Breakfast like a king makes sense. You are hungry in the morning. Your stomach is empty. But your liver is not fully empty! It has used 60-80% of the glycogen (hey I am a medical translator, so I like to use words doctors use! For you, you can SAY it is glucose.)
[Skip text in pink as it may be a bit technical.]
So you have 100 g of glycogen or 400 calories in the liver on an empty stomach. Empty stomach = 8 hours of fasting.
Liver contains 100-120 g of glycogen. Skeletal muscle contains 400-500 g. Liver has 500 kilocalories in the liver and about 1500 kilocalories in skeletal muscle.
Simply, put -- tank empty hai bhai! Bharo! Full tank bharo! If you are not going to eat the whole day....fill the tank full. If not, maybe fill enough until the next meal.
Rujuta Diwekar and most Indian nutritionists recommend a hearty breakfast of idli, pohe, dosa, etc. It makes sense.
Roshni Kanchan a blogger and my Twitter friend, says What is wrong with eating what you ate during childhood? Eat what you ate as a child. Makes sense. But cereal manufacturers say have our cereal. It is so convenient. Yes, convenient way to load yourself with ultra-processed food (this colour means you need to avoid them), sugar, preservatives, and unwanted oils.
Khushwant Singh used to have an orange, the first thing in the morning! Then, later, probably he had a hearty breakfast of paratha! I did try having fruit as a breakfast. A few fruits or a fruit salad. On Twitter, everyone has advised me against it. It makes sense. Fruits contain fructose.
When lot of fructose reaches the liver, it converts it to fat via lipogenesis. Consume too much fruit/fructose you develop nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NFAD). [Psst! You already know how to get alcoholic fatty liver.]
Penso(Sir/Mr./Docter/Your Highness/King) @JohnnyPenso
IMO fruit only meals are a terrible idea. W/o a good dose of protein the fruit is going to be relatively quickly metabolized and you'll be wanting more food late morning. A breakfast based around protein will lead to greater satiety & thus less hunger & snacking later on.
Dr Anil Bhat, my favourite foodie-haddie (Ortho!) doctor on Twitter, tweeted:
Soak some
oats,
dry fruits like dates, almonds. Add any fruit you want like apple/banana. Blend all into a
smoothie.
You will not get hungry for next few hours.
I loved the idea. As I like to chomp things, I twisted the above recipe to suit my taste buds. You see the photo above! Will call it:
Guru's Oats Pear Walnut Brekkie
5 tbsp Oats, 1 small pear, 5 walnut halves, 5 cashew nuts, 2 tbsp cocoa powder, 1 spoon cinnamon, 1 tiny spoon of stevia, 150 ml lactose free milk.
Highly satisfying. Here is the nutrition breakdown thanks to Cronometer:
Excellent charts and information from cronometer.
Calories 441
Protein 11.3 g
Carbs 37.2 g
Fat 20.1 g
See the cronometer details. It is highly interesting. Most of the fat is MUFA and PUFA. OMG! You even get info on the Omegas!
18 g of starch. Not sure if this is resistant starch. If it is, then it is very good. I think only a small portion of this would be resistant starch. Say 5 g! Even that is good.