The following is excerpted from Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 4th Edition. Human Kinetics is the publisher. For more info, go to www.HumanKinetics.com.

Just as your car works better when it has fuel in its tank, your body works better when you give it adequate morning fuel. Yet, many people push their bodies through a busy day with an empty fuel tank.

The result is low energy, cravings for sugary food, a high intake of sweets and treats, difficulty in concentrating, irritability, lack of energy for afternoon workouts and often undesired weight gain. There’s no doubt in my mind: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Eat up!

If you’re not hungry for breakfast, you probably ate too many calories the night before. When evening snacks replace a wholesome breakfast, you can end up with an inadequate sports diet.

For morning exercisers, a wholesome breakfast that combines carbohydrate with a little protein—cereal with milk, granola with yogurt, toast with peanut butter—promptly replaces the depleted glycogen stores and helps refuel and heal the muscles so they will be refreshed for the next training session. Plus, the sooner you eat, the more quickly you’ll recover.

 
Breakfast does not have to be a sit-down, cooked meal. I advised one client to prepare a breakfast-to-go the night before. He made a “duffle-bag breakfast” that consisted of two peanut butter and banana sandwiches and a bottle of juice.

My clients often ask what I recommend for breakfast. In general, my answer is any combination of wholesome choices from three food groups. More specifically, my answer is cereal because it’s a simple way to get those three types of foods—whole grains, low-fat milk and fruit.

The Author: Nancy Clark has a private practice at Healthworks Fitness Center in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

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