One of the most important things in the morning is to hydrate. During the night your body has been working hard to clean up and detoxify. In the morning drinking at least one 8oz glass of pure water or warm water with lemon is critical to keep your inner body toned and help it to detoxify and alkalize. When the body is overwhelmed with toxins the weight begins to accumulate around the waist. Eating late at night also may have something to do with that too. But that is for another blog post.
Once hunger emerges you have to be prepared though. Having something to eat in the morning is important especially so that your energy and blood sugar are sustained throughout the day.
So what are you going to choose? Food as Fuel?
One of the hardest tasks in the morning is often getting yourself to eat something of substance when you are rushing to leave for work, for class, or to get the kids to school. If you are a person who often leaves the house without eating breakfast in the morning, you are taking a risk of crashing with hunger and of eating something that is grab and go which is often less than optimal!
It is equally important to take a moment to eat when you are hungry. Find that free moment to eat, hopefully before your lunch break. If you gave yourself a full week where you had time to eat breakfast and then went back to your normal routine the next week, you’d already see a difference in your body and your energy levels. That next Monday, your body would be aching even harder for some heat energy to get you through the day! You should not have to starve yourself! Eating a small meal at night (for dinner) can help to ignite appetite in the morning.
I think it is also important to note that when you eat, it should be as peaceful and as calm as you can make it. Often we eat more at night after running around all day just to get grounded and feel calm. There are other options to consider. I would love to hear about how you unwind after a busy day which exclude watching TV, drinking alcohol, eating food, or anything screen related. Please share on Facebook.
Keeping in mind the recent Olympic games in Sochi, I wanted to look up breakfast routines of the American Olympic athletes and came across a pretty interesting article in Glamour Magazine that tracks a typical training day of female Olympic athletes. It tracks the food that fuels them in their workouts as well as the workouts themselves. One of the women in the article is aerialist skier Emily Cook from Belmont, MA. Her breakfast consists of oatmeal with flax and nuts like almonds, walnuts, and pecans. Nuts contain a great amount of Omega-3 Fatty Acids that help brain development and function. They also give an athlete like Cook the protein she needs for her morning exercising and work-outs. For people who aren’t prepping for a full day of Olympic training, this can also be a good breakfast to have before you head to the office. Eating high quality fats for breakfast also helps curb hunger between the hours of 4-6pm.
Women who eat breakfast are statistically in better shape than those who do not. It’s true! If you starve yourself all day and eat a huge dinner when you get home, you are not working with your metabolism. Human beings all work so similarly and everyone is in a better mood when they are not hungry. This is the key to authenticity and finding that true happiness we are all hard wired to exude. Fuel your body in the best way possible and make time for yourself to do it. You are worth it!
This week, I challenge you to make sure you hydrate first thing in the morning, upon hunger, have a fully balanced breakfast every morning and eat smaller dinners. Take a picture of your breakfast fuel and tag me on Instagram as @Heleneskitchen!