Let me know if this sounds about right:

You woke up, ate nothing for breakfast, and headed to work.  It’s now 11AM, you’ve been on your shift since 7AM, and you’re absolutely starving and cannot wait to tear into your lunch at 12.  Despite the feeling of wanting to eat everything in sight – food, furniture, etc – you’re proud that you’ve ‘survived’ another morning of fasting and eliminating morning calories from your diet.

That’s more or less how it goes, I think.  Many nurses skip breakfast and justify doing so by claiming it’s ‘part of their diet’.  They go to their morning shift on an empty stomach and hope to be busy enough for the next five hours with patients and paperwork to keep their mind off food.  The statistics for nurses are not much different than the average public – nearly 20% don’t eat at all in the morning.

Skipping breakfast is the worst thing you could do for your body, especially if you’re trying to stick to a diet plan.  I know that sounds ridiculous and counter-intuitive, but it’s true.  Your body is wonderfully complex, and many times it behaves the opposite way that would make sense at first (yes, that complexity can sometimes be a huge pain in the butt).  In this case, you figure:  “I’ll wake up, not eat, save 300 calories from my diet, then have lunch and try to eat well for the rest of the day.  This will help me lose weight.” 

In reality, your body responds differently.  It hasn’t been refueled since the night before – probably around 15 hours ago.  Waking up from a long rest, your body is low on blood sugars, low on amino acids and with few energy reserves.  Fearing it will never see fuel (food) again, it immediately reverts to survival mode, and starts cannabilizing itself.  It is very reluctant to use fats and stored glucose for energy…it wants to keep it around for later on in the starvation process -- in case you never eat again.  Instead, for immediate energy, it starts eating your muscle (literally!), saving its fat stores.  Besides, well, EATING MUSCLE AND NOT FAT, this slows down your metabolism and you end up expending fewer calories.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead, your body dug into your fat stores during this fasting period?  Sorry, doesn’t work that way.  Forcing your body to undergo this stress is taxing.  You lose concentration, decrease mental performance, get moody, and – of course, another fun nuance of your metabolism – your satiety signals become distorted (knowing when you’re full) and you therefore end up over-eating throughout the day. 

So, by skipping breakfast, you’ve managed to
A    eat away at your muscle and NOT your stored fats, 
B    slow your metabolism,
C    lose concentration and mental sharpness,
D    set yourself up for eating more total calories throughout the day, and
E    increase your chances of gaining weight over the long haul.

Thousands of great articles are available on the web and will give you much more detail around the way this works.  I get it – some people will still doubt that eating breakfast is a better strategy for weight loss than skipping it.  Some people won't be able to get past the idea that calories ingested can help you stay trim versus no calories ingested.  Don’t take my word for it – here's a google search results page for you.

Nursing requires a lot of energy and a sharp, attentive mind.  There are plenty of people who can snooze through their morning on the job.  Not a nurse!  The food you ingest in the morning kick-starts your metabolism and gives your brain and body the energy it needs for activity throughout the day.  Nursing is tough enough without the extra pressure of stressing your body and distracting your mind.

What to Eat



The simple answer:  a blend of slow digesting carbs and protein.  Check out our post here on what a well-balanced carb & protein breakfast looks like.  The post also includes some on-the-go breakfast tips.  I know a 7AM shift can be tough to wake up for.  It’s reasonable for 9-5 workers to wake up at 7 instead of 7:30 to make breakfast.  But when you have to be at work at 7, getting up at 4:30 instead of 5 is another story.  I’ll cover some quick tips you can use for those early mornings.

So please – for the sake of your patients and your waistline – go with breakfast in the morning.  Eat something!   Mom might have actually been right (don’t tell her I said that.)  Here's a totally obnoxious commercial from the 80s as a reminder!

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