Hi everyone this is Monica Reinagle. Welcome back to the nutrition

divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous. Today I want to

talk about what's wrong with many healthy breakfasts.

Callie wrote to me this week to ask for suggestions for a healthy breakfast that would keep her going for at least five hours.

Apparently, she finds herself getting hungry long before lunchtime rolls around.

Currently, Callie eats a bowl of high-fiber cereal with skim milk,

and that's precisely the type of breakfast

that you'll see recommended in health magazines and diet books.

But I'm not at all surprised that Callie's running on empty midway through her morning. because most of the so-called healthy

breakfasts I see touted in popular books and magazines fall short on two major counts.

One common breakfast mistake is simply not eating enough. When you wake up in the morning,

it's been 8 or 10 hours since you've last eaten, so you're basically running on empty. Is it realistic to expect a 200 calorie breakfast to last five

hours? Probably not. The average person needs somewhere between 1,800 and 2,400 calories a day and most people are awake for

16 to 18 hours a day. So here's a very general rule of thumb. A meal should

provide at least 100 calories for every hour it will be until your next meal or until bedtime.

So if it's going to be five hours until lunchtime, you should be eating closer to 500 calories at breakfast.

Now some of you are going to find that number shockingly large, but that's because you've been

brainwashed by magazines and food ads that promote low calorie breakfasts as a good weight management strategy.

But if you're only going to eat 200 calories for breakfast, you'd better plan for a mid-morning

snack because you're probably going to need it. And if you're someone who just doesn't wake up with a big appetite,

dividing that 500 calorie morning meal into a smaller breakfast and a mid-morning snack

is certainly an acceptable alternative.

...