Practice eating breakfast now to get ready for the start of school.
Why?
- It may protect your heart. The reason isn’t entirely known, but breakfast skippers tend to overeat at other meals and snack excessively throughout the day.
- It may lower your risk for type 2 diabetes. A morning meal may help you avoid fluctuating glucose levels, which can lead to diabetes.
- It gets you moving. Breakfast eaters are more physically active during the morning than those who don’t eat breakfast.
- It may give you a mental edge. Breakfast may enhance memory, attention, reasoning, creativity, learning, verbal abilities and speed of processing information.
- It just might keep your weight down.
What?
For a power breakfast choose these three components and you are guaranteed to feel and do better all day.
- Carbohydrates: A high-energy carbohydrate fuels your body and brain for a busy day. Think cereal (hot or cold), bread, muffins, rolls, tortillas or rice. Choose whole grains (oatmeal, whole wheat anything) for an extra nutrition punch.
- Proteins: The usual missing ingredient, protein, is what you need to keep your blood sugar going strong until lunch. Think lean — a slice or two of Canadian bacon, a cup of milk, an egg, a slice of deli meat or cheese, nut butters, a container of yogurt, a scoop of cottage cheese with black beans, nuts or some leftover meat from dinner.
- Fruits: Breakfast is the perfect time to get a head start on your daily produce. Think fresh, frozen, canned or dried fruit (veggies count, too) such as pears, apples, mangoes, berries, bananas, oranges, grapefruit, kiwi or pineapple.
How?
- Get everything ready the night before. Set the table with bowls and spoons for cereal. Get out a pan for pancakes or a blender for smoothies. Slice up some fruit and cheese, cover and refrigerate.
- Pack it to go the night before. Save time and money by packing both a brown-bag breakfast and lunch right after your evening meal.
- Keep it simple: a sandwich, a slice of leftover pizza or yogurt with nuts will work just fine. Try low-fat yogurt topped with crunchy cereal and sliced fruit, turkey and cheese on whole-wheat bread, string cheese with whole grain crackers, a bag of baby carrots, trail mix made with cereal, nuts, dried fruit and a few chocolate chips, a nut butter sandwich.
Eat as well as you can as often as you can.