Eat breakfast

One of the most important lessons I learned during my weight loss journey was that you must eat breakfast. Sometimes if I have a really intense workout in the morning, I will even eat TWO breakfasts, one before my workout and one after. Breakfast is really important because during the night you are fasting and you need to jump start your metabolism first thing.

Also, eat breakfast at home. Even seemingly healthy options at most restaurants are not as healthy as what you can make at your house. I typically rotate between three options for breakfast: cereal with 1% milk, oatmeal, or toast with peanut butter and jelly. I take certain steps to ensure that these are healthy options. For the cereal, I eat out of a coffee mug. This limits the serving size to a cup. For the toast with peanut butter and jelly, I make the bread myself so I know what ingredients go into the bread. I also use Polaner's sugar-free jelly to make sure that there are not too many empty calories coming from the jelly.

Finally, one of the places where calories tend to hide is in morning coffee. It is really important to remember that the milk/cream and sugar that you put in your morning coffee has calories too. Over half of my breakfast calories come from coffee (185 for my travel mug). I really enjoy the process of drinking my coffee on the way to work and am willing to "waste" that many calories there. If you are not, there are a lot of great sugar-free syrups available in the coffee aisle of most grocery stores.