STOP! The Top 3 WORST Meals to Eat for Breakfast If You Have a Damaged Metabolism.

Today we’re going super practical here as we talk about the top 3 worst things you could wake up and eat when you already have a damaged metabolism.

If you eat these three meals for breakfast each day, you will start your day in weight gain mode instead of fat-burning mode and that is a big deal. 

What you eat for breakfast puts you a metabolic train that you can’t get off that either leads to a high-energy, fat-burning town or frumpy and tired, weight gain town.

Let’s talk a bit about why breakfast matters so much to your metabolism. 

I want you to think about the last time you went to a county or state fair or maybe even a big amusement park. Think about the rides they had.  

 We took our three kids to Disneyland and one park was called California Adventure.  It had a lot of rides.  

One ride my daughter loved was the Little Mermaid ride, where you sat in big seashells and were taken on a slow, colorful ride that moved through the whole story of the Little Mermaid movie.  It was pleasant, calm, and safe.  

My older boy loved the Incredibles rollercoaster ride. It was fast, zippy, jerky with a ton of up and down, even a full loop at one point.  It was fast, disorienting and you could barely take it all in before it was over.

Now picture this.  What you choose to eat for breakfast is like choosing to either get on the Little Mermaid ride or the Rollercoaster for the whole day metabolically.

Alright?

The Little Mermaid ride is where we have a healthy metabolic day. A wonderful, peaceful day with calm, even energy, we don't feel the need to snack,  we are clear headed, purposeful and excited about the day. 

The Little Mermaid ride is the goal. 

We burn fat all day for energy on the Little Mermaid Ride and lose weight or maintain our perfect weight effortlessly.

The Incredibles Roller Coaster is a bad metabolic trip. A damaged metabolic ride. Where we start our day with no energy and then inject fast, racey, hot energy into our body and then ride the energy roller coaster all day, up and down, up and down. 

We are always reacting to our energy levels and feeling like we need to eat more, we feel the need to eat sugar, have more caffeine, take a nap, and then calm the day with wine or other alcohol.  

The rollercoaster is the worst. 

We feel terrible, have really high and low energy that swings wildly throughout the day, we can’t think straight, our emotions seem a little out of whack and we are generally irritated and anxious as we move through our day. 

So much so that we need a tranquilizer like alcohol at the end of the day. 

The roller coaster is where we only burn sugar and also where we gain weight.

What we choose to eat for our first meal, be it breakfast or lunch, puts us either on the Little Mermaid ride or the Rollercoaster basically for the rest of the day until we finally go to sleep.

What you choose for breakfast either sets you a day of fat-burning, or a full-day of sugar-burning and fat storing.

In The Freese Method, I teach you all about fat-burning vs. sugar-burning but for now, think of it like these two rides.

Let's talk about the actual breakfast foods that put you on the bad metabolic rollercoaster.

The first worst breakfast you can eat that puts you squarely in the front seat of the roller coaster for the whole day is a bagel with low-fat cream cheese or jam.

A bagel with low-fat cream cheese or jam is the worst for your metabolism.  Your body takes that bagel and turns it into an enormous amount of sugar. 

Regardless of its calorie content, the bagel and low-fat cream cheese create a huge surge of sugar in your blood.  This is the big rise in the rollercoaster where you are feeling good! 

The bagel is giving you energy.  

Then comes the fall!

All that causes a huge surge in our fat-storing hormone, insulin. Your insulin floods your bloodstream and the sugar is sucked away into your cells and into your fat stores and it’s like a vacuum of energy inside your body.  

This tiggers a cycle of high and low blood sugars, high and low energy, high and low insulin levels that make you feel terrible and make you gain weight.

Like the highs and lows of the roller coaster. Up and down, hungry and too full, starving then in a post-food coma of brain fog, light headed to sleepy.  

All because you started with a bagel with low-fat cream cheese.

The next breakfast that punches your ticket for the crazy rollercoaster of metabolic mayhem is low-fat or fat-free yogurt. 

This is usually a surprise to women, because we’ve been told for so long that it is so healthy, right?  You’ve been flooded with messages about low-fat dairy and the need for calcium and low-fat or fat-free yogurt is on fire.  

Here’s the thing, fat-free or low-fat flavored yogurt is terrible for your metabolism.  It does the same thing as a bagel. 

One cup of fat-free strawberry yogurt has more sugar than a full cup of vanilla ice cream.

Sugar is what damages our metabolisms and causes the roller coaster effect. 

Stay away from fat-free flavored yogurt.  

If you have to have yogurt, for the love, whole milk, plain yogurt is the only thing you should have.

We talk about these metabolically damaging foods in the Freese Method, in fact that is Step #1, Stop the Damage.

We have to stop eating certain foods that just wreak havoc on our metabolisms and fat-free yogurt is so tricky because it’s billed as a health food and it’s actually terribly fattening.

Ok, so now we know the bagel with low-fat cream cheese is terrible and fattening and fat-free yogurt whether it has flavoring or not is terrible and fattening and puts us on the roller coaster of crazy.  

The third worst meal ever is the weekend favorite of waffles or pancakes.  To wake up on a weekend and eat either pancakes or waffles is to jump on the roller coaster and gain weight all day.  

We struggle with this in our house because we have young kids and my husband grew up with a ritual of thin german pancakes or waffles on the weekends and the kids love them. 

But every time we have them, I watch my husband and kids ride the roller coaster and crash at the end.

They all have three or four pancakes topped with more metabolically damaging sugar.  The kids get all hyped up and my husband is zinging on coffee and sugar. 

Then we head out for the day to go hiking and before we’ve left the house an hour later, everyone is zombied out on the couch and mindlessly looking for more food to eat.  

At least one kid has a stomach ache and my husband feels like he needs more coffee but more coffee would literally make him sick.  

As we drag our dumbfounded family up the mountain, the kids start fighting, someone is crying, my husband loses his temper and it’s just a total meltdown. 

Everyone is starving and hangry and we eat all our food before we get on the trail.  

Do you see what happened to us? 

We got on the roller coaster.

The roller coaster affects everyone. 

You are on the roller coaster no matter if you have minimal metabolic damage like my kids or more metabolic damage.  It’s a cycle that just gets worse and worse. 

Have you felt this before, where you eat a big carbohydrate heavy breakfast and you're tired and grumpy all day?

Ok, so there you have it, the three worst things you can eat for breakfast, especially if you already have a broken metabolism and are trying to lose weight are: bagels and low-fat cream cheese, fat-free flavored yogurt, and pancakes or waffles with or without syrup.  

Why?

Because they put you on a metabolic roller coaster all day that has you burning sugar and storing fat.  And once you’re on, it’s really really hard to get off.  A salad at lunch is not enough to get you off of the blood sugar, insulin roller coaster.