Let Them Eat Cake…For Breakfast?

Okay, so I’m not really giving everyone permission to eat cake for breakfast (peaked your interest though, right?), but I am going to explain why breakfast needs to be the biggest meal of the day–and why your breakfast should include something sweet plus plenty of protein, especially if you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a recent weight loss.

 

Health statistic: 78% of people who are successful in maintaining weight loss eat breakfast.

 

Why is breakfast so important?

As the first meal of the day, breakfast sets your day up for success; it signals to your brain that you are no longer starving from your night’s fast and tells all those hunger hormones to subside. You’re less likely to overeat the rest of the day if you eat breakfast, because there’s no need to crave food when your body feels nourished and satisfied.

 

What should be in my breakfast?

Protein keeps you full the longest, more so than carbs or fat, and should make up a large portion of your breakfast. But carbohydrates are extremely rewarding to your brain, so constantly restricting them can result in a withdrawal effect, which causes increased hunger hormones while you’re cutting back calories that will persist even after you stop counting. No good!

 

In a study where people successfully lost and maintained weight, breakfast was their highest calorie meal of the day; and with breakfast they were given something sweet in the form of carbohydrates. The study had two groups on a calorie restricted diet: one low-calorie, low-carb, moderate-protein group, and one high-calorie, high-carb, moderate-protein group. While both groups lost a similar amount of weight during the study, the group who ate a breakfast higher in calories and carbs had continued weight loss success even after the study ended; whereas the group who ate a lower calorie, lower carb breakfast regained much of the weight back that was lost during the study.

 

Participants in the high carb group chose from a variety of sweet items like doughnuts, cookies, or chocolate to eat as a portion of their breakfast, but they were only given an appropriate serving by the researchers. For a lot of people (including me) those type of foods can be trigger foods and hard to stop eating; and let’s face it, there’s nothing healthy about a doughnut.  So, I say we can do one better than the study with the same end result: eat something sweet for breakfast that’s also healthy–it’s a win all around. Since our brain wants satisfaction from carbs, make it happy with good-for-you carbs. Your brain won’t even know that the cheesecake smoothie below is secretly nutritious.

 

 

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{Strawberry Cheesecake Breakfast Smoothie}

The oats and almonds act as a healthy makeshift crust for this smoothie, which is combined with cream cheese and strawberries for that classic cheesecake taste. Cheesecake for breakfast–don’t mind if I do.

 

Servings: 1

 

Ingredients

1/4 cup dry quick oats

10 almonds

1 cup skim milk  (almond milk would be good too)

3 oz fat free cream cheese

5 or 6 ice cubes

1 1/2 cups frozen strawberries

1 tbsp honey (or sweetener of choice)

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp cinnamon

 

Directions

1. Combine oats and almonds in blender, blend into a powder.

2. Add milk, cream cheese, ice, strawberries, honey, vanilla, and cinnamon. Blend until smooth.

 

Nutrition info: 475 calories, 28 g protein, 70 g carb, 9 g fat (1 g sat fat), 10 g fiber

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