by Diane Stacey

Created on: August 01, 2007   Last Updated: March 16, 2010

Breakfast is the most vital meal of the day and should be included in your morning ritual. After a night of sleep, your body needs to be refueled to jump start your day.

We learn about diet and health at an early age. Our parents try to instill a good foundation to help us understand the benefits of proper nutrition. The first meal of the day breaks the fast we've endured during the sleep cycle. While most people stop eating after dinner, we should actually indulge in a light snack at bedtime. This helps the body maintain healthy blood sugar levels as it winds down to recuperate and provides energy to assist with any necessary repairs and healing.

A nutritionist once shared that it isn't healthy to go more than 10 hours between meals. We can parallel this idea with trying to drive a car without gas, it doesn't want to start. When it does, it sputters all the way. The body must have fuel to run properly. This explains why it is important to eat a small meal before going to bed as well. Those people who stop eating after dinner fast a minimum of 12 hours during evening activities and sleep. This pattern can lead to the development of physical problems down the road. Without a bedtime snack, it is even more important to have a healthy breakfast as soon as possible upon waking.

During times of fasting, the body begins to store energy in our fat cells and we start to gain weight. Fasting sends a message to alert our body's systems that we could potentially be heading into a starvation mode. Our fat cells continue to store energy so they will be able to provide fuel for vital life processes once we are denied the proper nutrition. Our metabolism slows down and we can experience an inefficiency of the hypothalamus gland. By depriving yourself of this important meal, you are really doing more harm to your body than good.

Some people believe in dieting to lose weight and enter the "yo-yo" cycle. They either skip breakfast or have meal replacement drinks in the name of weight loss, only to find they regain the original weight lost plus more. People who skip breakfast tend to weigh more than those who don't and skipping a meal is not the way to reach your maximum body potential.

To maintain a healthy body, we have to ensure that our basic needs are being met. We require sleep, during which our bodies repair and restore. This is similar to rebooting a computer. Sleep makes our minds sharp again and our thought processes clear. Our rest should be a continuous eight hours

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