Life&Style. The importance of breakfast: it’s grrrreeat! aS. By Eric Wilkins, Staff Writer ake up. Get out of bed. Throw on a random assortment of clothes. Hit the coffee pot, and then head out to catch the bus. This is about the average student’s morning, but it shouldn't be. There is a key ingredient missing from this picture: breakfast! Breakfast is an essential part to the day, even though it is often forgotten in the rush to get out the door. Contrary to popular belief, your mother was on to something when she stressed the importance of a good meal in the morning. Seeing as the average person only has three meals in the day, missing breakfast means missing a third of your daily nutritional intake. Flimsy excuses such as “I’m not hungry” or “I don’t have time are often reasons for not eating breakfast, but there is never any real justification for skipping the first meal of the day. Those who ” choose not to partake in morning food often experience increased irritability, shortened attention spans, poor decision-making, and physical sluggishness. Avoiding breakfast can also lead to being overweight. How? By not eating breakfast, the body is being denied the nutrients that it needs to function; this leads to overpowering hunger pangs later in the day that are often compensated for by excessive and unhealthy snacking. Junk food is a quick fix for your hunger, but a great way to foul up the workings of your body. Breakfast just makes sense. Assuming a reasonable sleep schedule of eight hours or more, bypassing breakfast can leave a person with no food for over 12 hours. Half a day! While many mask their hunger /replace breakfast with a cuppa joe or tea, they are merely creating a stop-gap solution. This particular stop-gap solution is a leading reason why yawns tend to be prevalent towards the end of your first or second class. Caffeine is not a reasonable substitute for food. Don’t try and fool yourself into thinking otherwise. In eating breakfast, remember why you're doing it; breakfast is so that you can have a healthy, energizing start to your day. Don’t settle for a bowl of sugary cereal. Make some toast and have some fruit instead! That bowl of sludge is going to do little more than a cup of coffee. You will get a short burst of energy, and then crash. A toast and fruit combo is, to use the cliché, nutritious and delicious. Start the day the right way; fill up on some grub! War of the waists: Prelude Douglife’s Biggest Loser competition to fuel cellulite-reducing rivalry By Jacey Gibb & Sharon Miki, Fitness Correspondents ome people argue that having GS: mortal enemy is a bad thing, but maybe, just maybe, rivalry can prod us into becoming better people. Sure, hate can be difficult to maintain, and it can make for some stressful situations, but the upside is that you always have someone ready to take you on in a challenge and try to prove that you’re inferior. Such is the relationship between us—your own favourite Other Press employees—Sharon Miki and Jacey Gibb. While our competitive antics in the past have been trivial at best, we finally found a way to raise the steaks-stakes: we both recently registered for Douglife’s Biggest Loser competition. Starting on Wednesday, January 18, we will be faced with two, eight- week options through the Douglife program—either the Biggest Loser competition or the Health and Wellness Challenge. Participants in the Biggest Loser contest will weigh in at school every Wednesday morning, measuring their success by their percentage of weight lost by the final week. Conversely, participants in the Health and Wellness Challenge will be scored by self evaluations, measuring their success by their adoption of healthy habits (think sleep, floss, stretch) 8 OL Ke UA BIGGE into their lifestyle. We’ve already decided that we will be enrolling in 1 Challenge smaller waistline, lower cholesterol, and sense of accomplishment aren’t “The winner of the Douglife Biggest Loser match will go home with a bounty of prizes, including a Jamis Commuter 1 Hybrid Bike and a gift card for Sport Chek; for us though, the real prize will be in proving that we are the better (and healthier!) editor.” the Biggest Loser set, where we will track our weekly weight loss until March 14. The winner of the Douglife Biggest Loser match will go home with a bounty of prizes, including a Jamis Commuter 1 Hybrid Bike and a gift card for Sport Chek; for us though, the real prize will be in proving that we are the better (and healthier!) editor. And, just in case a big enough motivators, we’ve upped the ante with an additional clause for the two of us: loser must eat a live cockroach. Aiding us in our quest for personal superiority and extreme fitness will be a variety of secret weapons courtesy of Douglife— including health and wellness clinics, workshops, and tutorials covering topics like healthy cooking, stress management, and physical activities like yoga and weight training—all of which are exclusive to people registered to the program (there’s gotta be at least a few perks to being forced to publicly weigh yourself every week). And so my friends, we invite you to join us in this endeavour to best the other blubbersome students of Douglas College in the hopes of being crowned the Biggest Loser. For your entertainment and education, each week we will be tracking the progress and plunders of our two-month quest for personal success in The Other Press. Hey, it’s better than being crowned the Biggest Asshole, right?