I love breakfast. If I didn’t also love fine dining so much, breakfast would probably be my favorite meal of the day. Through years of exposure to nutritional guidance, including becoming a Certified Health Coach with Dr. Ray Strand‘s Healthy for Life organization (use Discount Code cejco to get 20% off), I also recognize that most people do themselves a disservice in their food choices at breakfast time.
Here are some simple guidelines to follow to make breakfast your most healthful meal of the day:
- Don’t skip breakfast! It fuels your furnace and jump starts your metabolism, allowing you to burn more calories throughout the day. They say you should eat something almost immediately upon arising in the morning. I am not there yet. I do enjoy savoring my first few cups of coffee before I can even think about food, but by 8:30 or 9:00 I am ready for breakfast.
- Ultimately, eat whatever you want, but pay attention to how your food choices make you feel. I love bacon and I love hash browns. Neither of these is particularly healthful. But eaten in moderation, and truly savored, I don’t deny myself these treats. I do monitor how I feel after eating them, though, and I invite you to do the same.
- Avoid cereals. With the exception of whole oatmeal (stay away from instant anything), breakfast cereals are probably the worst thing you can put into your bodies. For the most part they consist of the two ingredients we all need to limit: refined bleached flour and various forms of sugars. To add insult to injury, the milk we put on them is mucous-forming. (Ever wonder where that nagging clearing-of-the-throat comes from?)
- Likewise, avoid breakfast breads: doughnuts, danish, cinnamon rolls, etc. These are all high-glycemic, give you an initial energy boost, bring you crashing down, and make you ravenously hungry for more. If you find yourself starving in the middle of the morning, you probably ate something high-glycemic for breakfast.
- Eggs are good. Wait a minute! Don’t they raise cholesterol levels? Friends, dietary cholesterol is not where we get our elevated levels of cholesterol from. If anything, our overconsumption of refined bleached flour is the culprit.
- Plain yogurt is fine, but the flavored versions typically contain more sugar than is advisable. And absolutely avoid those brands that contain artificial sweeteners. As a rule of thumb, I avoid any food that calls itself “Diet,” “Lite,” “Low-Fat,” “Low-Carb,” or even “Healthy Choice,” because what these products tend to use instead (or as fillers) is typically far worse for us.
- Fresh fruit is great. Fruit juice is good but not great. Rule of thumb: The closer a food is to its natural state, the better it is for you.
- A breakfast shake is an alternative, but most of these are high-glycemic, too. The only brand I recommend is USANA’s Nutrimeal. All of USANA’s foods (even its Rev3 energy drink!) are low-glycemic.
To reiterate the main point, definitely have something for breakfast, preferably low-glycemic to give you sustained energy throughout the morning.
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So what does this have to do with the 29th chapter of Proverbs? Absolutely nothing. There was only one verse that stood out to me this morning, and I really didn’t want to go where it would have taken me. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but it does seem to point to the economic dampening effect of high taxes:
By justice a king gives stability to the land,
but one who makes heavy exactions ruins it. (Prov 29:4, NRSV)
