Breakfast is important for a number of reasons:

It affects your metabolism. If you miss breakfast, your body has to use stored energy to perform, it tells your body that if we eat less, we should store more food as fat - the opposite of what you need when you want to lose weight! As a matter of fact - Including breakfast in your regular eating schedule will kick start your body to burn fuel all day!

Skipping Breakfast. Not only does it slow your metabolism but you're more likely to skip fruit and vegetables the rest of the day and more likely to snack on sugary foods.

Aside from alcohol, too much coffee and bad food stress is one of the biggest causes of excess fat. Reasoning behind this is when were frightened, angry, and tense or worried our body releases adrenaline and a stress hormone called cortisol. Adrenaline keeps us alert and focused while cortisol prepares our muscles for a flight or fight response. Cortisol is a hormone known because it gives us an immediate burst of energy. ‘fight’ i.e. confront a potentially harmful situation or ‘flight’ to run away from it.  It also helps our body release sugar into bloodstream for instant energy.

Less worry = less cortisol = less fat

Modern stress, caused by relentlessly busy lifestyles, is really bad for you – even toxic.  It wears out your immune system and increases your risk of serious illness. So when your  stressed your body releases adrenaline and cortisol, and that’s when you’re in real danger, these hormones prompt you either to run away or fight, in which case they don’t make you fat. But when not in real danger, you don’t use these fat-storing hormones, so they  and all that sugar that is released into the bloodstream – just float around, eventually  ending up as fat on your stomach and around your waist.

Why is Australia the fattest country in the world?

Let's look at the major contributors;

1.    Current Lifestyles
2.    Underactivity
3.    Ease of buying and preparing calorie rich foods and drinks

Thousands of years ago our ancestors survived by gathering and hunting their food, if they didn't hunt they didn't eat! This will to survive seems to be forgotten in recent times with the ease of which we collect our food from the shelves and the simplicity of how we live our everyday lives. It's too easy to take what we want, when we want, where ever we look, food is available.

Physical activity is an important determinant of both physical and psychological health. Regular physical activity exerts beneficial effects on onset and progression of a number chronic diseases, well-being, and has a positive effect on communities and societies. Unfortunately, more than 60% of world-wide adults do not reach the recommended levels of physical activity (Kruk J, 2009).