Solving The Breakfast Conundrum!

Hey everyone, it's Dr Angela here today to talk to you about the importance of breakfast.

I'm sure you've heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day - and from a scientific point of view, that’s true. We've all heard that, but breakfast can be a real conundrum because if you eat the wrong breakfast, it can really stall your weight loss efforts.

Not all breakfasts are created equal!

So I wanted to clear that up for you today. I’m going to spill the beans about how to actually make breakfast work FOR you and not AGAINST you in your weight loss journey. That's what we're going to talk about today - how to avoid the breakfast conundrum and how to make sure that you're eating a breakfast that's going to support you in your weight loss journey instead of hinder you in your weight loss journey.

If you don't already know me, I'm a board certified obesity medicine physician practicing in Olympia, Washington, and I have an online program called Journey Beyond Weight Loss designed to help people lose weight and keep it off.

So let's talk about breakfast. Here's what I used to do. I had a bagel and orange juice every morning. I'm patting myself on the back three times over because first of all I'm eating breakfast when most people skip. I heard it... "Got To eat breakfast." I'm eating low fat and I'm getting plenty of vitamin C. I thought that what I was doing was really, really good. I have a lot of patients who will eat yogurt and a banana for breakfast thinking that's a really healthy breakfast or they'll eat oatmeal for breakfast, thinking that that's a really healthy breakfast.

I want to explain the science behind why MY breakfast, in particular, wasn't going to serve me. I need to tell you a story about insulin. You may have heard me talk about insulin before. Insulin has three jobs.

Insulin's first job is to bring your blood sugar down after you've eaten.

Insulin's second job is to make fat and it's particularly good at making visceral fat, which is belly fat, which is the fat that's dangerous! That belly fat we all hate. That’s insulin fat. So my low fat bagel has just done the OPPOSITE of what I wanted, it’s caused me to GAIN fat!

Its third job is to prevent fat burning.

Insulin is really precise and really good at its job. It's managing your blood sugar in a very narrow range. And basically - thats about one and one-fourth teaspoons worth of blood sugar in the entire bloodstream. So it's very precise, very good at its job. When you eat a lot of carbohydrates, your insulin levels are going to shoot up, the pancreas is going to get ready and shoot out enough insulin to bring your blood sugar back down.

So here's what I was doing. My bagel is full of carbohydrates, turning instantly to blood sugar - cranking my blood sugar up, sky high. The orange juice? Same thing! Now my blood sugar is high! Guess what? My body is going to produce a ton of insulin to bring my blood sugar back down and that's going to make visceral fat.

So basically - what was happening is - I was doing the exact opposite of what I was hoping I was going to be doing by eating my low fat bagel and orange juice for breakfast!

Now, unfortunately, the problem gets worse - because guess what happens a couple of hours after I've eaten that bagel? Well, my insulin has shot up sky high and now I have a blood sugar crash. So how do you feel when you have a blood sugar crash? I can tell you what I was feeling. I couldn't really focus on my work. I was feeling distracted. I was tired. I wanted to go take a nap and I was having cravings.

I was working at the state health department at the time. Usually somebody would have brought in some muffins or some donuts. There would be some sort of treat like that in the break room or maybe some leftover cookies. So I go off and I get something like that. Now, all this time I'm beating myself up. I'm thinking I have no willpower. I want you to understand when your blood sugar is low, you need those carbohydrates to bring your blood sugar back up. And so there's no willpower issue going on here. This is survival. Okay?

My blood sugar would go back up again and I'd feel better, but guess what? A bunch of more insulin was getting produced and then a couple hours later, again, another low. So all day long I'm having these blood sugar ups and downs, ups and downs, lots of insulin being produced. Anytime my blood sugar is high, making visceral fat, every time my blood sugar's low, I'm having cravings. Can you see how that all started with the wrong breakfast? Is any of this ringing true for you? Let me know in the comments. The blood sugars can go up and down like crazy all day, causing cravings and weight gain, if you eat the wrong breakfast.

So here is one thing that you can do that will really, really help you and that is to eat the right breakfast. You want to eat a breakfast that's not gonna cause any insulin production. What does that mean? Well, here's more science for you.

The science is showing that when you go to sleep at night, the first thing that your body does is it uses up your glucose stores in your liver for energy. Remember - you're not eating. So it's got to find energy all night long to keep your body functioning. Second thing that it goes to is 'fat' stores. The last thing that it goes to, and by the time you wake in the morning, it's burning protein for energy. Well, where do you suppose it's going to get the protein from? If either you haven't eaten breakfast or you haven't eaten any protein for breakfast, it's going to get it from your muscles. This is why we oftentimes see muscle wasting when people's insulin levels are running high because they're eating low fat food and they're starving themselves. Muscles are your fountain of youth. Muscles keep you young. You do not want to be burning muscle. Sooo --- what if you fed your body some protein to burn instead of your muscle?

What you want to do is you want to make sure that you eat protein for breakfast. A huge, HUGE key here. Protein for breakfast!

What kind of protein? Any kind of protein, any kind of protein whatsoever is awesome. So eggs for breakfast, that's what we usually think of here in the States as a good breakfast protein. But any kind of protein - it could be Greek yogurt, could be cottage cheese, could be any kind of cheese, it could be salmon, it could be chicken, it could be pork, it could be any kind of a protein! I would recommend against processed meats because those are associated with colon cancer. So you want to avoid bacon and that kind of thing for breakfast except as an occasional treat. You could do a protein shake… but you have to watch the sugar on those. And you have to be careful not to make fruit smoothies, because again, you don’t want to jack up your insulin levels first thing in the morning.

But basically that's it! I would encourage you to have some protein tomorrow morning. I’m going to post in the comments a very popular egg, cheese, and cauliflower breakfast casserole recipe. So yummy and very filling that will help you get your self off on the right foot. You just make it once and then you either refrigerate it or freeze it, and you've got breakfast for the whole week. Isn't that awesome?

I'm here to help you and answer any questions!

If you're new to me and you don't know that much about me, I have an awesome freebie that you can download and it's called the THREE Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes. I'll put a link to that in the comments as well. Make sure you download that and I will see you next week.

Take care and To Your Health! Bye bye!

Dr. Angela

Breakfast Casserole Recipe

Avoid The 3 Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes