Proper and healthy eating is a very important part of our existence and it must not be ignored at any cost. A good and hearty meal is the sure key to a wonderful and healthy living and this has been a truth since time immemorial. However, ever since there has been this heightened craze for losing weight and looking lean and slim, people have somewhat started to devalue the importance of a sumptuous meal and there has been an increasing tendency to skip meals frequently. Now, the very first meal of the day is the breakfast that is today shrouded with a lot of myths and notions and it is high time that they are all busted. A breakfast, it must be understood is the most crucial meal of the day as it is the accelerator that kick starts your day and keeps you thriving on it for the entire day. An easy healthy breakfast can indeed make your day by giving you a very refreshing feeling and while at the same time making you feel light. How you spend your whole day and how your mood remains, is very much influenced by what you have had for your breakfast or if you had anything at all.

Benefits of a proper and healthy breakfast:

Just as getting up early in the morning is one of the healthiest habit a person can develop in his or her lifetime, so too, eating a good breakfast on time and eating it, for that matter consists of an important aspect of a person’s lifestyle and you can tell a lot about him or her from the eating habits of that particular person. An easy healthy breakfast in the first hour of the morning gives you the much needed energy to run the whole day. Some of the basic benefits of breakfast are as listed below:

• It helps in a better performance at work or school: A full stomach with all the right nutrients, it has been scientifically proved, can reduce irritability and also increases the attention level and attention span.
• It helps in improving the metabolism of the body: Since the body sugar is normally down in the morning after the longest eating gap through the night, a good breakfast provides the body with the energy fuel to get through the day.
• It helps in maintaining the insulin responses: Going without food for long hours leads to a hyper insulin response which can result in metabolic disorders and also weight gain.
• Believe it or not, it actually aids the weight loss process: As stated above, a breakfast is a good cause, just the reverse of weight gain.
• It helps in burning calories much faster: Unlike large meals, a small meal every two hour actually keeps the body working and the calories are burnt more regularly.
• It gets you the essential nutrients for your body: A good and right breakfast with your essential cereals, pulses, nuts and grains can provide your body with more nutrients, the very first thing in the morning, than you can even imagine.
• It prevents one from being grumpy: A good breakfast is like a sunny day and can actually improve your mood, preventing you from being a grumpy face all day long which might affect your work.
• It sets a good example: if you are a parent or an elder sibling, it is no doubt a great example to set to your younger one, especially when it comes to eating habits and a healthy lifestyle.

Busting the myth

These days there has been an overwhelming tendency, mostly among women, to lose weight for which they frequently tend to skip meals and the breakfast has become the most convenient and common target for that. Unaware completely of what or how this may tell upon us, we suffer under this notion that if we can give our meals a miss we might actually lose weight fast which, scientifically speaking, is rather ironical since the very opposite of it is the ultimate truth. While the common notion goes that eating less might make us go slim, science speaks otherwise, saying that we must eat continuously on a regular interval as it would curb our appetite and stop us from gorging a lot at a time, which is just the case when one intends to skip meals. In fact, the insulin that is secreted during calorie consumption after a long gap becomes more than the glucose level in the blood which is surely not a good thing for our body. Thus, missing meals can actually result in putting on weight in place of losing it since it surely leads to frequent cravings and then the quick fix fats foods are the only solutions. Naturally, one tends to gain weight faster. While an easy healthy breakfast can provide your body with almost quarter per cent of the total energy and nutrients required, skipping your breakfast food would not only deprive you of your daily cereals but also ring disaster for your body metabolism process. If you have no time for cooking healthy breakfast at home, you can find nutritious and healthy food in some popular fast food restaurant chains with the help of menu prices.

What best to have for your breakfast?

One thing that must be kept in mind is that the breakfast being the first meal of the day, it should ideally consist of a perfect combination of a number of ingredients like protein, fiber and carbohydrate which can be found in a variety of food items that includes different kinds of fruits, berries, whole grains, good fats and so on. Normally, the high fiber fruits like oranges, apples, maskmelons, papaya and watermelons are the best and most popular breakfast food choice to be included in a standard breakfast. Also, if you want to go for a variety sort of dishes then the soft and light idlis with sambhar daal, thukpas, plain and simple dosas with the green chutney, vegetable pohas or upmas, cornflakes or wheatflakes with toned milk, etc. are all rather wise choices and a treat to your taste buds too. These food items are not only easily available and quick to fix but are also light on your stomach and creates no mess to all. Another added advantage of these quick healthy breakfast items is that they are all low on their time consumed for eating or preparing.

What not to have for your breakfast?

However, if you love yourself and wish to enjoy a healthy and fit body then apart from the skipping breakfast mistake, another great criteria that you must remember for the sake of your health is never to have processed or fried and oily foods at breakfast, the first thing in the morning. It can tell heavily upon your system and might even result in some permanent health issues. Any sort of preserved food like meat, deep fried samosas, puris, pakodas, potato chips, French fries, sodas that are all loaded with tons of fat or junk items like cakes, pastries, left over meals or even refined food items like white bread or white rice are all a big no no and must be avoided at any cost. These items, if included as your breakfast food, might taste good to your tongue for the moment but the harm they can cause is simply beyond imagination. While the extra carbohydrate and fat will surely add to your weight gain, it can also cause damage to your heart, kidney functions and what not. Although your leftover food items might seem a convenient option for you in the morning but they are plain evil in comparison to the quick healthy breakfast options mentioned earlier.

How does it differ?

While there is usually a standard set of breakfast food already known, it does differ from one person to another, mostly on the basis of age, sex and body type or built, activity level and even height. What a kid or a teenager would require to have as a breakfast food would definitely not be the same as what an adult working man or woman would need to have. Again, what a sports person, be it a man or a woman would be needed to have as the breakfast food option would, no doubt, be completely different to that required for an aged man or woman who is probably above 60. Thus, as it may well be noted, whatever the arrangement be, a good breakfast is quite essential to every human being, irrespective of ny factor.

Thus, we must always make sure to eat our breakfast on time, eat right and never to skip it. What is more, we must also not allow those around us to develop such a bad habit either. A simple glass of skimmed milk with a half boiled egg, some fresh fruits, a green vegetable sandwich and some whole grains is, as you would know, the key to your healthy living and the secret to happiness since a fit body and mind is the best one.