One of my clients had just started week one of her Ignition program. Upon careful consideration of her current lifestyle, she sent me a message. “Hey Moren! I have noticed that I rarely have time for breakfast. I do my best to get lunch in depending on how much time I have but dinner is my main meal for the day. I have heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so do I need to start eating breakfast more and stop eating so much at night?”
I love week one of the program, clients experience this phase of self-discovery and it is exciting and shocking to them some of the things they learn. So when I got her question I was not surprised. See, the body follows very basic principles but every individual is different so it is important to understand your own body.
There are different food groups and each one provides a very specific benefit to the body. In general, the role of food is to fuel the body so that it functions properly. The really cool thing about your body is that it will always let you know how it’s doing, so paying attention to how you feek is a key to fitness success (key to Fitness success, totally made that up, but you get my point. Haha). But seriously, every time you exert energy, your body is burning calories and it relies on food for those calories. So the goal is to ensure that your body has enough so that it functions optimally but not too much food to where you just gain weight for no reason.
So if you are dragging through your day- low energy, it is an indication that your body is not getting what it needs. A big reason for that could be eating the wrong foods or not enough food. Sometimes, the sign is a headache to indicate hunger or thirst and other times you could may just find yourself in a bad mood. So is the solution always to have a mealfirst thing in the morning? It really depends on the individual and the more you pay close attention, the better you get at understanding what your body is trying to tell you. The same applies to late night eating. Heavy eating at night with no activities can cause the food to just sit and cause major discomfort. These could include difficulty sleeping, weight gain, heartburn, acid reflux and so much more but again it depends on who you are and how your body responds.
Now, you can make all kinds of painful rules to govern your eating habits but the most reliable thing to do is pay attention and I cannot stress this enough! Make deliberate changes and see how your body reacts. This will give you an idea of what works best for you then you plan accordingly. If you realize you would be better off throughout your day by eating breakfast, go for it and if you discover the discomfort that comes with eating late at night, make adjustments. It is so much easier to sustain changes that make sense to you than random rules that just sound noble. Reach out to me if you need any support and I will be more than happy to help out! Have a lovely day
