Have you felt this before? When you eat breakfast, the rest of your day seems to fall into place. When you set an intention to nourish yourself early then it’s easier to eat a good lunch and dinner and find the energy to do your best work.
This is a common experience for women I work with. When you swap the coffee habit for food that gives you a hormone high you can get far more done on natural sustained energy at much less cost to your cortisol and insulin levels and ultimately your health. Balancing your hormones now reduces your risk of the big inflammatory diseases later in life – diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer’s.
As an adrenal junkie – I have had a lifelong love affair with adrenaline and cortisol – I know how hard it is look after my own needs in the morning. We think kids – getting them up, loved, fed and out the door – on a deadline is more important than eating. In fact many women don’t feel like eating early in the morning and that’s often a result of eating later at night. Caffeine then becomes the “go to” to get going: just the smell wakes up your limbic system, the emotional centre of your brain. But have a coffee without any food and your hormones are toast.
Adrenaline and cortisol rise dramatically, sugar is driven out of storage in the liver and insulin shifts into gear to drive that sugar into your cells. But you don’t burn it off sitting exhausted before the day starts, reaching for something sweet as blood sugar continues on a roller coaster of highs and lows. You feed your fat cells instead and feel heavy, cranky, tired and wired.
The science is pretty compelling for breakfast. Not only does it improve your mood, concentration and ability to focus it also helps regulate your hormones by balancing insulin, cortisol and leptin the huger hormone. Cortisol controls all your other hormones including your sex hormones.
So what’s for breakfast?
When you only have 10 mins or less make sure you eat a lower carb breakfast with protein 30 mins after waking.
- Instant miso soup with tofu
- Green smoothie with protein powder/spirulina/hemp, chia, flax
- Scrambled eggs with slice of GF bread
- Celery boats with nut butter
- Handful of macadamias/cashews/brazil nuts sprinkled on cottage cheese and fruit
- Quinoa flakes and pumpkin seed porridge with cinnamon
Eat to nourish yourself first and when you do it with awareness and gratitude you set your day up for success.
photo credit: Kristof Borkowski via photopin