Eat breakfast to blast belly fat

Excerpt from FC&A's The Kitchen Table Book.

Eat breakfast to blast belly fat

How would you like to lose 30 pounds this year? Losing weight isn’t easy. Keeping it off is even harder. But experts say you can do it with very little effort.

One in five people manages to lose 10 percent of body weight and keep it off for at least one year. More than 4,000 of these successful weight losers participate in the National Weight Control Registry, and scientists are studying them to learn what they do differently from other people. Each has lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for more than a year.

Turns out, eating breakfast is one of their secrets. Three out of four eat breakfast seven days a week, usually a bowl of cereal and fruit. A few — a mere 4 percent — never eat breakfast. Researchers say successful weight losers are much less likely to skip breakfast than the general public.

They may be on to something. People who eat cereal for breakfast are more likely to have a low body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity. Women, especially, are 24 percent more likely to have a healthy BMI ifthey eat breakfast, whereas men who eat breakfast cereal regularly tend to weigh less and are less likely to gain weight as they get older.

The insoluble fiber in Kellogg’s All-Bran, FiberOne, and other highfiber cereals suppresses your appetite, helps you eat less, and improves how your body handles blood sugar after a meal. It helps food move through your small intestine faster, so you absorb less starch. The unabsorbed starch triggers your body to release a “fullness” hormone for two to four hours longer than it normally would. Insoluble fiber also boosts blood levels of another fullness hormone better than low-fiber cereals.

Breakfast-eaters tend to eat less fat during the rest of the day and may choose less energy-dense foods. Plus, they may have more energy for exercise and other physical activities after a nutritious breakfast. They also get more calcium, thanks to the milk in cereal. Getting more dairy calcium is linked to having a lower BMI. Slow down and take time to enjoy breakfast every morning, and you, too, could become a successful weight loser.