How do you start your day? If you’re like most people, it’s with a quick cup of coffee and perhaps a donut or muffin. Big mistake! Breakfast is by far the most important meal of your day.
Skipping it or going for the quick fix only leads to problems, both short term and long term.
Studies show people who eat a good healthy breakfast start their day in a much better frame of mind. They think better and have greater energy throughout the day. And they also manage their weight more effectively – those who skip breakfast tend to eat more calories over the day.
What is the Healthiest Way to Start Your Day?
Starting your day with a typical American breakfast of bacon and eggs, hash brown potatoes or pancakes and syrup is not the way to go. It’s much too high in fat, carbohydrates and calories.
For many people, a big breakfast might have been a good idea a hundred or so years ago when it was typical to spend your whole day working on the farm, but that’s not typical these days. Today you’re more than likely going to spend most of your day sitting behind a desk.
So let’s rethink the modern menu to come up with the healthiest solutions.
A great way to begin your day is with a steaming bowl of high fiber oatmeal or a bowl of low fat plain yogurt, crunchy whole grain cereal and a banana or some berries, either frozen or fresh.
This type of high fiber breakfast is a super way to get your day off on the right foot and your body running smooth. It’s good for you. It tastes great. And it’s a lot more filling than a croissant.
Oatmeal or cereal is also easy to fix. Plus, it takes no more time than you would spend waiting in line at the coffee boutique or fast food drive-in. But stay away from those highly processed, highly sweetened, low fiber, “vitamin enriched,” “all –natural,” “multigrain” store brands.
You might as well be eating slices of bleached white bread soaked overnight in corn syrup.
Instead, shop for unsweetened 100% whole grain cereals that contain at least 3 or 4 grams of fiber per serving. These courser, rougher varieties may be harder to find, but they are available.
How to Choose Your Breakfast Cereal
Why eat more fiber? Making sure you get optimum daily fiber is essential for good health.
Getting enough fiber in your diet is absolutely critical to help you control high blood pressure and high cholesterol and for preventing heart disease and diabetes, two of our biggest killers.
However, most Americans are living on a diet of high fat meats, sweets, white bread and other highly processed foods. Only 5% of the population gets the recommended 25 to 35 grams of daily fiber. This is a major reason why so many Americans have serious health problems.
Fiber is not only necessary for protection against the prevention of diabetes and heart disease, it’s also necessary for constipation and hemorrhoid prevention and basic bowel regularity.
High fiber foods are also filling, which makes them excellent for healthy weight management.
So make a commitment today to start eating a healthy high fiber breakfast of oatmeal or some other whole grain cereal as part of your daily routine. It’s the high fiber way to start your day.
The team at CommonSenseHealth.com has put together a great high fiber foods list to help you make the healthiest food choices. You can follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/commonsensehealthdotcom.
