Many Americans start their day off with just a cup of hot coffee and some sort of junk food that they picked up on the way to work. This could consist of a donuts, tastycakes, egg mcmuffins, hash browns, pack of crackers, or biscotti. If you are they type of individual who gets up a half hour before work takes a 5 minute shower throws on some clothes and rushes out the door to work, chances are you have eaten some of the foods listed above. The problem with the foods above is that they are extremely unhealthy and start your day off with you trying to play catch up the rest of the day. There is the other third of the population that chooses to not eat breakfast or anything until their lunch break. This strategy is not any better than the first because by not consuming any calories your body will store fat for hours until you choose to feed your body some fuel. Many people think that the best way to lose weight is to not eat anything for breakfast and then just eat lunch and dinner. The problem is that if you use this strategy, you will overeat at the two meals that you do consume and then you will store it as fat before heading to bed.
A very small portion of the population chooses to eat breakfast and takes some time to prepare their own breakfast prior to work. The problem is that most of us are looking for quick meals that require a small amount of effort. There are quite a few products on the market that are marketed as good breakfasts. Some people like the frozen breakfast sandwiches because all you have to do is microwave them and out the door you go. These choices are like anything else if you don’t read labels or the fine print you could be doing more harm than good. One of the sandwiches I looked at was Jimmy Dean’s Meat lovers Breakfast sandwich, it consists of two sausage patties with egg and cheese on an english muffin. Upon looking at the label, if you look at the protein to carbohydrate ratio it is 17 grams of protein to 26 grams of carbohydrates. This is not a terrible ratio, however when you look at the total calories it is 480 and 300 of those are from fat. That means that almost 2/3 of the sandwich is fat. This would not be an optimal choice for a breakfast sandwich, not to mention that is almost 500 calories for just breakfast.
A better choice would be one of the Jimmy Dean Delights, they have less calories than the sandwich above. If you choose the Egg White with Spinach and Mozzarella cheese on a honey wheat flatbead you reduce the total caloric intake to just 160 total calories. The protein carb ratio is 11/22 grams which is a sufficient decrease from the sandwich above and there is only 40 grams of total fat. This means that even if you ate 2 of these sandwiches it would still be less total calories than just 1 of the Meat Lover’s sandwiches.
My suggestions to a healthy nutritious breakfast would be to wake up in plenty of time to enjoy your meal and prepare food for the rest of your day. Make sure that you read labels and look at things such as how many grams of protein and carbohydrates are in the food you are consuming. We live in a very rushed society where we are constantly having to battle the clock, make the morning your time to enjoy the food you like and maybe read the newspaper or just enjoy the quiet time alone while the rest of the family is sleeping. For more nutritional information or questions, please contact us at info@xspeedtraining.com