Day 18 of 5am - Breakfast is Important

Another day of really pushing it through the workout.  Maybe I'm coming down with something, who knows.  Anyways, I wanted to talk about breakfast today.  Sooooo important.  Some statistics say that around or more than 50% of Americans skip breakfast.  Not hard to believe.  In this fast paced society, who has time right?  Well, I have started doing something that I wanted to share with everyone.  Last year, I was really struggling with the thought of getting up early enough just to make sure I eat breakfast.  Not just any breakfast, a HEALTHY breakfast.  Sure, cereal is quick and easy, but there are so many more healthy foods that we miss out on when we eat cereal every day.  They also say breakfast should be your biggest meal of the day, right?  I have yet to figure that all out, but I will give you a clue of what I do.  I focus on having one to two servings of grain.  Good grains are loaded with fiber and help keep things moving if you know what I mean.  The other category I focus on is protein.  And last but not least, a "super food" fruit.  The fruit I usually have in the morning.  As I mentioned in another entry, I'll have either a grapefruit, juice, or a smoothie and sometimes I'll treat myself to something else if I find a good sale and haven't had it for awhile.  The Smoothie contains a serving of pineapple juice, a serving of vanilla yogurt, and a serving of Mixed berries found in the frozen section in your grocery store.  I use my Magic Bullet to blend it all together and it's ready in a minute tops!  For my grain, here is where I do most of my preparation.  You could look for a variety of different things that are Whole Grain or Multi Grain in the store, or you could simply make it at home.  This weekend, I made raisin bread, oat bran muffins, and pancakes with bananas and nuts.  The pancakes I usually leave out to cool like you do after baking cookies and then wrap up in wax paper and put it in a freezer bag and freeze them.  It’s like buying the eggo pancakes or waffles, only homemade!  Less processed and much healthier.  When you have it all ready, all you have to do is pop it in the microwave in the morning for about a minute to minute and a half and wah lah, pancakes for breakfast.   I do the same with the muffins.  There are other grains that I will have such as certain hot or cold cereals, english muffins, or Ezekiel Bread.  For your source of protein, you could have yogurt, milk, cheese, turkey bacon, eggs, or nuts.  Yogurt contains probiotics, in other words bacteria that is actually good for you and is killed anytime you take antibiotics as a medication.  So when you have to take antibiotics, be sure to load up on your yogurt afterwards to build it back up.  It is key for helping your digestive track.  Milk does a body good. J Turkey bacon is just so much healthier then pork or beef.  I guess you could say Turkey is a “super food” as long as you don’t eat toooooo much of it. I just heat this up in the microwave.  Doesn’t take long. J  If you are worried about the cholesterol in eggs, recent studies I have read say that it does not have a great effect on your cholesterol level.  If you are still concerned about it, maybe just take the yoke out and eat the egg whites.  The yoke is the part that contains the cholesterol.   Eggs can also be heated in the microwave.  They have containers specifically designed for cooking them.  I found mine at Walmart by the microwaves.  It’s like a little bowl just big enough for one egg and a top that hinges over it.  One minute is all it needs.  So eat your breakfast and don’t worry about spending too much time making it.  You could have it ready in 5 minutes or less.  Have a cup of tea or coffee with it and make sure you have another glass of water to counteract the dehydrating factors in them.