Breakfast in the Mornings

I'm not a very good breakfast eater. Glass of milk and toast or a nutri-grain bar and I'm good to go until lunch. The problem is breakfast is an important meal. It'll set the tone for how much you snack for the rest of the day and how big of a lunch or dinner you might eat. It's also important when you're dieting and exercising to not let your body think you're starving it. That will make it harder to lose weight.

But I can't help it! I just can't think about eating so much food so early in the day. Blech. I don't know why it makes me nauseous to even think about eating more than my milk and toast. So I've been working on a strategy to beat my senses. Instead of having a full 8oz glass of milk I'm only having half. And instead of two pieces of toast, I might have one. Then I replace what I'm not eating with something else. A fourth of a cup of oatmeal instead of a half cup. An orange or a banana to replace my milk fix. This has been helping me to eat just a little bit more. Over time perhaps I can have a full-on breakfast.

Another thing I'm trying to do is eat slowly. I always go do something while I'm eating breakfast. So I'm not thinking about how much food there is. I also give my body time to adjust to the meal. One bite at a time while I check my email and get situated with my work. Sometimes it can take me over a half hour to finish breakfast but at least I've eaten it.

I also try to eat a little later in the morning instead of when I first wake up. It helps me avoid that nauseous feeling I get if I eat to much in the early morning. And by early I mean anytime before 10am. So after or around 10, I can generally eat a decent sized breakfast and be okay to go. If I'm hungry before 10 I'll just grab a nutri-grain bar or a banana to munch on with some water until I have my acutal breakfast.

These methods I've been trying have actually led me to eat less over all and here's why. Eating breakfast a little later in the morning starts a chain reaction for the timing of my meals throughout the day. I eat lunch a little later, like around 1 or 2 instead of right at noon. Then, I'll eat dinner a little later like around 7 instead of at 5. So I have a snack at 3 or 4 to tide me over. Go to the gym with Matt at 5, get back at 6 in time to cook and have dinner at 7. This is very important to me because of lot of our extra eating had been coming at night. Since we used to eat dinner at 5 we would have another 'meal' around 8 or 9 just before bed because we were hungry again by then. Nowadays we generally don't even have a snack before bed.

Now I understand most people with jobs and kids have their own meal schedules to stick to and can't really follow what I've done but I wanted to post it to point out that just a small adjustment here and there could make a big difference. And it's also important to snack to tide yourself over until meal time.