The Weekly Sugar Rush - what is the right thing to eat for breakfast?

Are you a breakfast eater? Do you struggle to eat it? Not bothered by it? There is so much conflicting advice out there as to what to do, but the key is to understand how the first thing you eat affects you.

So lets break breakfast down.

The first thing you need to understand is that when your stomach is empty in the morning it is full of hydrochloric acid - designed to breakdown protein not carbohydrate. So what matters is not what time you eat, it is WHAT you eat first that is key.

If breakfast is carb heavy, glucose will be released quickly into the blood stream and result in high insulin and a blood sugar roller coaster for most of the day. This often manifests as an inability to control cravings, constant hunger or mindless grazing.

Plus high insulin makes it harder to burn fat for fuel, so if weight loss is a goal what you eat first thing in the morning is key to long term success.

Here are 5 things not to eat:
1. A latte and a muffin from a coffee shop on the way to work
2. Toast with Honey on because it is quick
3. A bowl of bran flakes/weetabix because they are 'high in fibre'
4. A calorie controlled breakfast biscuit to stay in a deficit
5. Nothing

All of these will cause an insulin spike, leading to what feels like a lack of willpower later in the day as the cravings kick in.

So if today you were starting over and being good, and now you are craving something sweet, and it doesn’t feel like anything you do to try and manage your weight works, go back and look at what you ate for breakfast. Because that is what is leading to high insulin levels and stopping the weight loss for most menopausal women.

I will be running a series of workshops called 'Midlife weight loss 101' designed specifically to help women in perimenopause and menopause understand how to eat for easy weight management. Keep an eye on the webpage for more details.