Do you reach out for that plate of fresh fruits or cold milk or maybe soaked overnight oats? While all these boost umpteen health benefits, they may not be ideal food choices for the day’s first meal. There are people who opt for cold breakfast options over warm ones to give their day a much-needed start, Ayurveda suggests otherwise. As per Ayurveda, it is best to kickstart your day with warm breakfast options to make the digestive system active for the heaviest meal of the day, the lunch.
Health Shots reached out to Dr Dimple Jangda, gut health and an Ayurvedic expert, to understand why we should preferably have a warm breakfast.
Is cold breakfast good or bad?
Our metabolic fire has a direct relationship with the position of the sun. In Ayurveda and modern science, this concept of syncing your internal clock with mother nature’s clock is highly appreciated. The concept is called circadian rhythm, explains Dr Janga. “In the morning when the sun is just about rising, your metabolic fire in the gut is also just waking up and is a bare minimum. Now, if you put a cold breakfast in your gut in the morning, chances are that the metabolic fire will either extinguish or it will weaken. Over time, your digestive health becomes weak,” she adds.
Ayurveda recommends starting the day by showing love and care towards our digestive health. The expert shares that your colon is active between 5-7 am, and your digestive fire starts becoming active at sunrise and sets at sunset.
Healthy morning habits you must practice
Here are some things our expert recommends as we go about healthily starting our day.
1. Spend at least one-hour meditating, chanting, or in body movement
“You should kickstart your day on a healthy note by practicing meditation, chanting or some basic yoga exercises like stretching to activate the downward movement or peristalsis of the waist. The downward moving wind principle allows us to evacuate any waste from our stomach, intestines, and our colon,” says the expert.
Also read: Learn how to make poha, and end your search for a low-calorie desi breakfast
2. Have warm water on an empty stomach
You should drink at least 200 ml of warm water to stimulate the agni/digestive fire in the stomach.
3. Have overnight soaked nuts or stewed fruits
The expert suggests, “Have some overnight-soaked nuts because they are great superfoods and are a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals. You can also have stewed fruits wherein you can take fruits like apples or peaches. You can peel off the skin, add some water, cinnamon or clove and stew them all well. You can have a bowl of warm stewed fruits for breakfast. You can also have a bowl of porridge”.
Breakfast tip: Make sure that your breakfast is simple and small, based on the position of the sun. You can have a big lunch when the sun is at its peak and a small dinner when the sun sets. The portion of your meals should be directly related to the position of the sun, and the number of meals should be as minimal as possible.
Skipping the morning breakfast to directly go on to have brunch at 11 am is also healthy, according to Dr Jangda, even though many experts may contradict it. A healthy practice is to allow your metabolic fire to reach its peak before you start giving food to your body.
Also read: Why skipping breakfast for ‘brunch’ is not weight-loss friendly
Word of caution
If you are someone who suffers from issues such as acidity, acid reflux, headaches or burning sensation, you must have breakfast or it could aggravate pitta symptoms such as hyperacidity or acid reflux.
Best breakfast options
“You should refrain from having bread, wheat parathas, milkshakes or smoothies which are toxic combinations of vegetables or fruits and can lead to skin diseases in the future,” says the expert.
The best breakfast options as per the expert are porridge, steamed idli or dosa. These can be made using ingredients such as sooji and oats, or from any of the millets like bajra, jawar, raagi, or broken wheat. These ingredients can either be steamed to make idli, porridge or dosa on an iron pan where are no spices or cooking process involved.
This warmth in our body and gut keeps us alive. So, we should always honour the agni in our stomach which is the source of our life.
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