by Jenna Verhoeven
It’s a daily saga – “What do you want for breakfast?”
Luckily for me, pleasing the two adults in my house at breakfast is pretty easy. It’s usually easy to find something quick, simple, and most importantly, nutritious. However, so often I see students and young professionals fighting fatigue, headaches, and wayward hormones. A deep dive into their diet reveals that breakfast consists of a few bites of soggy cereal, a cup of coffee, or sometimes nothing at all.
Excuse me! Is breakfast so boring?
For so many people, breakfast, the meal that breaks your fast, might not actually be until morning tea time, lunch time, or sometimes until you collapse into a heap at about 2pm. We all have our reasons, “I have an early lecture” or “I’m so bored with breakfast, I just don’t bother”.
Should I, or shouldn’t I?
Breaking your fast in the morning is essential to kick-start your metabolism! Eating a healthy breakfast can help you avoid poorer choices throughout the day and prevent the dreaded 3:30-it is. Not to mention it‘ll increase the amount of nutrients you get in a day.
Your body needs fuel. Your body also doesn’t like the idea of running out of fuel. So when your body thinks it’s running low, a whole host of alarm bells start ringing which can make our bodies think we’re going into a food-famine.
The impact
If you skip breakfast, or instead eat a processed, sugary cereal, then you’ll find you only come crashing down a few hours later. Being hungry or eating a sugary breakfast leaves us with a cranky tummy. And no one should have to deal with that.
Fight the flavour fatigue and beat the breakfast blahs.
Here are some simple tricks to train yourself to eat breakfast:
- Plan and prepare
- Think about breakfast when you do your weekly shop and stock up the fridge and pantry
- Choose 3 recipes and rotate
- Prepare zip-lock bags of pre-chopped fruit for quick smoothies
- Power up your protein
- Use leftover chicken or fish from dinner as a protein base on toast
- Mix up protein powder flavours to keep them interesting
- Eat eggs! They’re so versatile, you can have them scrambled, boiled, poached or as an omelette
- Eat mindfully and eat socially
- Breakfast is a great ‘soul-food’ as you can spend time with housemates or friends while eating – so make it a social gathering at your favourite café!
- Grab your greens
- Add extra greens to breaky for something more alkalising and nutrient dense
- Add basil and rocket pesto to scrambled eggs
- Spinach, kale, or wheatgrass work as great additives to smoothies and you can barely taste the difference
- Seasonal swing
- Eating seasonally will decrease your shopping bill
- Try berries on granola in summer and stewed pears and apples on porridge in winter
- Zucchini fritters are great in summer and sweet potato mash is perfect in winter
