If you are struggling to lose weight and fat from your body chances are you are either skipping breakfast or eating the wrong fuel.

Firstly skipping meals especially breakfast eventually slows down your metabolism. This is the rate your body burns calories and from a dieter’s point of view is the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

What is the wrong fuel? Cereals, toast, fruit and fruit juices are the most common.

I can her people screaming why? After all aren’t some cereals like porridge oats good for you? And bananas and fruit juices are health foods right? Yes and mainly no. Yes fruit is a natural food and can have health benefits but can be disastrous when eaten alone for dieters. I’ll tell you more about this next time.

The other commonly consumed foods like toast, breakfast cereals (including porridge) and fruit juice all have one thing in common, they are all carbohydrates. That is their main problem for dieters; if you delve deeper the other issues are the added ingredients that accompany these highly marketed foods. The processing involved in making these foods strips them of their nutrients; they rely on added synthetic ingredients to compensate for this.

If you think fruit juice is exempt from this think again, the fruit juice you can buy in supermarkets is pasteurised. The pasteurisation process kills the goodness in the product. Tip: whenever you see foods with added ingredients (like added vitamins) plastered over the packaging it normally means there is nothing good in it for you to start with.

With this information it appears most of the population is eating nutrient poor foods at breakfast. Not only this but the foods are the wrong kinds of fuel for the majority of dieters. I’ve not forgotten about yogurt, the mass bought yogurt is made from pasteurised milk and contain added sugars. Again not a good choice if you want to trim body fat levels.

Summary
Avoid skipping meals because it slows down the metabolism.
Avoid eating carbohydrates by themselves even if they are from natural health foods.
Especially carbohydrates from processed foods. Most breakfast cereals and cereal bars contain sugar and hydrogenated oil.

Next time
Why you should avoid carbohydrates by themselves.
Which types of carbohydrates you should stay away from when dieting.
The right kind of fuel to eat at breakfast is when dieting.
What you need to look out for.