Healthy breakfast: The best way to begin your day

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day as it is considered as the brain food. After a long fast of about 7-8 hours of sleeping our body need fuel to carry out the activities throughout the day. Skipping breakfast with an intension of losing weight is not a wise idea, as the fasting period increases making you feel hungrier. As a result you tend to binge in the meal which you first eat leading to over consumption of excess calories.

Thus ultimately you gain weight instead of losing. Many studies prove that children who avoid breakfast are not able to pay full attention in school hours, have more than desired body mass index, or have low iron stores in the body.

Healthy breakfast options –

* Having your breakfast doesn’t always mean that you can have anything and everything in it.

# A healthy breakfast is what one should emphasize on. Here are some of the breakfast ideas which can help.

# Cakes, pastries, chips, wafers, junk foods like pizzas, burgers, and rolls are high in fat and sugar. Avoid such foods that contain fat especially saturated and trans fat, butter, sugar and excess salt as these are some of the major factors for health problems.
Also these foods don’t fulfill the requirement of other vital vitamins and minerals which are required by the body and give high satiety feeling thereby delay the time for next meal.

# Choose healthy breakfast food options like low-fat milk, low-fat yoghurt, roasted grains and cereals, air popped popcorn with minimum salt, whole grain cookies, oatmeal cookies and graham cookies.

# Variety should be the key, try to include little from the entire food groups for example a very wise option for breakfast is breakfast cereal along with a cup of low fat milk.
You can even add fruits of your choice like apples, bananas, oranges or peaches in it for better palatability. Along with this you can also include a cup of sprouts or an egg or pancake, french toast or waffle.

# Vegetables like carrots, cucumber can be cut in different shapes and dipped in some flavored low-fat yoghurt serves excellent finger foods for kids.

Here's a few facts you probably didn't know about breakfast:

~ Breakfast eaters are able to lose weight faster than others, as eating regularly each morning boosts your body's metabolism.

~ A regular meal every morning ensures that you will not binge at lunch -- your stomach will already be half full.

~ As compared to those who skip a morning meal, breakfast eaters are more alert and work more efficiently -- their brains receive the required nutritional energy at the start of each day.

~ Children who eat a good breakfast each morning are known to perform better at school and are less hyperactive.

~ While fruit juice is considered an essential part of a good breakfast, eating a whole fruit is a better idea -- it will provide you with less calories and more fibre, which may be lost in the juice.