By Isabel Smith, MS, RD, CDN
A good day starts from the time we get up in the morning. Although there is a lot of banter about whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I believe that it is truly helpful in prompting healthy choices all day long. After all, if we start off on the right foot, it does help us to keep making good choices (not to mention, it can energize and motivate us too).
Think about it. If you start the day with a sugary pop tart, your blood sugar increases which makes you feel energized, but then it crashes leaving you feeling hungry (and possibly quite guilty for making that choice). Then you’re back to square one, looking for more food, and probably feeling like “what the heck, why not” when considering that bagel that’s staring you right in the face.
On the other hand, if we had started the day with a more nutritious breakfast, that guilt and tired feeling would have been replaced by a feeling of happiness and energy. At least that’s the way it goes for me!
Studies suggest that starting your day with health in mind can affect many things, including your continued choices over the course of the day, your focus, productivity, progress with your healthy eating efforts, and even weight management. Pretty solid reasoning!
Incorporating more produce into your morning can get you off on the right foot. Here’s a few of my favorite ways to easily add produce to breakfast:
Adding a juice or a smoothie to your morning is a great way to easily get more nutrients into your day, and in a relatively low-maintenance kind of way. If you’re someone who’s used to having toast and eggs for breakfast, and suddenly are now adding either a juice or smoothie, you just increased your produce intake in the morning by 200-300% (that’s pretty great!). The best part is that you can use this momentum to help keep you going all day long. The other part of this equation is that you can double batch the morning smoothie or juice and have the leftovers later on in the afternoon as a snack (this is what I personally do!). Hear it from our success story, Gavin, who lost tons of weight and reversed his health all by drinking one juice a day for breakfast.
Here’s a little more information about how I personally include my juices/smoothies in the morning:
Want to know more about adding juice to your day and how it might benefit you? Check out our Guided Reboot Program so that you can learn more about working with a coach to get more juice and produce into your daily life before, during and after a Reboot.