You've heard it a million times before (probably from your mother or a concerned friend) that you shouldn't skip breakfast. But with how busy your life is, sometimes it seems like that's the only way to get out the door on time. However, their concerns and badgering is actually backed up by scientific research – skipping breakfast is a bad idea for your body. Here are a few reasons why you need to add breakfast back to your day as well as some quick ways to make breakfast easier on your schedule.

Breakfast Gives You Energy

Your body is a sort of machine that needs the right fuel in order to keep running. When you start off your day with an empty tank, you're going to notice a difference in your performance. As your body sleeps at night, it is using up the foods from the day before, digesting them, and emptying out your system. So, when you wake up, you need to replenish your body in order to get your morning and your day off to the right start.


The cells in your body require nutrition to function at the most efficient levels. Because energy is created through the processing of nutrients, not providing nutrients to your body is causing you to feel tired and weak. But if you give your body a mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, you will allow your cells to become nourished again, allowing them to complete the process of respiration. This is the process in which they convert food to energy. Without the food, this just isn't possible.

Breakfast Helps You with Weight Loss

While it might seem like skipping a meal adds up to a larger calorie deficit and thus weight loss, this actually isn't the case. Study after study has shown that skipping breakfast can actually lead to weight gain. This is due to the fact that the person skipping the meal begins to think that they can eat more throughout the rest of the day because they didn't eat breakfast. While this is slightly true, the amount that the person eats to compensate for their breakfast calories is usually far more than breakfast alone would have been.

In addition, when you are trying to lose weight, you want to keep your blood sugar levels steady in order to keep your hunger levels steady. But when you skip breakfast, this doesn't happen as easily. You start of the day in a blood sugar deficit, which can lead to hunger pangs and eating binges.

There is also research indicating that skipping meals can actually slow your metabolism and cause you to hold onto extra weight. Studies are showing that people that eat breakfast have an easier time losing weight, even if they are eating more calories than they used to eat. Some speculation is that the additional calories in the morning are kick-starting the metabolism for the rest of the day.

Eating Breakfast Helps Your Focus

Since you already known that foods affect your body on a cellular levels, it's not surprising that your brain and focus can also be affected by a lack of nutrition. If you don't start off your day with a healthy breakfast, you can find yourself unfocused and tired, making that morning meeting impossible. You can't steady your brain or process information as quickly because your body simply isn't nourished enough to handle such complicated tasks.

Your brain operates by having messages transmitted to and from the body. When you nourish your body with breakfast, these messages are relayed more quickly and easily. This means that you can keep your attention span for longer periods of time while also processing the information that you are receiving during the rest of the day.

Breakfast and the Way You Workout

When you workout, your muscles need fuel in order to keep up their energy as well. If you workout first thing in the morning, breakfast is crucial in several ways. For one, since you are waking up with nothing in your body, if you workout immediately after arising, your performance isn't going to be as strong as when you have something in your stomach. It doesn't have to be anything heavy, but your body needs some calories and nutrition in order to have some energy.

After you workout in the morning, refuelling your spent muscles is also essential. In fact, it's best that you split up your breakfast to before and after your morning workout for the best results.

If you workout in the afternoon or evening, breakfast is also an essential part of your day. When you don't have breakfast in the morning, you lose out on a steady supply of energy in your body, which can continue to affect your muscles long into the night. Your blood sugar levels go up and down instead of remaining normal and steady.

Ideas for Quick Breakfasts

But the main reason that most of us don't eat breakfast is because we just don't have time. To help get rid of this excuse, here are a few simple breakfast ideas that you can use to start your day off right:

• Peanut butter and low sugar jam on whole wheat toast
• Cereal and skim milk with a banana
• Energy bar with a piece of fruit
• Fruit Smoothie – made with yogurt, skim milk, fruit, ice, and protein powder
• Leftovers from dinner the evening before
• Almonds, berries, and cottage cheese

Try to include one fat, one protein, and one carbohydrate in your breakfast meal for the ideal combination of nutrition.

It does get easier to eat breakfast, even if you're not used to doing so. For many people, it's a question of not always being hungry in the morning, so they simply don't eat. But once you begin to feel the difference that breakfast can make, you will begin to see just how right the research has been. Your friends and your mum were right – so, don't skip breakfast.

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