Best Breakfast Foods to Supercharge Your Health

Mark Hyman, MD

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Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy. Now low calorie breakfast also increased cravings for carbs and

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sugar throughout the day, which is not what you wanna be doing. Why? Well, it has to do with our circadian rhythms, which primes our

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body to be more efficient at digest absorbing and metabolizing food early in the day because if you haven't eaten all night, so we're just ready to go, we need to get food to fuel the tank for the day. It's like putting gas in the beginning of a a car trip rather than at the end of the trip. Right? Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I can help everyone via my personal practice. There's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale.

And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand. Well, you, if you're looking for data about your biology, Check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health

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journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website supplement store for a summary of

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favorite and tested products. Welcome to doctor's pharmacy and another edition of health bites.

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I'm Doctor Mark Hyman. You've probably heard the old adage that breakfast is the most important

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meal of the day, but what does that really mean? Is there truth to it, or is it more about the specific nutrition you need to just kick start your day? Well, maybe you've heard about time restricted eating or intermittent fasting where you skip breakfast altogether. Is that better than eating breakfast? In this episode, I'm gonna answer your burning questions about breakfast.

Should you heat it or should you skip it? What's the ideal time to break your overnight fast? And most importantly, when do you break your fast? And most importantly, when you do break your fast, how can you fuel your body to ensure the best possible start to your day? We're gonna explore what the latest research says about the best and the worst foods to start your day with.

I'm gonna provide simple actionable tips

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to help you incorporate these insights in your daily routine, and we're gonna also discuss the role of breakfast in maintaining a

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healthy weight and preventing belly fat accumulation. Yep. That and lowering your risk of chronic disease. Now if you've ever wondered about the true impact of breakfast

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on your health, you're in the right place. So stay tuned as we set the record straight on the breakfast debate and empower you

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with the knowledge to make informed decisions around your Let's dive in and uncover the truth about the nutrition. You need to start your day right. I'm gonna cut right to the chase. Yes. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Breakfast is the first chance you get to feel your body to energize your brain and to get your protein in for the day. Yep. Protein. Not what we typically eat for breakfast in America, which is sugar or dessert for breakfast. But contrary to what you may have been told about breakfast, it doesn't have to happen right when you first wake up.

You can wait a bit to prolong you overnight fast, which should be about 12 to 14 hours, and hence, the term break

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fast or breakfast. In fact, I don't eat breakfast until usually 2 or 3 hours after I wake up after I do

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my morning meditation and get my workout in for the day. So my last meal, the previous day was 7 o'clock. I wouldn't break my fast until the next mid morning around 9 or 10 the next day. So it's less about when you break the fast and more about what you eat for breakfast. But you can eat breakfast too late.

Right? And then it's called lunch.

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But you do

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wanna make sure you're eating something, mid morning to early afternoon, 11 to 1 at the latest, especially if you're asleep late, you can have a longer fast, but most people shouldn't do more than a 12 to 14 hour fast overnight, long term. Maybe 16 hours if you're if you're really going for it. But it depends on you, and we've done podcasts on intermittent fasting. So we'll link to those in the show notes. The research shows that skipping breakfast is a bad idea.

Skipping breakfast according to the research is associated with an increased risk of lots of things, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and weight gain. In fact, in the systematic review and the men analysis of 45 observational studies, researchers reported a 31% higher risk of excess belly fat by not eating breakfast, a 48% greater risk of being overweight and a 44% greater risk of becoming obese over time in those who are breakfast skippers. That's pretty significant. So what could be causing the increased risk for metabolic disorders? Well, There's a good chance this could be due to increased late night eating.

Right? When we skip meals, we miss out on eating good stuff. It's satiating like protein, healthy fats, and fiber. If we're not getting this in, we're more likely if you're hungry at night and our ability to make healthy choices also isn't so great late at night when our defenses are down or more likely to

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reach for a sleeve of Oreos or a bag of chips in an apple. Another study found a causal link between skipping breakfast and the increased

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risk for ADHD, which is a a big problem. Also an increased risk for major depressive disorder and reduce cognitive performance and increase frailty.

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So that's a lot of things

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that happen when you just skip breakfast. So you don't

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want that. Now why would that happen when we what you eat for breakfast sets the tone for the rest of

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the day? It's really an opportunity to get in the essential nutrients you need to help you better reach your daily protein goals, which most

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people probably aren't, to balance your hormones, your blood sugar, your mood, your energy, your focus, cognition, all of that depends on your breakfast.

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Now have you ever heard the saying eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a popper?

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Well, research shows that there's actually truth behind this, and then it's better to skip dinner than breakfast.

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So have a bigger breakfast, a lighter dinner. An interesting study show that men who initially consumed low calorie breakfast and a high calorie dinner experienced a significant boost in diet induced their magenesis when

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they switched to eating the same high calorie

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dinner for breakfast. In other words, if you eat a low calorie breakfast versus a high calorie dinner.

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The high calorie dinner is gonna actually stimulate your metabolism. So if you eat a low calorie

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breakfast or not breakfast at all, you're gonna have a slower metabolism, which isn't good. Specifically, their diet induced thermogenesis, which means, the heat and the calories that are burned just

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by the process of metabolizing your food was two and a half times higher when the high calorie meal was consumed in the morning compared to the evening.

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So you basically burnt two and a half times more energy when you had breakfast compared to eating the same meal at dinner.

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Now the low calorie breakfast also increased cravings for carbs and sugar throughout the day, which is not what you wanna

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be doing. And it means that diet induced thermogenesis is higher in the morning than the evening. Why? Well, it has to do with our circadian rhythms, which primes our body to be more efficient at digesting absorbing and metabolizing food early in the day because if we have an email night, so we're just ready to go, we need to get food to fill the tank for the day. It's like putting gas in the beginning of a car trip rather than at the end of the trip.

Right? Your insulin sensitivity is higher. Your melatonin also reduces insulin release, you know, for these spikes of insulin which cause belly fat. And it could be really a good strategy for weight loss, when you eat the majority of your calories earlier in the day. What Should you eat for breakfast to get the best start to the day?

Protein protein protein protein protein. Let me say it again. Protein. And you can add fat in there too. But protein and fat are basically the foods you should be eating for breakfast.

Why Well, high protein breakfast leads to making you feel full.

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It controls your appetite. It makes overeating less likely at your next meal. It helps balance your blood sugar. It keeps your insulin levels low. It cuts your

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cravings and it reduces snacking, and there's something magical called the thermogenic effective protein, which means you actually burn more calories when you consume protein. So about 30% of the calories get used in actually just metabolizing the protein. Now one study compared the effects of savory breakfast, eggs, cheese and sausage with 30 or

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39 grams of protein that's matched for fat for fiber versus a low protein sweet breakfast of eggo mini pancakes with three grams of

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protein with pancake syrup and butter or no breakfast in 34 healthy women age eighteen and fifty five. Now what did that study show? Well, it showed an increased port

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of satiety or feeling full for the protein versus the low protein and the no breakfast. I mean,

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obviously, protein, you're not gonna feel hungry. Post meal glucose and insulin levels were significantly lower in

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the savory breakfast group than in sweet breakfast also makes sense. You don't have sugar for breakfast. You're not gonna spike your

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sugar in insulin. Right? Insulin levels in the low protein group, the pancake group, peaked after 30 minutes of eating followed by a sharp decline, 30 to 90 minutes after eating, and that's gonna cause this this rollercoaster of blood sugar and insulin. Then your energy intake at lunch, people who got no studied how much they ate at lunch, was significantly less in the highest protein group. So the more protein you need for breakfast, the less likely you're over eat at lunch or to eat too much.

Now the total energy intake for the day, for the whole day, if you ate protein for breakfast, was the lowest in the high protein group and the highest in the low protein group. In other words, you have low protein for breakfast. You're gonna eat more food throughout the day and more calories and gain weight. And if we eat high protein for breakfast, you're gonna feel full and not eat over over eat calories during the day. And you're gonna be good.

And this really suggested high sugar breakfast are just gonna make you increase your total calorie intake through the day. And that's why eating protein for breakfast versus grains has been shown to help with weight loss. So it's really, really important. I think people don't understand that that the the protein is such a key factor in helping with metabolism and weight. And and you cannot

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control your calories by counting them. You if you're off a 100 calories a day, it's

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like a fourteen pound weight gain in a year. So nobody can measure exactly to a 100 calories. So your body naturally regulates all of its metabolic functions through hormones and neurotransmitters, in your microbiome and lots of factors that are regulated by the quality and the type of calories you eat. So when you eat protein for breakfast, it has a very different set of messages to your body than if you eat sugar for and that's why you don't overeat and you will

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eat less calories. It was a study in in, in in China. It was a 156 obese Chinese adolescents. It was a randomized controlled

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trial. They were told to eat either, breakfast of eggs or steamed bread for 3 months.

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Now energy intake was significantly less for lunch in the egg breakfast group, meaning they eat less food at lunch.

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So this was this was correlated with weight loss and lower levels of the hunger hormones and higher levels of the feel full hormones after 3 hours. So, basically, your hormones are set by what you're eating. And when you eat the right foods, you naturally regulate your hormones, particularly hormones or regulate appetite or or peptides like P YY and ghrayland and all these other important, regulatory factors for for your appetite, which are built in, and they're hard to control with willpower. When they looked at what happened, they also saw they had dramatically higher weight loss

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in the egg breakfast than in the steam bread breakfast, about

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3.9% versus about 2.2%. That's like a, you know, I don't know, 20 full difference. That's huge. Right? The P YY, which is the appetite suppressing hormone, increased by 66% and those wheat eggs versus just 18% in the bread group.

Now GLP 1, which is, you know, Zenpek, which is your body naturally makes it. Those levels were lower and more stable in those who ate eggs. Whereas in the bread group, the GLP 1 level surged and then dropped. So you got the spikes and then dropped. So you're gonna be hungry.

So front loading your day with protein really helps you better reach your protein goals and sets you up for optimizing your metabolism. It makes you eat less during the day. It, supplies your body with great amino acids for making hormones, enzyme neurotransmitters for muscle. It helps with muscle protein synthesis, which is really key. And I I think I'm just gonna sort of point this out.

When you eat breakfast. It's the most important meal because you're eating on a fasted state. And, you know, fasting is good. Overnight fast is great, but it's key what you eat when you refeed. And the refeeding with protein has unique properties.

That increases stem cells, activates all these longevity pathways, and is an incredible way to build muscle. So make

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sure you have protein for breakfast. I think you probably got the point by now. Now protein also has a

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lot of other stuff. It has essential amino acids and micronutrients, It helps your hormones, making metabolism.

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So how much protein should you eat? Well, I would have 30

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to 40 grams of protein for breakfast.

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And then you probably need another 30, 40 grams at each meal. Now that's a palm sized portion.

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Have a savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. Have eggs, have great yogurt with nuts and fat in there. Not low fat. That's worst cottage cheese, but don't have the weird one with gums. Make a tofu scramble with veggies, tempeh, I love tempeh, or protein shake.

That's my go to. Easy as quick, delicious, used to go away. You can have dinner leftovers for breakfast. Some people do that. There's no no rule that says you can have chicken or steak for breakfast.

Some people do. Some of us take in eggs. Right? So what else do you need to eat for breakfast? Well, healthy fats.

They're really important. Because they help you promote satiety or feeling full.

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They slow your digestion. They increase a couple of peptides digestives, molecules and hormones and

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regulatory molecules that actually regulate your appetite, like cck and peptide y y y or p y y. It balances your blood sugar, and it fuels your brain. And it doesn't spike insulin. So what what could you eat while a half an avocado with your four eggs or two eggs with the yolks? No yolk free eggs, please.

Make sure you have pasture raised eggs. If you can, cook them in olive oil. You can just cook at a lower temperature and extra virgin olive oil. Otherwise, it gets oxidized if you do up to high temperature. Lots of other fats are great for breakfast, almonds, cashews, brazonuts, pecans, seeds like pumpkin, chia, flax seeds.

You can throw those in your smoothies too. Nut butters, We have coconut oil. Lots of fiber, really important. You can have a frozen berries or high in fiber. For example, I put that in my smoothie.

When you do that, that fiber also helps. Right? Fiber helps to support you feeling full. Why? Cause it actually increases GLP 1, right, increases the very hormone that is the hormone that we think of as Ozempic, or it's it's a peptide hormone.

We call it pepsiosis insulin, by the way. It's a peptide hormone. And and this supports you, in terms of digestion, stabilizing your blood sugar, and helps your gut be healthy. Now what could you eat? Well, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, kiwi, citrus fruit, grapefruit, oranges, chia seeds, flax seeds, spinach, leafy greens, kale, bell bell peppers, Also, you could put a lot of veggies in an omelet, and omelet's great for a breakfast.

Why? Cause it has protein. It has healthy fats when you throw veggies in there. You got the fiber. It's a triple triple header.

What are examples of breakfast? Well, you can have omega 3 eggs or pastries eggs sauteed with dark leafy greens and berries on the side. And now one egg has only 6 to 7 grams of protein. So you need at least 3 to 4 eggs to reach your morning protein goal. You can also try 2 eggs and egg whites if you're worried about the saturated fat, but you really don't need to be if the rest of your diet dialed in and you're not eating ultra processed food.

Now if you think eggs are boring, you can try the breakfast scramble, which is 2 or 3 eggs, pastries, chicken, or turkey sausage, spinach, tomatoes, feta goat cheese. You know, one of my favorite thing is make it for tata. I basically take all the leftover veggie in the fridge, onions, garlic, all oilster fry them up, took out all the extra veggies, put them in there, then I pour the eggs on, a little 6, 7 eggs, and then I, salt and pepper it, maybe at the end I throw a little bit of goat, cheese on there, and I bake in the oven and it comes out fluffy and nice, amazing, delicious. You can create mini egg bites, you know, basically take a whatever you put in a quiche and cut it up, cook it, and then put in a muffin tin and put the eggs on it. It's like a little muffin egg, egg muffin, but without the mic.

You can make them a Sunday. You can, you know, it's a great to have in your fridge. It's it's great for meal. Perhaps you can eat throughout the week. Also, tofu scrambles are yummy.

I love those. You can chop some extra firm tofu, cooking and extra virgin olive with turmeric, greens, cherry tomatoes. Makes look like actually scrambled eggs with the yellow from the turmeric super anti inflammatory. Now if you're on the go and you're busy, you can make chia seed pudding at night. You just put some chia seeds in a cup or bowl for some mom and milk on it.

You're gonna throw some berries nuts in there, and it'll basically prepare itself overnight. It's low glycemic. It's high in protein, and you can make a, also, a a smoothie, but a high protein, low glycemic smoothie. I used, frozen berries. I use unsweetened nut milk, like macadamia milk, I do protein powder, like, go away, basically probably 30, 40

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grams at least. Sometimes I do 50 if I'm working out. You can throw in some chia seeds or flaxseeds.

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You know, you can that's a great smoothie. You can also have hard boiled eggs are easy to do. You can have you can also, have hard boiled eggs, and you can have with sliced apples or berries, a handful of almonds, really simple, easy portable, not not something you have to worry about preparing. You can make it the night before. If you really wanna go for it, you can have a last night's dinner for breakfast.

So, you can put, whatever you had for dinner for breakfast if it's protein and veggies. You can make a yogurt parfable. I like a sheep coconut or goat yogurt unsweetened greek yogurt that's plain, that hopefully grass fed, put in berries, almonds, pecans, little gisley honey. That's fine. Or you can try plain unsweetened go key furs.

There's a lot of options out there. Right? If you need breakfast inspiration, I would check out my recipes that featured weekly in my newsletter, Mark's Kitchen. So my favorite go to recipes are kimchi wild rice breakfast bowl, cabbage pancakes with poached eggs, my 15 minute turmeric fried eggs, everything but the bagel Egg bites. Something sweet might be okay, but doesn't spike your blood sugar like a high protein chocolate muffin.

I have a recipe for that. Check out my brand new young forever cookbook. I'm gonna link to it the show notes for tons of inspiration and recipes. They'll be sure to make your mouth water. They certainly do mine.

So thanks for joining me for another episode. I hope you now feel more equipped to plan your first meal today, whether it's at 8 AM or 11 AM, whatever works best for you. Starting your day with a high quality nutrition, Richard protein, healthy fats, and fiber is gonna set you up for success. It's gonna give you lots of energy. It's gonna improve your focus.

It'll help you lose weight, and it's just better for your overall health. Now remember, the choices you make for your first meal are gonna have a profound impact on how you feel throughout the day. So by prioritizing nutrient dense foods, you're not only fueling your body, but you're also supporting your long term well-being. So stay tuned for future episodes where we're gonna continue to explore more ways to optimize your health and tackle various aspects of wellness If you found this episode helpful, be sure to share it with your friends and family who might benefit with this information. Until next time, stay healthy.

Stay informed. Keep making choices to support your best self. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on all social media channels at doctor Mark Hyman we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Farmacy.

For more information on today's episode, please check out my new video and audio podcast, health hacks. It airs every Tuesday and includes a more detailed breakdown of these Friday healthbytes episodes. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's picks newsletter at doctor hyman.com forward slash marks picks. I promise I'll only email you once a week on Friday and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations.

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These are the things

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that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's doctor hyman.com forward slash marks picks. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Farmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Delta Loma Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic And Function Health, where I'm the chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorsement of views or statements of my guess.

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