So Here For It Episode 4
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Amy Mingin: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode four of the So Here For It podcast. I am your host Amy Mingin and I am so excited to get started on today's topic, which is: why you should be eating breakfast. There are so many trends out there, different fasting trends, different lifestyle management things that say, Oh, breakfast isn't that important, but I'm sure you've heard just as many times throughout your life that breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day.
So have you actually experimented as to how your body goes with having a light breakfast or having a heavy breakfast? Or having no breakfast at all? Now we're going to go into the science of why have breakfast today. You're in for a treat. Before we get started on this, I am pro breakfast. So if you are someone who is waiting for me to say to you, you should be intermittent fasting, [00:01:00] or breakfast isn't that important, sorry to say, you ain't gonna hear it from me.
And there's good reason for it. I have been So darn busy in my life. I've been one of those people that rushes around in the morning with two little kids and a husband and a dog and trying to do multiple drop offs with the kids and doing all of the different things as well as run my own business. It's a busy life.
So I totally get the whole time management thing, but I don't get the time management thing. Like if you go out the door and you haven't had something to eat or even a decent something to drink, like you could have a smoothie, I know, but I shared something this week about smoothies. Like, let's just start right there.
A lot of people, when they go on a weight loss journey, they think that smoothies will make them lose weight. Like there's this thing, it maybe is [00:02:00] linked to the culture around having a shake, like a meal replacement. But if you have a look at, let's say the pre packaged shakes, they don't have very good ingredients.
They've got fortified nutrients in them, meaning they're lab created. There's a bit of protein in it. That's cool. But often these meal replacements have a lot of refined carbs in them. They're actually not good for you. So if you're doing some of those shakes, I highly recommend that you don't purely because of the sugar content.
And it's not really good for you. It's just not good for you. You can get such better results by eating real food. Now if we start with the first thing that most people would say is they don't have time to eat breakfast. You can pre prep your breakfast, just saying. It doesn't take much to soak some oats, pop some milk into it or pop some yogurt into it and put some berries on top and put it into the fridge.[00:03:00]
It really doesn't take a long time to stir some ingredients together. and then take it with you. It really doesn't take a long time to pre prep for some vegetables. I know this one's going to be out there because for real, a whole lot of people have vegetables and protein as a breakfast option in Catalyst and hardly ever do they eat it.
It's like my favorite breakfast and so many people are just like, Oh no, I don't even see that as an option because I'm eating veggies at the other meals. And it's like, if only you realized that if you have vegetables at every meal, your micronutrient content, your fiber, if you add protein to that, holy moly, you are just like setting yourself up with the best day.
But hey, Don't look at me and say, I can't do a savory breakfast. Like so many people just can't do savory for breakfast, but I think it's actually the most important time to do savory to be [00:04:00] honest. It sets your blood glucose up for the day. So if you have sweet, if your very first thing that touches your lips is sweet, your tongue is sweet. Then there's the expectation of your body, your dopamine cycle to want more sweet throughout the day. It's just the way that it happens. I bet you've noticed this as well. If you have chocolate and then you go back to have more chocolate and then you just think, I'll just have another bit. Like there's this thing about the taste of sweet.
We are so wired for it. So the best way around it, is to actually start your day with a savory breakfast. So that's number one. If you've got time to do a savory breakfast, do a savory breakfast. Highly recommend. Number two, that's, like, the time management thing. If you want to do a smoothie, I'm going to circle around to this.
A lot of people do smoothies, but they don't realize how many actual calories are going into the smoothie. So if you're filling your smoothie with lots of healthy fats, I mean, you [00:05:00] can put coconut oil and coconut yogurt and oats, and you can put berries and you can put chia seeds. But by the time you put a couple of tablespoons of each of those things, so many people's smoothies go up over a thousand calories and people don't realize how much they're actually having inside that smoothie.
So I just want to say if you want to have a smoothie, it's best for you if you're not actually trying to lose weight, if you're trying to maintain or if you're trying to have a bit more of an increase in your weight, then a smoothie is a great idea. But for those of you who are trying to decrease your weight, a smoothie is not a great idea.
I shared this on socials just the other day. And it surprises people. And I like to surprise people, so that's why I'm putting it in here. Now the next thing is, like, why do you actually need it? Now this comes back to our friend cortisol. This comes back to our hormones. It comes back to our glycemic load, the amount of blood glucose rising throughout the day, [00:06:00] which therefore affects our insulin, which therefore over a long period of time, it'll affect the way that our metabolic function works, which is going to affect all of our hormones.
So, of course, breakfast is one of the most important things that's going to set you up for hormonal balance throughout the day. When your hormones are balanced, your energy is balanced, you feel balanced, everybody benefits. Not just you, everybody. Everybody around you. Because you're thinking more clearly, you're less flighty with your emotions and you're more grounded, you're more in your body. So, you want to feel less stress, surely. You want to feel less stress, then eat breakfast. Like, fill that glory filled body. Fill the glory filled body with some nutrients every single morning. Now, I don't know about you, but when I grew up, juice was a thing.
And I just want to say this. Juice doesn't generally have any fiber in it and it generally has a lot of sugar in it. Natural sugars, yes. [00:07:00] However, this has the effect on high blood glucose. So we're wanting to limit blood glucose, aren't we? We want to level it out. So my suggestion is don't have juice. Just don't have juice, have water, have your cups of tea or coffee, have your green tea, have matcha, but don't do the sweet juices. I know someone's out there thinking, what about veggie juice? Veggie juice is probably okay, but I actually prefer you to eat vegetables. Like there's a guy at our local farmer's market, and when I go there, I fill a whole basket. Granted, my family eats a little bit of the fruit and veg, I eat most of it.
I eat about a half a kilo of vegetables a day, plus three pieces of fruit, which sounds like a lot, right? I eat a fairly high volume diet. And that's because that's what satisfies me. And that's what makes me feel good, that that has me healthy. And that's me. And that's what I base a lot of my things on is [00:08:00] what works for me, what works for my clients, and then I continue on with that and add different varieties to it. Now, the guy at the markets was like, Oh, you're doing juicing. You've got so many apples. You've got so many carrots. I'm like, nah, I eat every single bit of this, like all of that fiber. Like when you think about it, it is a lot, isn't it?
Like it's not until I say it out loud, half a kilo of vegetables a day is a lot, right? But if you're not getting much veggie matter into your gut, what are your gut microbes going to live on? It's like sending a bunch of people out into the Sahara desert without tents. You want communities to thrive inside of your gut.
Now, the better your gut health, the better your everything is. And I'm talking about your neurotransmitters. I'm talking about your immune system. I'm talking about your hormones, the better your fiber levels are, the more regulated your estrogen is. Now, I haven't talked about estrogen that much, and [00:09:00] it's bringing me to this.
If your estrogen is unopposed, and what this means is some people might've called it, you might've heard it being said as estrogen dominant, or someone having high unopposed oestrogen or oestrogen causing issues in some women's bodies. Now, usually oestrogen is higher when your cortisol is higher.
Surprise, surprise. Oestrogen goes higher in response to stress. Oestrogen goes higher in response to inflammation. Again, oestrogen is protective. So, it's not oestrogen's fault, by the way. It's up to us to regulate our systems in order to get the oestrogen into the right position so that we can actually thrive from the oestrogen rather than struggle with the, sometimes it's breast pain, sometimes it's gaining weight, some women who have high unopposed oestrogen [00:10:00] gain a whole cup size in their breast before their period. That's a lot. That is a lot of fluid. So they get very, very sore breasts. Sometimes they get a lot of fluid around their tummy. Sometimes a lot around their legs and their butt. If you get a lot of fluid, it could be an oestrogen thing. Sometimes it's cortisol. Yes. And I have talked about that before, but sometimes it's oestrogen, particularly if it's in relation to your period as well.
Now, oestrogen is only going higher because there's not enough fiber, probably.
It's high because your body's not detoxifying it. Now fiber is helpful because it binds to excess estrogen in the gut. If you're exercising, that also helps to detoxify estrogen. If you have a sauna every now and then, that's going to help with detoxifying estrogen. Now it doesn't mean that every single woman needs to do all of this stuff all the time. However, It is very helpful to know [00:11:00] where you are on the estrogen scale. Now there are some tests that I usually do if I suspect that someone has high estrogen, my favorite test is called the Dutch test. I used to do that quite a bit and holy moly, like such great results with it. So if that's something that you want to look into, just send me a message. We can get it sorted out for you because these sorts of symptoms that people get from the estrogen excess are just like, so debilitating at times. So debilitating, sometimes linked to migraines as well. I didn't mention that before, but it is sometimes linked to migraines. Now, how can all of this be linked to your breakfast?
Well, very easily, because if you're not eating anything for breakfast or you're fasting and you're getting your cortisol up and your blood glucose is going AWOL and that's stressing you out more, you can see how estrogen down the track, as a cascade effect, is going to go out, right? And that's where your symptoms are coming from.
Now, sometimes people are like, Oh, but you know, what is so important [00:12:00] about all of these hormones? What if I decide that I don't want to have kids? What if it's, you know, my fertility is not important anymore. I've already had kids, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. There are so many women who say these sorts of things to me.
And I'm like, your hormonal health is a key indicator of your overall health. So if you're getting symptoms, If you're getting sore breasts, if you're getting period pain, if you're getting all that excessive fluid each month, if you're not feeling great inside of your body, let's do something about it.
Like this is not the time for you to sit around and just be like, Oh, well, it's my genetics. Oh, well. No lady, it's about time that you ate more vegetable matter. It's about time that you started walking every day. And it is about time that you started releasing what it is that is not serving you. Because you holding on to all of these old patterns, definitely not serving you in the long run.
So if you're ready to change, perfect. Let's [00:13:00] keep talking about it. Now, the other bits about breakfast. It doesn't need to be sweet, although I know that a lot of people love sweet things. It doesn't need to take forever to make. You can pre prep it. You can literally make things that you can just reheat.
It's so easy. Breakfast is actually so easy. I'm not the hugest fan of cereal, but if that's all you can get in in the morning, can you please get some of my favorite protein powder, is collagen, unsweetened and unflavored. So I get all the women in Catalyst to buy because of this. Number one, it is a protein source. Number two, it seals up any leaky gut. So it helps with any gut inflammation. And number three, it is fantastic for hair, skin and nails. So everybody starts glowing. So what you can do is if you choose to have some form of milk with your cereal, if that's what you're choosing. Like, if you're doing Weet Bix, please, can you stop eating Weet Bix?
Like, Weet Bix [00:14:00] are some of the most not good for your gut. Like, anything with wheat in it, just avoid it. Just avoid it. Every single human I know, even if you say that you're fine with wheat, it still causes gut inflammation. So if you just switch out the wheat, like go, gluten free Weet Bix. Or, go for wheat free oats, if you have to have a cereal, okay? Anyway, even if you're going to do that, then use, instead of just milk, put the protein powder into it, put the collagen powder into it, sorry, collagen, unflavored, unsweetened. It is going to change your life. It's going to fill you up for longer and it's going to actually have a medicinal feeling inside of your body, like you'll start to notice things. So you're welcome for the healthy glow. I absolutely love collagen. I go through so much of it. I have it every single day. It is part of my anti aging policy. Like this is the stuff of champions. Now, what else [00:15:00] is important about breakfast?
Like you think about The person who's rushing around, the person who forgets herself, I actually want you to consider that you feeding yourself in the morning is going to help calm cortisol down. It's going to help calm you down. It's going to help you be more mindful and it's you putting nutrition into your body.
So you're going to have so much more energy throughout the day. And it's going to regulate your, not only your energy, but your concentration and your focus. It's going to give your body the nutrients rather than take away.
Again, I want all of this to make sense to you. I want you to go, this is a good idea for me. I want you to want to do this. This is not just me giving you advice, this is me using science to be able to show you what happens if you do and what happens if you don't. And then you get to actually make an informed decision. Yes. I did say at the beginning that I believe in eating [00:16:00] breakfast and I believe in eating breakfast within an hour of waking up. There's something about having protein, especially within an hour of waking and having protein before you have coffee, if you're a coffee drinker. Oh my goodness. It's really, really important that you're not doing that on an empty stomach. So important. So if you can eat first, then have your coffee, this will change your life. You're going to notice such a smoother, nervous system response, a smoother energy response.
There's going to be none of that, like revving up in your nervous system or feeling scattered, and you'll feel so much more grounded and warm and in your body. That is always the goal. Now there's probably someone out there who's like, well, what about if I want to go do a workout or fasted cardio or a walk?
Now, this is where I say, it depends. And what I mean by this is, if you have a bit more space in your morning, maybe you don't have kids or [00:17:00] you don't start work till later or you run your own business. Perfect. This is for you. If you wake up and you're not feeling frantic and you want to go do a workout, don't do coffee before the workout, preferably.
If you do, can you have something small to eat with it? Like maybe a kiwi fruit, for example. It's got really good digestive enzymes in it. It's very protective for the gut. You could have some papaya as well. Those two are like my go to for the gut. So go have those. And then you could have a little bit of coffee with it and then you can go do your workout.
So that's like if you're heading to the gym or something like that. If you're going for a walk, just have some water, have some water, go for your walk. When you get home, have your normal breakfast and then have your coffee afterwards. Same goes for black tea. Black tea isn't as high in caffeine, although sometimes it can be, depends on like your coffee and what your order is.
But a generalized like one cup of coffee is about 80 [00:18:00] milligrams of caffeine and one cup of black tea is about 40 milligrams of caffeine. But the way that tea delivers caffeine is way different to how it's delivered via the volatile oils inside coffee. Like it gets into your system so much faster. So, it's still caffeine. It's still something to detox out. But if you've eaten first, your body can handle it so much better. So that's why I recommend that. That in one thing can just be so life changing. Now the other thing about caffeine, just while we're on it, if you're ever someone who gets wired, but tired in the evening, that's a really big indicator that cortisol could be a little bit out.
If you get really tired in the afternoon and then you get revved up again in the evening, another sign. If you're just flatlining all day, that's another sign. So sometimes people are going for their coffees or their teas all day long. So if that's you, then my suggestion is to start switching over to [00:19:00] decaf or to change to green tea.
I actually think that green tea delivers a slightly lesser amount of caffeine, but it gives you so many more antioxidants. So it's a lot more protective. I personally love matcha. Oh my goodness. I love it so much. If I'm out with friends, I always get a matcha made on almond milk. I love it. And if I make it at home, I actually use goat milk.
That's my favorite milk. So I know people will be like, Ooh, what? It's very goaty. It is quite goaty. And the other thing about that is, while we're on weird milks, camel milk. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, it's actually really popular over in the Arabic countries apparently and it's really really good for metabolic rate.
So if you can get your hands on some camel milk, let me know I would love to know. I know that they would probably have it in some of the more desert areas in Australia, I imagine, but I haven't been able to get my hands on it locally. I live on the Gold [00:20:00] Coast and I can't see it anywhere, but I can get goat. So it's interesting, hey. But if you're going for the green tea, it's going to give you less caffeine. And it's going to be a really good way for you to wean yourself off the so many shots of coffee or so many black teas every single day. That's my suggestion. It's a much more ease filled way rather than deal with the caffeine headaches when a lot of people detox off coffee. But it depends on how you want to do it.
And no one's saying here that you have to give up coffee. It's just about moderating yourself. Like if you're revving yourself up or, or even worse, if you, I often say to some of my adrenal fatigue clients in the past, I was like, it's like, you're flogging a dead horse.
Now you can't put espresso into your body all day and still feel tired and think you can sleep like there's some big alarm bells, red flags there. And then you're putting more things in that are like you're trying to wake yourself up with things that are not waking you up. So you're [00:21:00] better off going back to the beginning, refilling all of those mineral stores with your really good quality foods, from your farmer's market if you possibly can.
And then eating breakfast. Eating breakfast is so underrated, a bit like walking, eating breakfast is so underrated. And my suggestion is to eat it within an hour of waking up. It is so life changing. Now I'm going to give you something that is a really big bonus here. The bonus here is If you add in getting some morning sunlight in your eyeballs with no sunglasses, just get the morning sunlight, not through the window. You actually have to be outside, walk outside, stand on the grass, let that morning sunshine go on your face for a good few minutes before you have any form of caffeine. This is key. to your energy levels to be stable throughout the day. Now this works on your circadian rhythm. It helps to reset at [00:22:00] cellular level via your eyeballs.
Because your eyeballs are an extension of your brain. And the brain relies on us, our five senses, to send it messages. So it makes sense, if we're wanting to hit reset on hormones, if we're wanting to hit reset on our nervous system, that we're going to find different ways that are going to help reset at that brain level as well, right?
So that is key. That's a huge bonus I can share with you today. I absolutely love it. I usually do some breath work at the same time, and that's a good hour before I'll put caffeine into my body. And that's just so that I don't flatline in the afternoon. Like sometimes at 2, 3pm, it's just so tiring, right?
So it's really, really important that you're having your breakie, bonus points if you can get outside and get the sunshine on your face. with no sunnies on, also breathing deeply and then making sure that you're waiting to have your caffeine until a [00:23:00] little bit later. If you can get hydrated first, total bonus points.
So that, my friends, is why I believe more people need to have breakfast. Particularly women. I would love for you to share this with a friend who loves to intermittent fast. Or share this with a friend who never eats breakfast or doesn't put herself first. Or share this with someone who you know needs to hear this information.
There's someone just like you out there who I know needs to hear this. So please share it with them. I super appreciate being in your ears today and sharing this with you. And I will speak to you in the next episode.
