Breakfast And Dinner: 5 Tips To Lose Weight

Did you know that skipping breakfast or dinner can lead to anxiety and even affect your metabolism slowing down? The secret is not to eat less, but to eat better

Breakfast and dinner are two key moments in our diet.  If we skip them, don’t pay them proper attention or include unsuitable foods, your body and weight will suffer. In fact, the best diet is the one that keeps the metabolism active.

For example, skipping dinner or breakfast causes the pancreas to produce more insulin. The problem is that its functioning can alter and not enough glucose reaches the blood. We are faced with two important moments in our eating routine, from which we can and must benefit.

We explain how to do it to be able to say goodbye to a few pounds without losing even a moment of health. Start paying more attention to your breakfasts and dinners today.

1. No studies show that skipping breakfast or dinner helps you lose weight

We all know someone who told us to skip dinner to lose weight. It is possible that we ourselves have done this a few times with the typical excuse “I drink a juice or a glass of milk so I get used to the body eating less”. Is a mistake.  Our body does not need to eat less, but to eat better.

• Breakfast and dinner are the most important meals of the day, because there is a long time between the two before the body receives food again.

• Skipping breakfast means starting the day with few nutrients and little energy to activate the metabolism.

• Similarly, continued fasting can promote the onset of metabolic syndrome. We run the risk of developing diabetes or increasing blood triglyceride levels.

• Not having satisfying breakfasts or dinners also increases anxiety.  The greater the anxiety, the greater the need to ingest foods rich in fat to raise dopamine and satiate a brain that has spent too many hours fasting and that needs glucose and nutrients.

• Skipping dinner or breakfast gradually leads to  a slow metabolism that processes fats with greater difficulty.

2. Breakfasts and dinners rich in antioxidants

If you want to lose weight, you need to take care of your cardiovascular health and strengthen your immune system: include foods rich in antioxidants in these meals.

• Both at breakfast and at dinner the body is very receptive to these elements.
• The first and last meal of the day need a high intake of antioxidants to protect the liver, in order to promote detoxification and the correct assimilation of nutrients.

Antioxidants are good for our body  for several reasons, in fact they accelerate metabolism and fight free radicals that damage cells.

It is good to include foods that contain antioxidants such as allicin, anthocyanins, catechins or capsaicin at breakfast and dinner. Mark the foods that should not be missing in your breakfasts or dinners:

• Breakfast:
  • Fruits (grapes, apples, plums, bananas, blueberries, mangoes, papaya)
  • Lemon
  • Garlic
  • Green tea
  • White tea
  • Coffee

• Dinner:
  • Vegetables (peppers, Brussels sprouts, carrots, tomatoes, artichokes, aubergines)
  • A glass of red wine

3. High-fiber breakfasts, lean protein dinners

It is always better to take fiber in the morning: they will help us regulate intestinal transit, allow us to better eliminate fats and take care of the heart.

Dinners must be varied, not very abundant and very balanced. If you usually dine with a cup of milk and cereals and a fruit, you should know that this option is more suitable for breakfast.

Breakfast must include foods with starch such as, for example, rye bread, wholemeal bread or any cereal such as oats.

Dinner, on the other hand, must include lean proteins, such as those of a grilled chicken breast. Bear in mind that while losing weight, you also need to keep your muscles toned and not flabby; proteins do just that.

4. Time is also important

What time do you have breakfast? What time do you have dinner? It is obvious that most of the time we cannot choose what time to have breakfast or dinner. Work and our responsibilities sometimes prevent us from leading a more harmonious life with our body and its needs.

Whenever possible, however, it would be good to follow some guidelines thanks to which you can learn to take care of your health and weight:

• It is not good to have breakfast as soon as you wake up.
• The ideal is to drink a glass of warm water as soon as we get out of bed and wait from half an hour to three quarters of an hour before having breakfast. In this way, the body better metabolizes the accumulated fats in order to then be able to burn them.

• Have dinner two hours before bedtime.
• If you make the mistake of preparing a copious dinner and falling asleep immediately afterwards on the sofa, you will get the exact opposite: get fat.

How about adjusting your schedules to follow these guidelines? It is worth a try.

5. Neither too much nor a little: pay attention to stereotypes

It is true that it is said “to have a king’s breakfast and a poor man’s dinner”, but always with conscience.  Once again, we must pay attention to common sense and the basics of a conscious and correct diet.

• Having a king’s breakfast does not mean that we have to eat everything: snacks, fruit, juices, coffee, proteins, a cup of milk and oats, toast and so on and so forth. It means eating different foods in small quantities, but in a balanced way.

• The poor man’s dinner is not just about putting a potato on your plate. It’s a soup, some salmon and a tomato salad, for example.

The key is, undoubtedly, to know how to eat, to listen to your body and not commonplaces. We invite you to put these tips into practice.