Breakfast is widely considered the most important meal of the day
for a variety of reasons. Not only will it improve your cognitive
functioning, make you feel more alert and can even improve your mood,
eating breakfast is important in both weight loss and muscle-building
diet programs.
When you eat breakfast, you are literally breaking the fast you've undergone for the past 8 hours or so while you were asleep. During this time, your body was starved of nutrients and your metabolism was forced to slow to a near halt. This has important implications for people who are looking to lose weight, people on the opposite side of the spectrum who are actually looking to gain weight via lean muscle, and everyone in between.
Weight Loss
As I mentioned, while you are asleep during the night, your metabolism slows down to conserve the nutrients in your body. This occurs because your body is very good at not letting you starve, so when your body doesn't get food for an extended period of time, it starts to enter into a kind of starvation mode. This starvation mode will end as soon as you start eating a well-balanced meal, so time is of the essence. If you skip breakfast, you're also skipping hours of metabolic activity that will help you burn calories even when you're idle. Let your body do some of the hard work for you by making it a habit to eat breakfast within 30 minutes of waking up.
I've heard concern voiced by people who usually skip breakfast and think that eating breakfast will only add to the amount of calories they eat throughout the day. However, studies show that eating even a small breakfast (300 calories or less) will help to ward off hunger throughout the day, and even with an added breakfast calculated in, participants in the studies ate on average 200 calories a day less than those who skipped breakfast.
Muscle Building
The process of protein synthesis (which is essentially how your muscles build) occurs for approximately 48 hours after weightlifting. I've already discussed how your body is starved of nutrients during the night, but this has a slightly different implication for weightlifters. Moderate to heavy lifting causes micro-tears in your muscle fibers, the cause of soreness. With the proper nutrients, protein synthesis can rebuild these muscle fibers to create bigger, stronger muscles. However, if your body isn't getting enough protein throughout those 48 hours, protein synthesis cannot occur and your muscles will remain damaged. The bottom line: you won't get much stronger and your muscles won't get much bigger. If you skip breakfast, you're further depriving your body of the protein it needs to repair your muscles. Aim for at least 20 grams of high quality protein right away in the morning to reboot protein synthesis.
Start Small if You Need To
If you're completely new to breakfast, it's okay to start with something small, quick and easy. Look for a good balance of complex carbohydrates, high quality protein, and fat. Any good balance, even if it's small, will be far better than nothing and will boost your metabolism and muscle-building abilities.
When you eat breakfast, you are literally breaking the fast you've undergone for the past 8 hours or so while you were asleep. During this time, your body was starved of nutrients and your metabolism was forced to slow to a near halt. This has important implications for people who are looking to lose weight, people on the opposite side of the spectrum who are actually looking to gain weight via lean muscle, and everyone in between.
Weight Loss
As I mentioned, while you are asleep during the night, your metabolism slows down to conserve the nutrients in your body. This occurs because your body is very good at not letting you starve, so when your body doesn't get food for an extended period of time, it starts to enter into a kind of starvation mode. This starvation mode will end as soon as you start eating a well-balanced meal, so time is of the essence. If you skip breakfast, you're also skipping hours of metabolic activity that will help you burn calories even when you're idle. Let your body do some of the hard work for you by making it a habit to eat breakfast within 30 minutes of waking up.
I've heard concern voiced by people who usually skip breakfast and think that eating breakfast will only add to the amount of calories they eat throughout the day. However, studies show that eating even a small breakfast (300 calories or less) will help to ward off hunger throughout the day, and even with an added breakfast calculated in, participants in the studies ate on average 200 calories a day less than those who skipped breakfast.
Muscle Building
The process of protein synthesis (which is essentially how your muscles build) occurs for approximately 48 hours after weightlifting. I've already discussed how your body is starved of nutrients during the night, but this has a slightly different implication for weightlifters. Moderate to heavy lifting causes micro-tears in your muscle fibers, the cause of soreness. With the proper nutrients, protein synthesis can rebuild these muscle fibers to create bigger, stronger muscles. However, if your body isn't getting enough protein throughout those 48 hours, protein synthesis cannot occur and your muscles will remain damaged. The bottom line: you won't get much stronger and your muscles won't get much bigger. If you skip breakfast, you're further depriving your body of the protein it needs to repair your muscles. Aim for at least 20 grams of high quality protein right away in the morning to reboot protein synthesis.
Start Small if You Need To
If you're completely new to breakfast, it's okay to start with something small, quick and easy. Look for a good balance of complex carbohydrates, high quality protein, and fat. Any good balance, even if it's small, will be far better than nothing and will boost your metabolism and muscle-building abilities.
Convinced to eat breakfast? Learn how to build the perfect breakfast here: http://safehealthandfitness.blogspot.com/2012/11/build-perfect-breakfast.html. Check out the rest of my blog @ http://safehealthandfitness.blogspot.com/. Thanks for reading!
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