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I don't know if you have heard the saying that you should 'Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Lord and have Dinner like a Pauper' but there is still a lot of truth in that statement. Fair enough our days of being hunter gatherers and working in heavy physical work have gone, well, for most of us at least anyway. However the majority of us are still at our most active earlier in the day.

On the whole people rise in the morning and get on with their daily routine of tasks and work. When you rise your first meal of the day is called breakfast because quite simply you are breaking the fast that has occurred since you last ate. As such your resources will be low. Your metabolism is like a fire and needs stoking from time to time as the fuel is burned up. For a boiler to work well it needs fuel and so do you. When I was a child Mum would always say that breakfast was the most important meal of the day and like most kids I tended to think this was nonsense. However I did as I was told, and we always ate a good breakfast . I imagine most Mum's and Dad's are just the same with their children today.

As we get older most of us come to realise what sense this strategy has. If you were to eat in reverse , that is have a tiny breakfast, mediocre lunch and enormous dinner, the odds are you would not function as well and put on weight. I have heard some people say that, as a general rule of thumb, you should not eat anything much after eight o'clock at night, as your body will not burn the calories off.

This can be a problem for people who like my husband work nights. His work is quite heavy and he has a meal about two in the morning. However, he then works using a lot of energy for about four hours. Although he does burn some calories off he has gained a little weight since working nights. I think his metabolism is so confused with his eating patterns that it just can't regulate itself.

For most us we have regular nine to five activity and the old adage still makes sense. A healthy, but full breakfast will give you all the nutrients that you need to get your body working and keep your mind alert. Many who start to flag by ten o'clock in the morning only do so because the fuel has run out and the boiler has stopped working, so to speak.

If you can get into the habit of making time to eat a good breakfast then your health and level of constructive activity should vastly improve. If you also follow the earlier advice and decrease your eating throughout the day the bonus is that you should be able to maintain a healthy weight also.

Learn more about this author, Ethel Smith.
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