As you would have heard many times before, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”. This is some what true but this doesn’t mean other meals are less important. It’s just about getting each meal right. Every meal is the most important meal you will ever eat.

I am a firm believer breakfast should be consumed in some shape or form. My go to is eggs, or if I’m feeling a little different I may whack some nuts, seeds and natural yoghurt into a bowl. Breakfast is a meal that will set your productivity for the day. It will suppress appetite until lunch time meaning snacking will not cross your mind and also has many hormonal and fat burning benefits such as blood sugar regulation, cortisol suppression and many more. The right food choices will also accelerate fat burning.

You have something called the cortisol curve, which is a measure of stress in your body throughout the day. This should be naturally high in the morning and should lower as the day goes on to eventually be at its lowest to prepare us for sleep. Nowadays, people live stressful lives, and they make it worse by drinking gallons of coffee, staying up late, stressing at work, relationships, eating bad food, medications, using fake stimulants to feel awake etc. Eating breakfast (or any meal) resets your metabolic hormonal balance. So getting something in for breakfast is very important. Whether it is solid food or liquid based. Get in touch with us for a nutrition guide to see our approach to breakfast, with specific guidelines on what to eat, and what to avoid at breakfast times.

Fasted Training:

Getting up earlier than normal? Skipping breakfast pre-workout? Running on empty? Feeling fatigued within the first 5-10 minutes? Fasted workouts are not what you want to be doing out of choice. There are no research based studies that portray the fact you burn more fat working out fasted or post-prandial. It can mess with your hormones, it can start to eat into protein stores in the body for extra energy and it will increase cortisol(your stress hormone) which will negative affect mood, appetite and fat burning.

However, for some people fasted training may be needed to get a workout in before a long day at work. In this case, having a liquid based breakfast with fast digesting, free form supplements that prevent gastric distress is advised. (I.e BCAAs among other alternatives explained in our nutrition guide). This way you could get the benefits of fasted workouts, but will not be using unwanted fuel sources and will get the most out of fat burning, and energy.

Word of warning: these fasted workouts should not be longer than 20-30 minutes and the intensity should stay low. Lifting near 90-100% intensity is not going to be effective and may be counterproductive. Fasted workouts performed right can be great, but performed wrong will be very detrimental to your body composition, mental well being and energy levels.