The Benefits of Breakfast - It's Not All Hype!

We all know that breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day. I, personally, have never been a breakfast eater - unless you count half a pot of coffee as 'breakfast'. I have always justified this aversion to breakfast by claiming that if I eat a decent breakfast, I just get hungrier earlier than I do if I do not eat breakfast. And this is true. When I eat breakfast, within a few hours I am absolutely starving. If I do not eat breakfast, I can eat a light lunch and be perfectly content.

Now, though, I am in my mid-forties, and my body is simply not reacting to normal eating routines the way that it used to. For one thing, I find that by midmorning I begin to get slightly lightheaded and stupid if I have not eaten breakfast. Chugging a quick glass of orange juice will temporarily rectify the situation. Sooner or later, though, I have to eat. When this became a regular problem in my life, I began to force myself to eat a light breakfast within an hour of waking up. The key here is that it is a LIGHT breakfast. I do not pig out on a stack of pancakes, bacon and eggs. Instead, I have a small bowl of cereal with skim milk, or a cup of yogurt and a piece of toast. As long as I am not breakfasting like a pig, I still get through to lunch time without feeling as if I could gnaw my own elbow off, and I also get through without getting all lightheaded and stupid.

Eating breakfast is all about refueling that blood glucose level - I have come to realize that it was the craving for blood glucose that was steering me towards orange juice. I simply needed that sugar!

If you are the well-trained dieter and are not eating anything after supper, then you are probably going for about twelve hours without refueling your blood glucose. Blood glucose - or blood sugar - is absolutely essential for brain function. No wonder the schools harp and harp on the idea of a good breakfast before school. Blood glucose also fuels our muscles.