But I'm not hungry!

The morning ritual of getting kids up, dressed and fed before herding them out the door sometimes makes me contemplate drinking... heavily. I was discussing the importance of breakfast and the "why cant I just eat cereal" debate with my ten year old this morning. He was telling me that "my friends dont always have to eat in the morning" yea well, your friends mom's dont love them as much as I love you I told him. Thus sparking me to thinking, why exactly IS breakfast the most important meal of the day.

well, for starters it sets the tone for your day. Studies show that if you have a healthy well balanced breakfast you are less likely to binge eat later in the day, as well as more likely to chose healthy options for the remainder of the day. Kids need a healthy well balanced breakfast to help them be more alert, and less moody! Who knew that feeding my kids good food could keep them from being monsters, mostly.

According to WebMD:
Kids Need Their Morning Meal
While adults need to eat breakfast each day to perform their best, kids need it even more. Their growing bodies and developing brains rely heavily on the regular intake of food. When kids skip breakfast, they can end up going for long periods of time without food and this period of semi starvation can create a lot of physical, intellectual, and behavioral problems for them.

But it doesnt stop there! Did you know that having a healthy breakfast can actually help you LOSE weight?
Break the Fast to Shed the PoundsSome people skip breakfast in an effort to lose weight, but the practice is more likely to cause weight gain than weight loss. Skipping breakfast is strongly linked to the development of obesity. Studies show that overweight and obese children, adolescents, and adults are less likely to break the fast each morning than their thinner counterparts.

According to research, skipping meals, especially breakfast, can actually make weight control more difficult. Breakfast skippers tend to eat more food than usual at the next meal or nibble on high-calorie snacks to stave off hunger. Several studies suggest that people tend to accumulate more body fat when they eat fewer, larger meals than when they eat the same number of calories in smaller, more frequent meals. To teens, especially teenage girls, skipping breakfast may seem like a perfectly logical way to cut down on calories and lose weight. It's important for moms to educate their kids about the importance of the morning meal and the role it plays in maintaining good health and preventing obesity.

So the moral of the story here is make sure kids are getting healthy well balanced breakfast in the morning. Herbalife has a great kids shake that you can add fruit to, or some frozen greek yogurt to make it like a milkshake! Just make sure they are getting proper nutrition to help them get through the day!