Making a healthy breakfast can be a daunting task. There are always mixed reports about what is healthy or not: take chocolate, coffee, and wine for example. One year, they are all good for you; the next year, they cause cancer.
Why Natural is Always Better
When choosing what to eat for breakfast, I’ve found it’s best to rely on your intuition. An apple is better than sugary apple juice. But for less obvious choices, my general rule is the closer a product is to the way nature made them, typically, the better they are. Processing for the most part strips nutrients and other beneficial elements of a food product and adds unnatural products such as refined sugars and trans fats.
A good breakfast consists of a balance between carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. You want complex carbs, good fats, and proteins with a large number amino acids. When you have a balance of these three items, you will rarely go wrong.
Start With Carbs
The best way to choose breakfast foods it to start with carbs. You have a lot of breakfast choices here. The overwhelming majority of breakfast items are composed primarily of carbohydrates. The best are oatmeal, whole wheat bread, or whole wheat cereals like Cheerios and Total. Kashi makes some good cereals as well. Pancakes and Waffles can be good for breakfast too if you make them with whole wheat flour and fresh fruit.
Most people are used to sweetened products, especially sugary cereal for breakfast. Breakfast items served at breakfast cafes, Pancake Houses and fast food outlets is often overloaded with sugars in a bid to attract more customers.
But the healthiest way to enhance cereal’s sweetness is to add fresh or dried fruit. Blueberries, bananas, strawberries, peaches, are all good choices. However, if you can’t live without the sugary taste, honey is a much better choice than white sugar. Honey has some great benefits as they contain enzymes which promote oxidization. You can use honey on other breakfast items too.
Add Proteins
Next, for a healthy breakfast, you need proteins. Eggs are probably the best choice for protein. You can hard boil, scramble, cook them over easy, etc. Egg yolks are actually good for you as they provide healthy fats and good cholesterol. However, limit egg yolk consumption to about 2-3 per week. Use as many egg whites as you like as they are pretty much all protein.
Milk as well as most other dairy products are also great sources of protein. Try to avoid fatty meats like bacon or sausage. Any meat that releases oil when cooked is usually bad for you. Good meats include turkey breast or trimmed steak. Turkey Bacon is one of my favorite breakfast meats. You can heat them in an oven or pan fry them.
Add Healthy Fats
The protein source you eat for breakfast will usually contain enough fats so you do not need to add additional fatty foods. If you eat eggs and lean meats, you will be getting the healthy fats like mono unsaturated and poly unsaturated; not much Trans or Saturated fat.
If you want to add fats to your breakfast, good sources are nuts and fish. You can put almonds in your cereal, or peanut butter on a whole wheat toast. Some people eat cod or Pollock, or even salmon for breakfast.
Fruits and Nuts
As another breakfast rule, feel free to eat as many fruits as you want: oranges, apples, grapefruits, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, etc.
A benefit of eating a healthy breakfast is that you can eat more bulk with less calories, which means you can actually eat more! A whole bowl of oatmeal has less calories than a single sausage stick. So, you will feel full and lose weight!
Try eating a healthy breakfast for a week and you will notice a dramatic difference in your energy levels throughout the week. With a healthy breakfast, your body can digest nutrients much easier, making your circulation, digestion, and energy levels improve.
A Great Breakfast:
½ cup oatmeal with skim milk. Add ½ banana and 4 strawberries.
Egg white omelet with low fat cheese, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, turkey breast.
Toast with organic Peach jam and Peanut butter.
¼ cup nut mix: Almonds, pistachios, walnuts.
½ apple, ½ orange slices.
This breakfast will fill you up completely (if you can even eat it all) and has less calories than a whopper!
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