Episode 52: What’s For Breakfast? Quick, Easy And Balanced Ideas

Balance365 Life Radio

In this solo-podcast, Lauren explores everyone’s big questions about breakfast. You’ll learn how to make your breakfast habit a success, what science really has to say about breakfast and how to set yourself up for a great day when your family is too busy to sit down all together like they do in the movies and on TV. Tune in for ideas to make your mornings go more smoothly (and taste more delicious!) Bon appetit!

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Which components make up a balanced breakfast
• How Balance365 can help you determine how much of what you need
• Is it really the most important meal of the day?
• What happens if you miss breakfast?
• Will not eating breakfast impact your metabolism?
• Setting your breakfast time to work with your schedule
• Reverse engineering your eating
• How big does breakfast really need to be?
• Meal prep tips for busy mornings
• Breakfast ideas – what to eat

Resources:

Quick and Easy Breakfast Recipes!

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of Balance365 Life Radio. I am Lauren Koski and I am actually hanging solo for this episode today so it’s going to be short and sweet and we’re going to get right to the point. I’m talking about quick balanced breakfasts and I don’t know about you but when I watch a movie or a T.V. show and the family’s all sitting down for breakfast together, the young kids are all eating orange juice and someone’s making eggs and bacon that does not look like my mornings.

I don’t know if it looks like yours but mine are more me running around the house like a crazy person looking for socks and shoes and packing food and trying to get my kids out the door and into the car on time and there is no time for everyone sitting down together to eat breakfast unless I got up at like 4:30 which I’m really not willing to do.

So, today we’re going to talk how to get a balanced breakfast quickly because I know that if you’re like most of us you don’t have a lot of time in the mornings. So, first what we’re going to do is I’m going to break down what I mean by a balanced breakfast. So the general elements of a breakfast are going to be protein, carbs, fats and fiber or fruits and vegetables.

So inside Balance365 we help you determine how much of each of these that you need to support your goals and lifestyle. So we don’t give exact amounts but we give guidelines and typical ranges and then you can figure out exactly what that looks like for you but the elements again are going to be a protein, carbs, fats and fibre which is in the form of fruits and vegetables or whole grains and I also want to address whether or not breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

We’ve heard that for years and years and I’m sure you’ve heard that. But I want to make it very clear that there’s nothing magical about eating breakfast as soon as you wake up. So, eating breakfast is not going to increase your metabolism. Nothing “horrible” is going to happen if you miss breakfast. Your metabolism is not going to drop if you don’t eat breakfast.

So what you want to consider, there is no right or wrong answer for “Is breakfast the most important meal of the day?” Generally speaking, I’m going to say no, all meals are important. But what you want to consider is how breakfast individually affects you. So if you’re someone who wakes up and you are very hungry and you skip breakfast because you know, you’re trying to eat less or cut calories or whatever or maybe you just don’t have time and you skip breakfast. If that causes you later in the day to over eat at all of your other meals then breakfast is going to be very important for you and that’s something that you’re going to want to prioritize.

Now, if you are forcing yourself to eat breakfast when really, you’re not hungry in the morning and waiting to eat breakfast later actually works better for you then no, I would say, don’t force yourself to eat breakfast. So, me personally, I eat about, I eat a couple hours after I wake up. So I get up, depending on the day, between 6 and 7 usually and I eat at about 9-9:30 after I drop my kids off and that’s when I start getting hungry and so that’s when I eat. I’m not going to force myself to eat breakfast in the morning if I’m not hungry right away.

Now, with that being said I know there’s also people who have to eat breakfast at a certain time because that’s the only chance to eat until lunch, right, if you have, you know, if you’re a teacher or if you have set breaks at times, eating breaks, then obviously you’re probably going to want to eat breakfast otherwise you’re not going to even until your next break, right?

So for those people, well, what we recommend is what we call reverse engineering your eating and so if you find you’re not hungry in time for your breakfast but you do need to eat, one option is to look at what you’re eating at night before you go to bed. If you’re eating a nighttime snack, if you’re eating a large late dinner, try reducing that and you’ll probably find that you’re hungrier in the morning or sooner in the morning.

I should say another option is that breakfast doesn’t always have to be a big full meal. If you’re not feeling all that hungry but you need to eat something before lunch, right, you can make it a smaller meal as well. So bottom line, all of that to say, eat if you’re hungry and wait to eat if you’re not is basically our recommendation.

So, let’s talk balanced breakfast options. So we find that having your breakfast prepped and ready or parts of your breakfast prepped and ready definitely increases the chance of actually getting a balanced breakfast in the morning when we’re busy and all running around.

So some of our favorite meal prep ideas ahead of time are going to be chop your veggies ahead of time for omelettes, if you’re eating eggs in the morning, cook meat ahead of time if you want to put meat in your eggs or breakfast burritos or whatever. You can pre-pack protein scoops and put them in snack bags.

I know Annie does this and then she just takes all the bags and puts them in her gym bag so on the way home from the gym she can have that before she eats the rest of her breakfast. You can pre-cook protein pancakes or protein waffles and freeze them so all you have to do in the morning is toss them in the toaster.

Another great idea that we have come across is prepacking smoothies. So, prepacking your fruit and veggies for your smoothie in a ziplock bag and putting that in the fridge or even in the freezer if you want to keep it longer and then all you have to do is throw that in the blender and blend and you’re good to go. Janelle, actually, she, sorry, if you don’t know Jen now you probably don’t know Janelle.

She is one of our long long time Balance365 members and she is Jen’s sister and what Janelle does or used to do is she would blend her whole smoothie up and put it in like a mason jar and put the whole thing in the freezer and then the night before she just pull it out and put it in the fridge and then in the morning it was already all ready to go.

Now if you want to precook an entire breakfast that’s also a great idea. So some of our favorite recipes for this and we will put these a link to get these in the show notes so you can get the actual full recipes that we use. Egg bakes, egg bakes are really great. You can make them in a large casserole dish. You can do eggs eggs, egg whites, a mix of the two and they’re really versatile.

So you can throw in basically whatever you want, cheese, meat, veggies, anything you want and you can either cook it in a large casserole dish or my favorite way to actually do it is cook them in muffin tins so that way they’re like pre-portioned and you freeze them that way or put them in the fridge and then you just grab out a few, however many you want, microwave it, you’re good to go.

Another great one that’s really popular in our community is Annie’s Oats so, they’re Annie’s Oats because Annie is the only one who likes them. No, just kidding. It has a love/hate relationship with our members. Some people love it, some people can’t really wrap their heads around it but basically it’s oatmeal cooked with egg whites and if you cook it correctly, which I did not do the first time. The first time I basically got scrambled egg whites in my oatmeal but if you cook it correctly the egg whites just add a really creamy texture and they take on whatever else you add into it, so peanut butter or whatever And it’s a really great option for a high protein breakfast.

Another one that we really love is our Greek Yogurt Power Bowl. This is super simple. It’s just Greek yogurt and then you put, you know, granola, fruit, chia seeds, whatever you want on top of it and this may not be something you can make totally ahead of time, right, but it’s super easy to maybe have your toppings in a bag, scoop out the Greek yogurt, mix it together and go.

Another one of my absolute favorites is Overnight Oats. So you can make that totally ahead of time and put it in the fridge and then grab and go in the morning too.

Alright, so those are our quick breakfast options. Again, we will have a link to those in the show notes and just to recap, whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day or not really depends on you, your lifestyle, your preferences and your needs. So again, eat if you’re hungry, right when you wake up and wait to eat if you’re not. Have a great day!

The post 52: What’s For Breakfast? Quick, Easy and Balanced Ideas appeared first on Balance365.