{"id":453318,"date":"2026-04-25T14:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/453318\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T14:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:27:14","slug":"the-best-time-to-eat-breakfast-its-not-right-when-you-wake-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/453318\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Time to Eat Breakfast? It\u2019s Not Right When You Wake Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

People love to debate the timing of dinner<\/a>, but no meal drums up divergent opinions quite like breakfast<\/a>. The popular thinking pushed by cereal companies calls breakfast \u201cthe most important meal of the day.\u201d And yet, millions of people skip it entirely, and subside off coffee<\/a> until lunch<\/a>. Should we be eating breakfast at all? If so, what should we be eating? And what, from a health perspective, is the best time to eat breakfast?<\/p>\n

Nutrition experts generally agree that you shouldn\u2019t be scarfing down food as soon as you wake up\u2014wait a couple of hours, at least, until mid-morning. There are a few reasons for this. One is that it extends your overnight fasting window and \u201cgives your gut a little bit more of a rest,\u201d says Rupy Aujla, a doctor who produces podcasts and cookbooks as The Doctor\u2019s Kitchen<\/a>. Time-restricted eating\u2014waiting at least 12 hours between the last food you eat one day and the first food you eat the next\u2014makes the body burn fat rather than carbs and is associated with weight loss<\/a> and general good metabolic health. When you first wake up, says Aujla, you should be much more focused on rehydrating with water<\/a>, because \u201cyour kidney\u2019s been working overtime\u201d during the night. He puts a bit of salt in his water for that purpose, and doesn\u2019t eat any proper food until around 9 or 10 am.<\/p>\n

Many people simply aren\u2019t hungry first thing in the morning. This, says Adam Collins<\/a>, associate professor of nutrition at the University of Surrey, is because your body \u201chas already started to export glucose out into the blood in readiness for you to wake up. You\u2019ve already got some energy in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem with traditional, carb-heavy<\/a> breakfast foods, like cereal, toast and pastries, is that they give you \u201ca lovely glucose spike that fuels your cells, and then you have a corresponding crash,\u201d says Aujla. \u201cYou\u2019re hungry [again] by mid-morning, and need coffee and other stimulants to keep yourself focused and up and running until lunchtime.\u201d Instead, he recommends a meal high in protein and fiber<\/a>\u2014partly because we often generally skimp on protein, which we need for \u201clongevity,\u201d and partly because protein and fiber keep us energetic and satiated through the morning.<\/p>\n

Aujla has a few go-to breakfasts along these lines. During the week, he relies on overnight oats<\/a> that go easy on the actual oats. \u201cI have two tablespoons of oats, two tablespoons of milled flax seed, one tablespoon of chia and one tablespoon of hemp seeds,\u201d he says. \u201cThen I\u2019ll add grated apple, some pumpkin seeds, a bit of protein powder, and then water or coconut milk or whatever. You\u2019re matching those oats, that are quite carbohydrate rich, with [things that are] fiber and protein rich.\u201d When he has more preparation time, he has scrambled eggs or tofu on properly seeded bread (\u201cnot like a supermarket bread that\u2019s actually quite carb rich\u201d), or shakshuka with lentils and avocado.<\/p>\n

He also recommends leaning into savory foods, or simply having leftovers for breakfast. \u201cI\u2019ll quite happily have last night\u2019s salmon with sweet potato<\/a>, [a] bit of greens, and maybe some salad leaves,\u201d he says. \u201cMost of our breakfast food is antithetical to what we would have been eating as hunter gatherers\u2014we\u2019d just be having savory foods the whole time.\u201d There\u2019s no need to load up with a massive meal. It\u2019s your first of the day, so you need to ease into eating anyway, and most importantly, he says, \u201cit needs to have the right nutrients.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People love to debate the timing of dinner, but no meal drums up divergent opinions quite like breakfast.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[78],"tags":[13364,5250,18,518,135,19,17,1715,2555],"class_list":["post-453318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-digital_syndication","tag-eating","tag-eire","tag-food","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-wellness"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116465817743089446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}