Do you choose healthy breakfast choices as part of your overall healthy nutrition and lifestyle choices?
So why then aren’t you losing weight, improving your health and feeling at your best?
For the ultimate guide to what makes amazing nutrition take a look here, but for now let’s take a quick look at breakfast.
Healthy Breakfast Choices
Today I want to talk about healthy breakfast choices and show to you that adopting a new breakfast will contribute to huge health rewards.
It is only recently that what we now accept as normal breakfast choices have become ingrained (pun intended). There is a clear link between the dominance of the modern grain based breakfast and the size of the nation’s waist line and prominence of type II diabetes and lifestyle related disease.
An Unhealthy Breakfast Choice
Grains, cereals and sugars dominate the modern breakfast table, and this really is a hindrance to your progress.
50 years ago breakfast would have been protein rich, and nutrient rich, but modern lifestyles, fashions, and marketing have changed all that for quick convenient but essentially unhealthy cereals.
Just because foods claim to ‘contain calcium’, are ‘fortified with iron’, or ‘are whole wheat’ this does not make them healthy.
The trust we have of the food giants who train us with comforting associations of unhealthy foods is at best making us fat, and at worst literally killing us. So read on to adopt a change, and feel fab!
Green Breakfast Choices
Have you ever added greens to your breakfast?
I know what you’re going to say because I’ve heard it before.
Its weird, I could never do that, or no way, I’m a cereal addict!
But if you really want change, if you really want to improve your health, your body composition, lose weight, or even improve your mental alertness, then maybe you should consider it.
After all, if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. And I’m guessing you are reading this because you want a change in your life. In fact most of us want improved health and weight loss – being overweight is a modern problem and a western disease!
So, give me a chance and read on.
Spinach, Kale, Lettuce, Rocket, Watercress…
It probably feels a little unusual to consider eating a green breakfast. This is for two reasons.
- Firstly others around you will be looking at you strangely as they munch their cereal, or skip breakfast all together!
- Secondly, because you have always eaten other more orthodox breakfasts, it will feel strange. Change always feels strange bit this does not mean it is bad! So give it a try!
Acid Base Balance
In my experience, if I feel groggy on waking, eating greens for breakfast can help.
In addition to a green breakfast you can also try squeezing a lemon into a large glass of water and drinking at least a pint of water at breakfast.
The alkalizing effect of vegetables has on your body is beneficial, as is re-hydration.
Furthermore, lemons are one of the few fruits not to contain fructose, have many nutrients and vitamins. As before, it may take a little tuning of the senses, bit after drinking it once, I for one love it!
Fibre For Weight Loss and Health
Do you want a healthy digestive tract?
Green leafy vegetables are an amazing source of soluble and insoluble fibre, slowing down the amount of sugar rushing into the blood stream and doing wonders to prevent and manage diabetes.
Not only this but fibre is also an essential material for your intestines to use as leverage as they contract, and as a way of cleansing old or bad bacterial – a little bit like a scrubbing brush!
Nutrients Make You Feel Alive
A nutrient dense breakfast is a healthy breakfast. Famous for its iron, spinach and other leafy veggies are packed with other vitamins and minerals too. Magnesium and potassium are needed but often lacking in our bodies, especially if you have high sodium consumption. In addition, other trace minerals are also found in green leaves that fortify our bodies further.
Filling Breakfast Ideas
I personally find these ‘living’ breakfast food choices filling, which means that I will not pick or snack on bad things later. I always accompany every meal with a protein, whether that is meat, fish or eggs, nuts or seeds. This is one recommendation I always stick to for a whole host of reasons.
Healthy Oils
I’m not sure if it is just me, but plain salad, spinach, cress isn’t that nice on its own. Which is a bonus really because having it with extra virgin olive oil, avocado which is full of fats, and a drizzl of balsamic makes it a real treat to eat. The benefits of these fats, if eaten raw as is the case here, is their protective properties and EFA content.
Eating Healthy Breakfast Foods
So now you know what a healthy breakfast choice is. If you happen to be one of the many many people wanting effective weight loss, then adopting this change might just set you off on the road to success.
You’ll feel strange at first no doubt – I did – but the health rewards, energy and focus you get from a good breakfast is worth it.
I hope this was helpful and interesting, and all the best with your own breakfast experimentation. If you want more nutrition advice, please learn more about online nutrition coaching.