Best Breakfast: What Should You Eat?

Best Breakfast: What is it?

Today’s newsletter is a suggestion of Garry Adams of Crazy Networking (which is a great networking event, that you can check out on www.meetup.com/crazy-networking). We’ll be talking about what make the best breakfast. What should you have for breakfast? What’s the worst type of breakfast?

Before figuring out what the best breakfast is, let’s look at people’s most common breakfast choices.

Cereal with Milk

This is among the poorest breakfast choices available. First of all, it doesn’t fill you up, so you’re hungry again half an hour or an hour later.

Second of all, most cereals are laced with sugar (and if you’re thinking that your cereal doesn’t taste sweet, the effect on your body is just the same if it has lots of carbohydrates). After a 10-12 hour fast (which is sleep), your body’s stress hormone, cortisol, is at its peak. You briefly decrease that cortisol with breakfast (which triggers the release of insulin due to the high carbohydrate content), and then spike it again, because cortisol opposes insulin (insulin decreases blood sugar and cortisol increases it). This causes the body to cannibalize itself because cortisol is a breakdown hormone, and it breaks down muscle.

And even if we forget about the carbohydrates in the cereal, there are lots of things inside the cereal that aren’t healthy for you. Chances are if it’s on the ingredients label, and you have to be a biochemist to pronounce it, it’s not good.

Even cereals that are marketed as healthy aren’t healthy. A good general rule I picked up from Holistic Nutritionist, Shannon Kadlovski is that if something has to advertise how healthy it is, it’s probably not healthy. Yes, there are exceptions, but that’s the general rule.

And cow’s milk is a whole other can of worms. Some people can tolerate cow’s milk with no adverse effects. And in other people, drinking milk will drop their blood sugar like crazy. Milk contains a protein that is very similar to the human hormone insulin, and in some people (not all people), the body mistakes it for human insulin, and down goes your blood sugar. Once your blood sugar is down, cortisol rises to bring it back up, and you get cravings.

No Breakfast

After an overnight fast (by the time you wake up, it’s usually been 10-12 hours since your last meal), you haven’t gotten any food in you. Usually, your body burns whatever is readily available, but if your blood sugar is low (and if you haven’t eaten for that long, it is), your body won’t be using sugar for fuel. That’s a good thing and a bad thing.

The good news is that if your body doesn’t have sugar, it will turn to your other fuel source: fat. Usually, about 3-5 hours after a carbohydrate-filled meal, your blood sugar is low enough for your body to turn to fat as a fuel source.

The bad news is that if your body doesn’t have sugar, it will also turn to muscle, in a process called “gluconeogenesis.” If you break down that word, it just means “creating new glucose.” So your body starts breaking down muscle and converting protein (muscle is made of protein) into glucose. And by breaking down muscle, you are slowing down your metabolism.

Make a note of this because this is a clue to how to get both benefits with breakfast: continued fat burning, with minimal muscle burning.

Fruit Salad
Here’s a misconception: fruit salad is good for breakfast. It isn’t. That’s not to say that fruits aren’t good for you, but if that’s the only thing you’re having for breakfast, it has similar effects to the cereal. It will spike your blood sugar. And there is no protein coming in either (or very minimal amounts of protein).

Cigarette and a coffee

I know that you don’t do this, so do we need to even go there?

So then what’s a good breakfast?

A good breakfast is something that fits these criteria:

1. It’s filling
2. It’s nutritious
3. It maintains precious muscle (which is needed not just for metabolism, but for immune function and sexual function as well)
4. It tastes good
5. It doesn’t spike your blood sugar

I’d rather give you a principle than recipes. If you know one principle, you can make many recipes, so whenever you’re faced with the question of “is what I’m having for breakfast healthy?” just apply these criteria to it, and if it meets each one of the criteria (not just 3 or 4 of the 5, but all of them), then it’s probably a good breakfast.

So a great example of a good breakfast is some source of meat or fish, some source of nuts (but not peanuts), and some source of veggies and/or low-glycemic fruits (this includes the berry family).

The meat or fish give you protein that preserves precious muscle. The other benefit is that brain chemicals are made of individual amino acids (amino acids are parts of protein), so the meat or fish will help you with concentration and memory during the day. It also has plenty of nutrients that you can’t really get from plant sources, like iron, vitamin B12, carnitine, carnosine, zinc, and others.

The nuts are “smart fats.” They are filling, but they also help your immune system make chemicals it needs to defend itself.

The veggies and low glycemic fruits have great amounts of antioxidants, which are essential to your immune system. Plus, they don’t raise your blood sugar very quickly.

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Dr. John Dempster, ND Talks About Food Sensitivities

Sometimes you meet a professional that you can see is extremely passionate about his field, and has the experience and patient base to prove his or her effectiveness.

And when I meet such a professional, I want to pick his or her brain. This week, that professional is Dr. John Dempster, ND, and we chat about food sensitivities.

Here is our interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IYahE19YDE

Fitness Solutions Plus is hiring

We are happy to say that business is good, but we’re always looking to make it even better.
As part of our expansion, we have 2 openings for salespeople:

The first opening is for a door-to-door salesperson. This person would sell personal training on commission.

The second opening is for a salesperson for corporate wellness programs. We are looking to expand into the corporate arena, so this person would be responsible for finding the decision maker (this is a lot easier in small businesses), and selling our corporate services (which include lunch and learns, on-site personal training and small group training, as well as others).

So if you or someone you know is:

• An excellent salesperson
• Reliable
• Can work with quotas
• Loyal

Both positions offer:

• Great working environment
• Good pay
• Potential for growth
• Potential for professional development
• Networking opportunities

Please get in touch with us either by emailing us at [email protected] or call us at 647-271-8672.

Until next week,

Igor

647-271-8672

www.torontofitnessonline.com

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