Your mother was right

Well, at least she was right when she told you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. She probably didn't know exactly why it was so important exactly. She probably told you that it's because that's where your energy for the rest of the day. That's partially true. Breakfast does give you energy, just not for the rest of the day. If you didn't eat again, I can assure you the stuff you ate for breakfast would run out eventually. Aside from energy though, there are a couple other reasons that it is incredibly important to eat a solid breakfast.

Metabolism

If you want to lose or not gain weight, maximizing your metabolism is extremely helpful. Breakfast sets the tone for your metabolism for the rest of the day. The analogy I have always heard is that your metabolism operates like a fire. The more you feed it, the hotter it burns. Now you need to give it quality fuel, but breakfast is what gets the fire burning from the start.

You haven't eaten in a long time before breakfast

This is important because while you're asleep, your body uses up all the calories you have eaten the day before. Now wouldn't it be great if your body just burned some of that body fat you've always wanted to get rid of while you slept? Sorry, that's not what happens. Your body starts to burn muscle tissue instead when it think's it's being "starved". See, your body still thinks it's back in the stone age when food was scarce and people didn't get to eat every day, let alone 3 plus meals. So when you don't eat, your body has no idea when it will get another meal. It reacts by going into self preservation mode. Because muscle tissue requires more calories to be sustained than fat tissue, your body uses the muscle tissue for energy instead of fat. This decreases the amount of calories your body needs to survive and keeps the fat stores for energy later, in case you still don't get to eat for a long time. This is a great feature if you're ever starving in the wilderness, but a real drag when you're trying to lose weight.

So that's a long way of saying that eating breakfast in the morning stops that process of your body using muscle for its fuel, which is a really good thing because if you're trying to lose weight, muscle tissue is a good thing to hang on to.

So, what to eat

Yes, almost anything is better than nothing, but I recommend something that contains plenty of protein, fat(yes, fat is ok), fiber and good carbs. Good carbs would include whole grains, fruits, vegetables.....really anything that doesnt contain a ton of sugar or flour that's not 100 % whole grain. Look out for anything that says anything about whole grains, but doesn't say 100 %. That's a trick from food companies that makes things look healthy, when they're really not. I'll actually write a whole separate blog about little tricks like this that food companies use.

So actual stuff that would be good for breakfast: eggs, bacon, pretty much any meat, milk, whole grain cereal, whole grain bread, peanut butter (preferably natural pb), oatmeal, fruit, nuts, and pretty much anything else that meets the criteria of the above paragraph. Stuff not to eat: dougnuts, pop tarts, nutrigrain bars (yeah, they try to act all healthy don't they), and most other breakfast foods you can buy in a box.

Here's what I ate this morning

That's two whole eggs, a cup of egg whites, 3 strips of bacon and a bowl of oatmeal. Keep in mind I weigh around 260 pounds and lift weights 5 days a week, but a similar meal with reduced portions of each would be a great breakfast. Not to mention delicious