Healthy Eating can be easy and fun. Getting back to the basics of health, I wanted to do a three-part blog post about the fundamentals of each of your main meals. See part 2 and part 3.
Part One: Eating Breakfast!
Did you know that what you eat for breakfast sets the bodies eating habits for the rest of the day? In other words if you wake and first thing feed your body caffeine and sugar it will continue to crave those things all day long! Your blood sugar will spike and then crash and you will be starving! If you wake up and feed your body whole real nourishing foods you are setting the tone for a healthy and helpful day of eating.
Let’s talk about what happens when you wake up after sleeping. Your body is dehydrated. You have been breathing all night and water has been escaping your body through that process. While you sleep your body is still hard at work. It spends most the time you are at rest healing from the day’s bombardment of activity. It must repair cellular damage, bones, muscles, organs and more. It is why sleep is one of the pillars of health. Your body needs energy to do that work, whatever food you fed it last is that energy source. So when you wake up most likely your tummy is empty and growling!
So now you are awake and you are hungry and thirsty. Good, you should be. But now what? You know there will be donuts and coffee at work and you are running late. Perfect! NO not perfect. Read on to find out how to combat this mindset. In the long run it will make constantly running late in the morning a thing of the past!
HEALTHY EATING TIP #1 DRINK 8-16 OUNCES OF WATER FRIST THING
Upon getting out of bed before you eat or drink anything else, drink 8-16 oz of room temperature water. This will hydrate you and will get the gastric juices flowing telling your body to wake up. When you are dehydrated your mind is foggy, you might be grumpy, you might have muscle pain, your joints might feel stiff and your gut may be achy. Drinking this water first thing will help combat all those things!
Ok, now you are hydrated and your digestion system is revved up…now your tummy may be knocking around with a grumble looking for nutrition. Your body is actually in fasting mode and when you eat breakfast you break that fast…get it…breakfast? That growl is more audible when you are hungry because there is no food to muffle it.
HEALTHY EATING TIP #2 DON’T IGNORE THE GROWL
You body needs fuel. That fuel is food. When you wake up it is likely that you have not had anything to eat for 11- 12 hours. You body has moved into fasting mode and is ready to break that fast. Ignoring the growl until lunch will cause you to over eat and most likely you will make poor nutritional choices. One of the hardest habits for me to help someone break is the “skipping breakfast habit”. About 10% of the population skips breakfast routinely. Omitting any regular eating habit is bad but skipping breakfast is really hard on your body.
Once you have decided that you are going to actually eat breakfast it is important to make good real food choices. Making good choices for breakfast food can be a stumbling block. There are so many “easy” prepackaged foods for breakfast that are so bad for us. All you need to do is walk down the boxed cereal isle to understand how many there are!
HEALTHY EATING TIP #3 MAKE BREAKFAST MEAL PLANS
One of the biggest complaints I here from people is “I am so sick of my breakfast food”. Normally we get stuck in a rut because of convenience. We make the same things in the kitchen over and over because lets face it being creative is a crapshoot and time consuming. Breakfast is without a doubt the most hurried meal of the day. Most of us have only a few hours to make magic happen and get everyone out the door without a meltdown. My best tip here is to make a meal plan for breakfast. Believe me there are some “make ahead” things you can do to get a variety of whole real foods.
Essentially your breakfast should have three major components in it; protein, clean carbs and clean fats. Here are some breakfast ideas for that formula.
- PROTEIN – eggs, turkey sausage, real food protein powders, nuts
- CLEAN CARBS – fruits, veggies, raw yogurt, organic whole grains
- CLEAN FATS – avocado, nuts, seeds, nut butters, oily fish
Here are some ways to put it all together at the breakfast table.
- 2 boiled eggs, 1 slice of Ezekiel bread, 1 pat grass fed butter and fresh fruit cup.
- 6 egg frittata with veggies and turkey
- oatmeal with ground flaxseeds, fresh berries, grass fed butter and crushed cashews
- green mango and pineapple smoothie with pea and hemp protein powder
- sweet potato hash with scrambled eggs and turkey sausage and avocado slices
- quinoa with scrambled eggs, red pepper/tomato/avocado salad
- raw yogurt mixed in with oat bran cereal, berries and almond slivers
You may not think to “pre”pare breakfast foods. This is my favorite breakfast to make over night and wake up with a warm meal ready for the table! It is fun to set up an oatmeal bar with all whole real foods. Everyone can make their oatmeal fresh with their favorite ingredients. Fill small bowls with fresh berries, cinnamon, honey, crushed nuts and use the plain overnight Crock Pot Creamy Oatmeal recipe for a fun, healthy and easy breakfast!
Crock Pot Creamy Oatmeal
1 1/3 cups dry old-fashioned rolled oats
2 ½ cups water
dash of salt
Mix together oats, water and salt. Cook on low for 6 hours. Serves 4, the formula per serving is 1/3 cup dry oats and 2/3 cups water with a few grains of salt. Use formula to multiply for the number of servings that you need.
