ago I missed it for no reason in particular that I can remember.  And all day I felt fairly famished.  It was like I was behind and couldn’t get caught up.  The result:  After I got home from work I ate a full meals worth of food…before even having dinner.   It didn’t feel good and I don’t think I’ll be doing it again anytime soon.  It was a good reminder.  We need those sometimes to help keep us on track.