A good breakfast

Have you ever seen a diet plan that told you to skip breakfast completely? No, of course you haven't. So why are so many young women doing it anyway?

A recent report showed that nearly 20% of teenage schoolgirls were skipping breakfast because they thought it would help them lose weight. Around one in twenty miss both lunch and breakfast, and while 60% thought that they needed to diet only 16% were actually overweight.

It's one thing to oversleep and rush out hungry, but deliberately missing the first meal of the day is a different matter altogether. And it won't help you to lose weight, quite the opposite in fact. That's right, avoiding breakfast can even make you put weight on.

Think about it. Breakfast. Break - fast. Your body has been fasting overnight, and in the morning you are almost in the first stages of starvation. You need to refuel and boost your metabolism to keep you going through until lunchtime.

If you starve your body it will get its own back sooner or later. It might make you feel sick, shaky or irritable. You will probably find it hard to concentrate at work or college, and around 11am, you're likely to start craving sweets, biscuits and chocolate. So you binge on snack foods, and you miss out on vital nutrients.

Be kinder to your body and start the day with a light meal such as cereal with milk, followed by some wholemeal toast and fruit or pure fruit juice. If you want a cooked breakfast then why not help yourself to a bowl of porridge, or a big plate of baked beans with poached eggs or grilled sausages and bacon.