Eating a huge breakfast is my NUMBER ONE hack for how I was able to reverse insulin resistance, lose body fat, build muscle, stop binge eating, and get in the best shape of my life at 30!
It felt counterintuitive at first. I was always afraid of eating a lot and wanted to delay my food intake.
Yet what I’ve learned is…
Eat more than you think you need to at breakfast (predominantly protein). Here’s why:
1. Muscle health – After fasting overnight while we sleep, our muscle tissue is EXTREMELY sensitive to amino acids. This is our chance! Our first meal of the day post-fasting makes THE biggest impact when it comes to muscle protein synthesis (MPS). Dr. Donald Layman’s research showed that it takes a threshold of at least 30g of protein in a single sitting to stimulate MPS. A big, protein-rich breakfast is your greatest opportunity to not only protect existing muscle tissue, but build NEW muscle from your workouts. Healthier muscle mass = less insulin resistance.
2. Satiation – I used to skip or delay breakfast because I thought it would help me ‘save’ caloric room for lunch and dinner and thus consume less overall throughout the day. Instead, the years I spent scoffing at breakfast led me to overeating at lunch, dinner, and dessert because my hunger and satiation hormones were totally skewed for the rest of the day. I ended up ravenous at dinner and wanted endless snacks and dessert to fill that lack of satiation. Now that I eat a HUGE breakfast, I end up naturally portion controlling lunch + dinner and making much healthier choices. Some of my favorite ways to sneak in extra protein at breakfast are with this protein-rich frittata and my go-to protein smoothie. You can find more high-protein breakfast ideas here.
3. Binge Eating – This was a huge issue for me. I found that I don’t have the urge to binge eat at night when I front load (especially protein) at breakfast. Humans and animals exhibit protein prioritization, where we’ll continue experiencing the urge to feed until our protein requirements are met – it feels uncontrollable to our brains, we want all the cookies! A huge dose of protein at breakfast makes it easier for me to hit my protein goals and keeps my brain feeling safe and satiated at night when I was most vulnerable.
Of course, there’s a huge nervous system dysregulation and emotional element to binge eating, too. Listen to my recent podcast episode on What’s The Juice called “the binge eating episode” with Stephanie Mara Fox for the full picture!
