Cooking breakfast is a mission – but then so is cooking dinner. What’s the deal? Big Breakfast or Big Dinner?
To start the day and give you the energy to function properly, you need around 20g of good quality protein – something 2-3 eggs will provide. A small breakfast simply won’t cut it here – you’ll be less than energised, and be hungry by 10am, setting yourself up to fail for the rest of the day. Morning ‘fuel’ is required to get the engine running. It makes sense to get used to eating a big breakfast. And the building block of a fantastic, nutritious big breakfast is the humble egg.
The magic of eggs
One egg provides 7g of protein, to say nothing of the satiating fat and nutrients in the yolk. Eggs contain every vitamin except vitamin C and are particularly high in vitamins A, D and B12 plus a huge complement of all the minerals too.
This is why we consider eggs a real superfood.
They also contain choline – a brain food/builder, brain-loving DHA and the all-important B12 – not present in any plant food. Yes, they contain a miniscule 0.21g of cholesterol, but pffft! We know this is not a problem and eggs (plural) are good to eat every single day! None of that “one egg a week” nonsense! We tried that for 40 years without results. This is banting remember, we dance to a different tune. A tune that gets results and works for us.
The egg is seen as the ‘gold standard’ in high-quality protein, and one of the most versatile foods available, with almost all the goodness coming from the yolk (don’t ever eat just that bland white again!) Add to this bacon, sausage or whatever else tastes delicious, and you probably won’t give food a thought for another 5-6 hours, due to the amazing blood sugar balancing action eggs have. Blood sugar control is the real secret behind not being hungry. A big breakfast with a high protein and fat component keeps you full, so you won’t want to eat again – maybe till dinner!
Cooking a big breakfast IS a slight mission – but aren’t you worth it? Aren’t your kids and significant other worth that extra half hour? Once you get used to it, it becomes easy as your routine becomes slicker. If necessary, get up earlier or plan ahead – it’s like health insurance, and you’ll have boundless energy all day. By the time dinner comes around, after a hard day, you won’t need to sweat away over the stove for hours either. If you are doing the ‘big breakfast small dinner’ thing you’ll be surprised how at night you won’t want a big dinner.
On the flip side, skipping breakfast or having too small a breakfast will result in destabilised sugar levels and tiredness, snacking and lack of energy the rest of the day. The inevitable large meal in the evening you then feel you need to have, after a day of hunger, won’t do anything to help with weight loss, goodhealth or a good night’s sleep. There are times you’ll want to swop the two around – but for the most part the big breakfast will get your blood sugar and insulin doing all the right things for the rest of the day. Save big dinners for special occasions or celebrations.
Bottom line – a smaller dinner is a better idea than a big one – you don’t need energy at night when your digestive system needs to rest and allow all the body’s energy to be focused on repair
So a light supper or at least a smaller one – would be preferable to a large one. It’s been shown too that eating a large breakfast and smaller supper results in greater weight loss over the long term.
