Food for Thought

Prime your metabolism to burn fat with a low GI breakfast
Breakfast jump-starts your metabolism, helps you concentrate better (no hunger pangs to distract you) and generally gets the day off to a good start. Forget the excuses. It’s easy to whip up.

There actually aren’t fixed rules about when to have breakfast. We all have different needs, backgrounds, lifestyles and morning rush hour timetables. Just do it, whether you sit down with the family, grab something as you head out the door, have breakfast in a café, canteen or at your desk, or make your mid-morning break your ‘breakfast’.

Yes, it’s that flexible, it’s just the first eating occasion of the day. However, research shows that eating breakfast first thing in the morning helps stabilise blood glucose levels, which control appetite and energy. The longer you wait, the more insulin resistant you may become. This means that whatever you eat next will require an elevated insulin response, making life harder for your beta cells and probably resulting in an elevated blood glucose reading.

What you eat for breakfast is what really matters. A healthy low GI breakfast can sustain you until lunchtime, prime your metabolism to burn fat and reduce your day-long insulin levels more effectively than any other single dietary change. It’s easy to put together. It just needs some:

• Low GI carbs. Why? They trickle glucose into the blood stream, fill you up, give you energy and can reduce your day-long insulin levels more effectively than any other single dietary change.
• Protein. Why? It’s the feel-fuller-for-longer nutrient, keeping hunger pangs at bay between meals. It also lowers the glycemic load (by replacing some of the carbohydrate).
• Fruit and/or vegetables. Why? A high fruit and veg intake is consistently linked with better health. If you don’t have some for breakfast it will be hard to achieve your daily target (2 serves of fruit and 5 of vegetables is recommended in Australia, for example)

Choose foods from each column and prime your metabolism to burn fat.

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