8 tips for healthier breakfast habits
Some people claim that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. While that statement is hard to prove or disprove, breakfast is an important meal for most people. It’s also a prime opportunity to improve your habits, eat healthier, and eventually feel better about yourself.
Eating healthier foods and beverages for breakfast can set you up to feel great (and full) the rest of the morning – or even the rest of the day. But forming and maintaining those breakfast habits can also be challenging.
What Is “Healthy?”
First off, what is “healthy,” exactly? The population is plagued with nutrition misconceptions, so it’s no wonder why healthy is so hotly debated.
For our purposes, a “healthy” breakfast is one that contains a mix of different foods, providing you with a diverse assortment of different vitamins and minerals. It should also have an appropriate balance of different macronutrients, with complex carbohydrates, protein, and unsaturated fats being the best choices.
Healthy breakfasts should also be calorically appropriate, with reasonable portion sizes that aren’t too big, and they should reduce junk foods and foods that are high in sugar with little to no nutritional value.
Eggs, oatmeal, fruits, meats, and whole grains are great choices for healthy breakfast meals. but how can you make sure you eat foods like this every day?
Tips for Healthier Breakfast Habits
These tips and strategies will help you form and reinforce good breakfast eating habits.
1. Wake up earlier. Try to wake up earlier. If you’re not a morning person, this may be difficult for you, but you can still make progress in this area by trying to wake up just five minutes earlier each day. After a couple of weeks, you'll be getting up more than an hour earlier than you were before, which should be plenty of time to prepare a complete, healthy breakfast for yourself. As an added bonus, the extra time you have in the morning will make you feel less rushed and therefore less stressed.
2. Be consistent. The key to forming any habit is consistency. If you do something every day, no matter what, it's only a matter of time before it becomes such an ingrained habit that it's hard to quit. Make preparing and eating a healthy breakfast one of your highest priorities for the first several days of pursuing your new goal; if you can do it every day for a few weeks, the habit will inevitably stick.
3. Do some prep the night before. It's tough to find enough time to cook a full breakfast for yourself every day. If you find your mornings pressed for time, even after waking up earlier, consider doing extra prep work the night before. For example, you can mix the pancake batter or hard boil some eggs.
4. Drink a glass of water immediately. When focusing on food and nutrition, it's easy to neglect the importance of hydration. That's one reason why you should attempt to drink a glass of water, in full, immediately after waking up. The surge in your hydration levels is going to make you feel more energetic and healthier, and it will set the stage for the rest of your breakfast.
5. Diversify your food choices. It’s important to eat a varied, balanced diet so you get access to all the vitamins and minerals you need. It's tempting to eat the same thing for breakfast every day, especially if you love what you're eating, but it's usually better to diversify your food choices. Branch out and try new things!
6. Have both intensive and easy choices on hand. Some things are easier to make than others. It's much simpler to boil an egg than it is to make an omelet from scratch. Because some of your mornings are going to be more rushed and more stressed than others, it's a good idea to have both intensive and easy choices on hand. That way, you'll never let simple inconveniences get in the way of your healthy eating.
7. Get the family involved. It's much easier to keep your good habits if your family members are also following those habits. Try to get the entire family involved in healthier eating and breakfast meal preparation.
8. Reinforce your good habits. Finally, make it a point to reinforce your good habits. If you consistently eat healthy for several weeks, reward yourself in some significant way.
Changing your breakfast habits may not have the power to completely transform your life, but it will make a meaningful difference in your health and wellbeing as long as you stay consistent with those habits. And if you can’t do everything on this list, don’t fret – even small habit changes can add up to a healthier lifestyle over time.