Image Credit: Geneva O’Hara

We’ve all heard it a million times: “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” For anyone growing up in the 2000s, this meant an emphasis on the food pyramid, health-crazed school lunches a la Michelle Obama, and Got Milk? Ads galore – especially where I grew up in the US. 

Unfortunately, the breakfast propaganda did not rub off on myself or most of my peers, particularly my female friends, perhaps because we were also subject to the Weight Watchers and bikini body advertisements that filled – and fueled – mainstream culture. When the impulse-buy magazines at supermarket checkouts are all flashing headlines reading “GET THAT SUMMER BODY! How to Lose Weight – And Keep It Off!” it can cause shoppers to reconsider their choices. I recall reading aloud similar headlines to my mother at single-digit ages and each time getting a response along the lines of, “Geneva, don’t listen to things like that.”

Breakfast is the easiest meal to skip, and it’s not considered taboo to do so. A habit for many while I was in high school in the late 2010s was to pick up an iced coffee at the drive-thru, skip the breakfast sandwich, and let the caffeine suppress your appetite until an absurdly early lunch around 11:00 A.M. This trend, however, surpassed my small-town high school experience – one X (formerly Twitter) user’s critique of it from 2021 still circulates the internet three years later:

User @freshhel (helena) via X.

There are several reasons one may justify skipping breakfast, whether it be for weight management, a busy lifestyle, or the continuation of a long-held habit. When I began to skip out on my morning Eggo waffles, it was a combination of the above factors and a long-held secret I’d harboured since graduating from childhood homemade pancakes: I didn’t like any breakfast foods. There were a few traditional items like eggs or toast that I could tolerate for about a week at a time, but as my responsibilities at school increased, I grew lazier about my first meal of the day. I figured that because it was common among people my age to skip it, it wasn’t so bad if I did too.

We’ve all been lectured on the importance of breakfast, as I referenced early on in this piece; however, I am going to address it again with more pertinence. Self-care is not just the beautifying habits like a skincare routine. Sometimes, it’s not glamorous. Sometimes, it’s hard. For many people, including myself, eating breakfast is one of those things. If one’s reason for skipping breakfast has to do with losing weight, this is especially true, and there’s no sugarcoating the solution. If this is you, there’s no way around the difficulty. It’s going to be hard, and you’re going to do it anyway. 

If the reason one misses breakfast is that they’re rushing out of the house with a list of things to do and they simply ‘don’t have time,’ it becomes even more important not to disregard it. How could you possibly get anything done on an empty stomach, without any fuel? I’ve been a victim of this bad habit myself, and when I feel tempted to relapse, I force myself to admit what I already know: I always have time for breakfast. If you find yourself chasing your day with an apple in hand that never gets eaten, it’s time to start structuring your morning differently. You, too, always have time for breakfast – sometimes it’s just about taking a moment to butter your toast and have a sip of tea. Make breakfast the centrepiece of your morning, and wellness will begin to bloom. But you’re not in the Garden of Eden – you can take a bite of the apple.

A breakfast habit I have begun to implement, though not never-seen-before, has revolutionised my mornings. It may sound hyperbolic, but it’s true. I’ve found that it’s often easier to eat two breakfasts instead of one, Lord of the Rings-style. I like to do a Pre-Breakfast before a larger one later on – a soft launch, if you will. A Pre-Breakfast is a very small introduction to the real thing, serving as an appetizer to open my mind to the endless possibilities of a full stomach and an energized mind. I’m usually hungry for a quick bite before I’m ready for a full English, and I found this to be the perfect solution. Some things I cycle through for my first round of breakfast are iced cherries, frozen grapes, a small pastry, or a piece of toast with butter or honey. These items are small portions of sweeter, more ‘aesthetic’ foods that are easier to introduce in the early mornings. Pre-breakfast is to be eaten within the first half hour to 45 minutes of waking up, which for me is between 8-9:00 A.M. 

Image credit: Geneva O’Hara – “My first Pre-Breakfast that inspired this piece: ice-cold cherries.”

It is paramount that we do not stop at pre-breakfast. This is why I do not call it ‘First Breakfast’ or ‘Breakfast One.’ It is not a full meal and does not count as one. Something is better than nothing, and baby steps are certainly a win – that being said, a bowl of cherries with ice is not enough to hinge the rest of your day on. The key driver of the system is that we are taking care of ourselves, and being deliberate about it. It is not fully effective until we begin the main event.

Our Main Breakfast is the real deal. It can be sweet or savory, and it must include protein. Examples of Main Breakfast are eggs, bacon, sourdough toast with peanut or almond butter, a bagel sandwich or open-face with cream cheese, or a breakfast wrap. The possibilities are endless. Main Breakfast is the sustenance for your day, and will have the most positive impact on your mood, energy levels, and ability to complete any tasks. This should land around 9:45-10:30 A.M., a sweet spot between whenever you are next hungry from Pre-Breakfast and lunchtime. The purpose of a dual breakfast is defeated if it causes you to skip lunch. When I eat my first meal in two parts, I typically eat a late lunch and an even later dinner, which I like to pretend is European (this helps me not to ignore dinner, either). Either way, all three meals get their moment.

A dual breakfast solves multiple issues in one. It diversifies my breakfast menu, provides a beautiful appetizer to open my mind, and gifts me two intentional moments where I’m able to meditate on the day ahead of me. As I pondered before discussing my findings in this piece, I found that my Pre-Breakfast habit was quietly teaching me about sustenance, authentic self-care, and most importantly, self-respect. If all of my self-care habits revolve around making myself look better, such as a skin routine or even going to the gym, they do not fully represent my desire for self-improvement. When the only goal with self-care is to be beautiful, it can sometimes do more harm than good. We are people who deserve to feel good for the sake of it – not because it will make us desirable to others. We eat for energy, emotional stability, and to be as kind as possible to both ourselves and others. My self-love journey begins anew each morning when my alarm rings at 8 A.M. Yours can, too.