Break-fast (Breaking Your Fast)

Break’fast comes from breaking the fast (going for about 7–10 hours of not eating during the night). There are many that extend this period out longer and do not break the fasting period until lunch or dinner, and this can be okay if it’s not done every day, especially when we ate too much the evening or day before. I personally like extending this time to 18–24 hours once a week. This helps burn off the excess fuel in our system to keep our deposits to our fat cells in check.

You have probably experienced it or heard someone say that when they eat cereal for breakfast that they seem to stay hungry. This comes from the insulin spike (from a breakfast made up primarily of simple carbs/sugars). This causes insulin to pour into our bloodstream for glucose distribution. The insulin transports the sugars off and continues to look for more, thus giving us a sugar low causing us to have intense sugar cravings. This is the fuel we have told our system it can expect for the day when we fed it this for breakfast. When we try to get it to shift over mid-day, we are apt to feel shaky until our body shifts over to a steadier form of energy, complex carbs, dietary fat and stored fat.

For Breakfast: a breakfast primarily consisting of proteins and fats, gives you a steady fuel that will last and will help you avoid sugar spikes that lead to fat storage. If you want this benefit but want your diet to have a cholesterol lowering benefit, eat a little oatmeal or (drink a soluble fiber supplement such as BeneFiber) to force the body to pass the bile (bile breaks down fat) out through your waste, causing the liver to have to make new bile (our liver makes new replacement bile from cholesterol. This is the process that statin drugs try to mimic.

If you eat or drink something sugary, avoid any caffeine as this causes a sugar trap in your blood due to temporary insulin insensitivity caused by the caffeine. I personally believe this is where a lot of our problems with blood fats/cholesterol, diabetes, and excessive visceral (organ) fat are coming from.

We get to tell our body what energy it can expect by what we choose as starter fuel with our first meal of the day and having this meal, leaning more in the favor of fat and protein, gives us a solid, long, lasting energy source. It does not matter as much for someone that is going to be highly active after breakfast but very much applies to someone that has a desk job or is going to be inactive over the next few hours. A large amount of sugar and simple carbs are torture to a body that has to set still!

A sugary or carb loaded breakfast is like high octane fuel that burns out rapidly and dies, while protein, fat and complex carbs are like logs that continue to emit a steady heat for hours!