A Healthy Breakfast to Keep you Full until Lunch

Eating a healthy breakfast to keep you full until lunch leads to increased productivity and health. Do you ever eat your “healthy breakfast”, feel full for 2-3 hours, and wind up feeling tired, hungry, and unable to resist snacks by 10:30 or 11 in the morning? Often low fat, low sugar options top the list of weight loss recommendations.

I used to eat high carbohydrate breakfasts such as a store-bought muffin or bagel with only margarine to avoid the calories and “bad fats” that came with butter. Or I would just grab a banana and go due to being in a rush or to “eat light”. Often that would result in me feeling hungry and tired throughout the morning. This in turn led to me eating a bigger lunch with more indulgences, or eating unhealthy food offered in day-to-day life. Often options appear such as cookies, donuts, or candy.

How do I create a healthy breakfast to stay full until lunch?

However, getting nutrients into your body, as well as healthy fats and protein, is important. Many ditch their eggs and sausage and eat cereal for a low-calorie option. However, if you read the label of a standard cereal box such as Honey Nut Cheerios, you see whole grain oats, sugar, corn starch, honey, brown sugar syrup, salt, tripotassium phosphate, canola and/or sunflower oil as the main ingredients. This cereal has only 140 calories for one serving but has 30 g carbohydrates, 2 grams of fat, and 3 grams of protein. Most cereals are devoid of any nutrients your body needs and has few fats or proteins to make you full. This causes your body to spike in blood sugar, crash, and then leave you feeling hungry long before lunch.

The problem is not just cereal. I remember believing that high fat meals cause weight gain. To me, the solution was eating a smoothie with two tablespoons of chia seeds, non-fat Greek yogurt, a small portion of fruit, and spinach. I would then workout in the morning, grab the smoothie, and head into a full day of classes. This created susceptibility to picking up food as a snack between classes, usually something processed and high carbohydrate.

Why do I struggle to resist unhealthy foods during the day?

This crash can lead to seeing a box of donuts or cookies that someone brought into work, school, or other events and being unable to resist due to your body demanding something to balance your blood sugar. The food that you might have resisted a few hours ago or do not want in your body then looks dangerously good.

To keep from getting hungry, eat options that offer a good balance of fats, protein, carbohydrates, and are nutrient-dense.

What are the benefits of a healthy breakfast keeping you full until lunch?

• Decreased brain fog
• Ability to work longer and harder
• Comfort throughout the morning
• Better food and lifestyle choices
• Ability to perform more activities

Something to look out for in breakfast: seed oils. While a hot topic covered frequently on the internet, I want to mention them here. Any kind of natural, healthy fats are best. Think fats that have been around for many years: olive oil, butter, tallow, coconut oil, avocado oil, and lard. Preferably from good sources.

Seed oils include newer, industrialized oils that make them inflammatory, nutrient-deficient, and unrecognizable by your body. Your body cannot burn seed oil containing foods without an inflammatory reaction and cannot extract nutrients from them. Therefore, your body moves from burning body fat as its main energy source to sugar, which is less reliable and leads to weight gain. See here for more information. The list below covers how most seed oils within products are listed.

• Soybean oil
• Cottonseed oil
• Corn oil
• Rapeseed oil
• Rice bran oil
• Safflower oil
• Sunflower oil

These oils will be in cereals, bagels, bread, and other processed foods in the grocery store. They are toxic and unfamiliar to your body, along with other chemicals and preservatives.

What do I focus on for a healthy breakfast?

One solution is to make sure that the carbohydrates are slow releasing. This means that they do not raise blood sugar as quickly or as high. So, using limited amounts of sprouted or sourdough bread, which has a better glycemic index, and pairing it with something fat and protein-filled. Good options include some butter, an egg or two, or sausage.

Eating fruit is wonderful, but pairing the fruit with some kind of good source of fats and protein. For example, full-fat yogurt or cottage cheese stabilizes your blood sugar and promote fullness throughout your day.

Another solution for those who dislike eggs or other breakfast foods is to eat dinner from the day before for breakfast. Reheating your dinner that contains a mixture of meat, healthy fats, vegetables, and carbs allows your family to eat easily and healthily for breakfast.

I also enjoy making kefir or yogurt smoothies, making sure that whatever milk or yogurt I eat is full-fat. Including some fruit but not so much that it overwhelms the rest of the smoothie contents improves flavor. Something such as a clean, grassfed collagen powder or even an egg yolk (providing you get your eggs from a good, safe source) increases the nutritional and protein/fat content. Find my kefir recipe linked here.

Hard boiled eggs taste delicious egg lovers who need to prep breakfast in advance due to busy schedules.

How do I get my family on board with my changes?

If you are a wife or mother it is often difficult to move your family towards a healthier breakfast model. They may not be in the habit of even making time in the morning to eat. But, making breakfast delicious with butter, fresh fruit or full-fat milk leads to feeling better and satiated and making easy, on-the-go options creates a breakfast to look forward to. If a food tastes good and has demonstrable health benefits, my husbands gets on board easily.

Even sending kids to school with a fresh drink of full-fat raw milk is better than them leaving with an empty stomach and lack of fuel for the morning.

Eating a proper breakfast improves your cognition, stabilizes your blood sugar and hormones, and prevents mood swings and fatigue. It prepares you for a full day of work, school, or household activities. A healthy breakfast keeping you full until lunch allows you to give your best to your family, friends and co-workers.

**disclaimer-I am a physical therapist, not a nutritionist and cannot give dietary advice on chronic medical conditions. It is always good to seek out a health professional who knows you for advice.