Health experts say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and when you start the day with an unhealthy meal, it’s bound to have a negative effect on your weight loss and health in general. A majority of people make unhealthy breakfast choices for a number of reasons – some are always short of time in the mornings to prepare elaborate healthy breakfast, or are running late for work and would rather opt for a readymade breakfast option while going out of the door, or must have woken up hungry or rather “hangry,” and can’t wait to put together a good breakfast. Wrong food choices can completely ruin the rest of the day, slowing down metabolism and adding a whole lot of calories that you are unlikely to burn off even with a heavy day of work. In this post, we would look 14 unhealthy breakfast options that are bad for your weight loss and why you should totally avoid beginning your day with them.
What Should your Breakfast Ideally Have?
You should be eating a healthy breakfast with either a good amount of protein, complex carbs, healthy fats or fiber because it helps to keep the metabolism high, provide good amount of nutrition to the body to run its all functions smoothly, and keep energy levels high through the day.
14 Unhealthy Breakfast Options that are Bad for your Weight Loss:
1. Breakfast cereals: Many packaged cornflake advertisements claim to have fortified minerals and vitamins that claim to aid your weight loss journey. Well, most of them have been fooling us. Usually, packaged breakfast cereals are high in sugar content with empty calories, and hardly provide any nutrition, just refined carbs which spike up insulin levels which throw blood sugar levels into a tizzy. The added fruit bits are usually coated in sugar and artificial colors, GMO and synthetic products to make them appealing to the taste buds.
2. Margarine and toast: People who want to lose weight and are wrongly informed are actively replacing their butter with margarine in the mornings. A lot of people believe that margarine is comparatively healthier than butter because it’s low fat, but it’s not at all a better option because it’s made from vegetable oils, salt, and emulsifiers. Toast is usually made from refined flour, and a combination of toast and margarine is totally not recommended.
3. Pancakes: The reason why we suggest to avoid pancakes is because it is made from maida and white sugar mainly and they spike up blood sugar levels, leading to creation of new fat cells.
4. Fruit juice: Though fruits provide the body with vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, juices have simple sugars without the fiber content, and will spike up the sugar levels. These sugar spikes raise the blood sugar levels and then make them fall sharply, leaving you hungry and craving for more sugar through the day.
5. Low-fat Greek-yogurt: Such flavoured yogurt that also claim to be low fat have high amount of sugar to make up for the bland taste when fat content is removed. It’s better to opt for full-fat and unflavored yogurt to start your day with.
6. Bread and jam: Bread and jam are staple breakfast options in most households, and those who want to eat healthy, opt for brown bread. Most often, the brown bread that you pick for easy breakfast is just colored version of your regular bread. Even if it’s not colored, there’s a high chance that the brown bread has a certain percentage of white flour, sugar, and salt. These packaged jam bottles claim to be made from natural fruits, but they have sugar and preservatives that just ruin their “all natural” claim.
7. Waffles: Though waffles have eggs in them, the refined flour or maida content is completely bad for your weight loss.
8. Granola: They are often marketed as a healthy snack, but such bars are high in sugar, sodium, artificial color and flavour. It’s best to avoid them completely or just indulge in them as a cheat meal once a week.
9. Readymade breakfast: They are usually high in sugar, salt, and loaded with preservatives, and it’s best to avoid them.
10. Instant noodles: Complete no-no to begin your day with because they have high sodium, MSG, and refined flour content which can send your calories up the roof.
11. Packaged juices: Though these juices may claim to be 100% concentrated juice without any preservatives, the story is far from it – nothing can replace whole fruit with high fiber content. These juices not only lack the precious fiber content, they also might have preservatives and artificial flavours in them.
12. Smoothies: Smoothies are also considered healthy, but not as a breakfast because they have simple sugars in them which raise your insulin levels which in turn can lead to creation of new fat cells.
13. Instant oats: Oats are healthy and a great option when you want to lose weight, but the instant ones may not be a great way to start your day because they are low in fiber and get digested quickly by the body, making you hungry right after. That’s why Rati Beauty diet programs suggest rolled oats than instant oats for breakfast. Check out the detailed rolled oats recipe on the Rati Beauty app.
14. Protein bars: We often pick up protein bars to reward ourselves for working out hard in the gym and to supply the body with protein, but you are just putting back all those calories that you burnt during exercise with the high sugar content in the bars. full of sugar which can raise your insulin levels, cause sugar crashes and even inflammation in the body.
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