Is Breakfast Impacting Your Weight Loss Goals?

Breakfast has a reputation as the most important meal of the day – for good reason. If you ask your Los Angeles personal trainer about the value of breakfast in relation to your weight loss goals, they’ll probably have a lot to say. That’s because breakfast is indeed incredibly important to your fitness and health goals. Here are just a few of the ways your breakfast habits can impact your weight loss objectives.

Healthy Habits

One of the many factors that impact your ability to maintain or lose weight is healthy eating habits – and breakfast is part of the daily healthy eating equation. “You must make healthy choices in the morning,” says Lalo Fuentes, CSCS, “eating breakfast sets you up for continuing to make healthy eating choices all day long.”

Research has found that people who eat breakfast tend to make better food choices over the course of the day and eat a healthier diet overall. People who skip breakfast, however, are more likely to skip over vegetables and fruits the rest of the day too.

Controlling Hunger

Los Angeles personal trainers are believers in the ability of breakfast to reduce hunger over the course of the day. That can make overeating easier to avoid because you’re not so hungry you’ll eat anything that comes out of a vending machine in desperation. Plus, it makes those donuts in the breakroom a lot easier to say no to.

Prolonged fasting increases your body’s insulin response, too. That can increase fat storage and cause you to gain weight. You’ll be far better off by keeping your blood sugar steady with a healthy and nutritionally complete breakfast in the morning.

Increasing Energy

Breakfast, especially a healthy one, fuels your body for what lies ahead. It also helps to replenish the glycogen stores that your muscles need for energy. Regularly skipping breakfast will reduce your performance and physical activity, making you feel sluggish and making your workout seem like a gargantuan task. And if you want to continue to work toward your weight loss goals, you have to have the energy to exercise!

What Should You Eat?

There are few guidelines you need to adhere to for breakfast in order to support your weight loss goals. Personal trainers recommend you generally aim for breakfast to be between 300 and 400 calories at breakfast. And you probably want to stick to the lower end of that range when you’re in weight-loss mode. Your personal trainer can help you figure out the right amount of calories for you.

You also need carbohydrates, but not in the form of sugary breakfast cereal or highly processed grains. Choose whole grains, vegetables, and fruit to fulfill your carb requirements along with lean protein in the form of dairy, eggs, nuts, or seeds. Throw in a few good fats and fiber to help you round your breakfast out. Both will help you feel fuller for longer and get you through until lunchtime.

Working with a personal trainer like Lalo Fuentes will allow you to have a more precise target for calories and nutrients in your diet to help you reach your weight loss goals. Just remember not to skip breakfast!