The Most Important Meal of the Day My Foot

My entire life I have been fascinated with diets and health regimens.  I've tried most of them..sometimes to see if I could drop a couple pounds, sometimes to increase my general energy level, sometimes to feed a specific athletic goal, and sometimes just to see what all the buzz is about.  One diet I tried for an extended period of time was based on the "Natural Hygiene" philosophy that calls for lots of raw, whole foods in general, but specifically insisted that nothing but fresh fruit be eaten during the first four hours of the day.  While it sounds a little restrictive, I have always loved fruit, and see it as a real treat, so having a daily breakfast of something ripe, juicy, and seasonal was not much effort for me.  And a fruit-only breakfast was so in-step with my busy lifestyle...if I woke up late, I just ran out the door with a couple apples or oranges in hand.

The fruit-for-breakfast routine was so delicious and practical that I held on to that tenet of the diet long after I had abandoned other parts of the Natural Hygiene program that did not work for me.  Of course, on the days that I wake up a little hungrier, I might supplement that fresh fruit with a dollop of yogurt, a handful of nuts, or even a piece of toast, but basically I keep breakfast a pretty light affair and am no worse for the wear.  In fact, I'm generally happy with what my doc tells me when I'm in for a check-up and I could be doing a lot worse on the scale (despite all my indiscretions later in the day), so I have stuck with the fruity breakfasts over the years.

Until today.

Rare is the evening I am not a member of the clean plate club, but last night I just couldn't finish the last few bites of my salmon and vegetables.  No worries, thought I---salmon and vegetables will make a protein-packed breakfast that will get my work week off to a high-energy start. What could be better?  I even blended those last couple bites of salmon and veg with a scrambled egg to make it really feel like breakfast.

So, how did I like my big breakfast?  Not much, thank you very much for asking.  That's just too heavy a way to start the day.  I feel a little sluggish, really.

I mentioned my uncertainty about big breakfasts to a friend who chided, 'Well, you know it's the most important meal of the day!"  Yeah, my foot.

I'm not buying it.  I don't believe there is a single most important meal.  I think there are routines that work well with certain lifestyles and routines that are counterproductive.  I think the body needs a certain number of high-quality calories ("high quality" meaning packed with vitamins, proteins/amino acids, minerals, and fiber) per 24-hour day, but whether you get those calories at 8am or 8pm matters less than what recent dietetic dogma would have us believe.  In fact, I've always found great reasonableness in the Tarzan philosophy of total health:  "Eat when hungry.  Sleep when tired."  But for pity's sake, don't choke down a bowlful of cold, sugar-bombed cereal and see-through skim milk (so you have no fat to slow the uptake of that refined sugary crap and possibly get some use out of some of those substandard calories) at 0-dark-hundred because you think it's good for you.  Have a shot of real fruit or vegetable juice (the no-sugar added/not-from-concentrate kind) to break the fast of sleeping all night, or crunch on an apple until you "come-to".  Then eat a larger more substantive meal later, when your stomach is actually rumbling at you.

I'm not asking you to forgo breakfast entirely, but I am suggesting you try keeping it light.  Because if you big-morning-meal-eating people are all walking around with the over-full sensation that I've got going on right now, I can guarantee that that dull feeling is a message from your body to pump the breakfast brakes a little bit.

And if you think you are keeping yourself fit and trim with a toaster waffle and a half pound of bacon, think again:  As recently as September 2013, research conducted by the Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama found that breakfast habits and obesity do not have a direct link.  In fact, weight gain or loss is almost always a clear-cut matter of calories ingested versus calories expended.  You will expend a 150-calorie  fruit cup before you will expend a 500+-calorie sausage/egg/cheese biscuit.  So why not have two fruit cups?  You can have one when you wake up, just to get yourself going, and then have another one in another hour or two when you get legitimately hungry but maybe are not quite ready for lunch.  You get a bonus breakfast and still save yourself 200 calories or more.  And you won't feel like you swallowed an anvil along with your coffee.

Don't call me for brunch--I'm keeping it light from now on!