Surprising Nutrition Mistakes Derailing Your Health

A quick bit of good news to share: I was recently asked to contribute to a Body+Soul feature in The Sunday Telegraph on the surprising, everyday habits that quietly undermine our health. It’s always a privilege to help bring evidence-based nutrition to a wider audience, and the habit I was asked about is one I see derailing clients almost every single week. Breakfast.

The feature made a point I wholeheartedly agree with: the biggest food roadblocks usually aren’t the dramatic ones making headlines. They’re the small, repeated habits that fly under the radar. And few habits are as quietly influential as how you start your morning.

Here’s the exact point I made in the piece:

It sounds almost too simple to matter. But of all the changes I ask clients to make, front-loading protein at breakfast is one of the highest-leverage, and one of the most overlooked. Let me unpack why.

The problem with the “grab-and-go” breakfast

For a lot of people, breakfast is an afterthought: a slice of toast eaten standing up, a bowl of cereal, a pastry with the morning coffee, or nothing at all until an almond latte on the way to the first meeting. Each of these has the same flaw: they’re built almost entirely on refined carbohydrates, with very little protein to balance them.

Refined carbs digest fast. Blood sugar climbs quickly, insulin rises to bring it back down, and an hour or two later you’re running on empty: hungry, foggy, and reaching for whatever’s closest. That mid-morning “I could eat my arm off” feeling isn’t a lack of willpower. It’s a predictable metabolic response to how the day started.

Coffee compounds it. Caffeine can blunt appetite briefly, so a coffee-only breakfast feels like it’s working, right up until the crash arrives mid-morning and your body demands fast energy back, usually in the form of sugar.

What protein actually does first thing

Protein behaves completely differently in the body, and that difference is exactly why it belongs at the front of your day.

1. It steadies your blood sugar

Protein slows the rate at which a meal raises blood glucose, which softens the spike-and-crash cycle. Interestingly, a protein-forward breakfast doesn’t just help that meal, it can improve your glucose response to later meals too, an effect researchers call the “second-meal effect.” A better breakfast quite literally sets up a better lunch.

2. It switches on your fullness signals

Protein is the most satiating of the three macronutrients. It stimulates the appetite-regulating hormones, GLP-1, PYY and CCK, that tell your brain you’ve had enough, while helping to keep the hunger hormone ghrelin in check. That’s the physiological reason a protein breakfast keeps cravings quiet for hours rather than minutes.

3. It costs more energy to digest

Your body burns more energy digesting protein than it does carbs or fat (the “thermic effect of food”). It’s not a magic fat-loss lever on its own, but paired with better appetite control it nudges the whole day in a healthier direction.

4. It protects your muscle

Muscle is metabolically precious: it supports strength, healthy ageing and a resilient metabolism. Spreading protein across the day, starting at breakfast rather than cramming it all into dinner, gives your body a better, more even supply to maintain and build it.

What a protein-rich breakfast actually looks like

This is where it gets easy. You don’t need an elaborate morning routine or a blender full of powders. You just need to build the meal around a genuine protein source. A few of my go-tos:

Notice what these have in common: whole foods, a clear protein anchor, and enough fibre to round them out. None of them are complicated, they’re just built differently to toast-and-a-coffee.

The habit hiding underneath: eating too little, too late

There’s a second thread the Body+Soul feature touched on that’s worth naming here, because it so often travels with the breakfast problem: eating too little, too late in the day. Between back-to-back meetings, school drop-offs and endless to-do lists, a lot of us coast through the morning on a flat white and a prayer, then arrive at dinner ravenous and overeat.

A proper protein breakfast is the antidote to both ends of that pattern. It stops the mid-morning crash and it takes the desperate edge off the evening, so your eating is spread more evenly, and your choices later in the day come from a calmer place.

Try this tomorrow

1. Anchor breakfast around a real protein source: eggs, Greek yoghurt, smoked fish, tofu, or cottage cheese.
2. Aim for roughly 25 to 30g of protein, and eat within about two hours of waking.
3. Keep the carbs, but make them wholegrain and let protein and fibre do the balancing.
4. If you’re a coffee-first person, keep the coffee, just don’t let it be breakfast.
5. Notice your 11am. If the cravings and fog are quieter, that’s the change working.

Small habit, outsized payoff. It’s the kind of unglamorous, evidence-based tweak that doesn’t make headlines, but genuinely moves the needle on energy, cravings and long-term health. Which is exactly why I was glad to see it in the pages of The Sunday Telegraph.

This article is general information, not personal medical or nutritional advice. Individual needs vary, particularly if you have a health condition, are pregnant, or take medication. For guidance tailored to you, book a consultation. The quote reproduced is Jake Biggs’ own contribution to the Body+Soul feature; the original article remains the copyright of its publisher.