Heart Attacks, Hidden Gluten, and COPD
ate a balanced 700-calorie breakfast over a 12-week period lowered their blood sugar and blood pressure two times more than people who ate a 200calorie meal. They also lost an average of 19.2 pounds and had lower levels of ghrelin, the “hunger hormone.”
6. Pile on the produce.
“I advocate for plants in every meal,” Shapiro says. She recommends sneaking in a serving of fruits or veggies by cooking tomato or spinach in your eggs, adding avocado to your breakfast sandwich, or eating half a banana with toast.
7. Always pick a protein.
A review of studies in the journal Advances in Nutrition found that for breakfast to reduce hunger later in the day, it needs to be high in protein. Shapiro recommends eggs, nut butter, or cottage cheese (which is generally a little lower in sugar than yogurt) to give your breakfast a protein boost.
8. Embrace fat, even dairy fat.
Fat isn’t the main enemy to weightloss success—sugar is. “Fat is digested slowly by the body and helps decrease the rate at which we digest and break down carbohydrates,” says Moss. That means healthy fats keep you full and squash cravings. At least one quarter of the calories in your breakfast should come from fats, mostly the healthy mono- and polyunsaturated kind. What’s more, milk is usually fortified with vitamins A and D, which are fat soluble. So you need some fat (at least 1 to 2 percent) to help your body absorb those nutrients more efficiently.
9. Calorie-control your smoothie.
A smoothie might seem like a healthy option, especially when made from whole fruits rather than fruit juices. But be careful of a fruit free-for-all, because the calories and sugar add up when you toss in too much, Shapiro says. Just one large banana, for instance, has 121 calories and 16.6 grams of sugar.
10. Look for larger flakes ...
A little-observed fact about cereal: The smaller the flake size, the more efficiently it fills a bowl. That means
you’ll get more small-flake cereal by weight in a given bowl than you will with larger flakes, and that could lead to overeating. In fact, a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics revealed that even though participants poured themselves a slightly lower volume of cereal when the flakes were small, they still consumed more cereal by weight compared with a bowl containing bigger flakes.
11. ... and sneaky sugar.
Since cereal can be a surprising sugar bomb (depending on the brand, more than half of your calories could come from sugar), it’s wise to limit how much you eat. You should also look for a brand with at least five grams of fiber and no more than eight grams of sugar per serving, says Shapiro. (Examples are Shredded Wheat Original Big Biscuit, Kashi GOLEAN, and Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes.) Yogurt can be a problem too. Nonfat yogurts are often loaded with sugary syrups or artificial sweeteners. Instead, try an unsweetened low- or full-fat version and add fresh or dried fruit or some honey.