Day 22: What's the best breakfast for you?
Posted by kathryn in Breakfast
Today’s task in the 31 Days to a Better Diet centres around awareness and making your diet work for you.
Breakfast is an important meal. It provides your body with fuel and nutrients, after the overnight food free period. A good breakfast can also set you up for the day: stabilising blood sugar levels, and keeping your mood and energy more even-keeled.
But I’ve found that different breakfasts work better for different people.
You can see this in my family. My mum is a confirmed porridge eater – anything else just doesn’t keep her going. While dad and Richard both swear by muesli. For them, a morning without muesli means they’re ravenous all day.
Whereas for me, if I eat porridge, cereal, fruit and yoghurt, a smoothie – I’m hungry within two hours, maybe less. Instead my best breakfasts include either eggs or some heavy-duty wholegrain toast with cottage cheese or hummous. If I can have one of these two, then I’m set for 4 – 5 hours.
What’s the best breakfast for you?
Many people struggle to have breakfast and most people go for something which is easy and simple. It’s the convenience of the meal, more than it’s nutrition, which is the primary consideration.
I understand this. But without a bit of experimentation you may be selling yourself short.
Over the next few days your task is to experiment with some different breakfasts. Are you better with toast or cereal? If it’s cereal, does the type you’re eating make a difference? Which keeps you going for longer, baked beans or vegemite on your toast? Does adding an egg help? Or are you better with a liquid breakfast, like a smoothie?
Plan a different breakfast each day and track how you feel, and how long before you get hungry?
Some breakfast suggestions
If you’re stuck about what to eat, then why not try these comparisons:
- Muesli with yoghurt & fruit vs a smoothie with oats & fruit
- Wholegrain toast with vegemite or jam vs hummous & sliced tomato
- Weetbix or cornflakes vs porridge with sultanas & honey
- Baked beans on toast vs fruit & yoghurt
- A spinach & mushroom omelette vs porridge with banana & walnuts
- Cooked barley or brown rice with fruit vs wholegrain toast & cottage cheese
- Jam & banana sandwich vs raisin toast with ricotta & honey
Experiment over the next few days and let us know what’s your best breakfast?
Surprised woman eating lettuce photograph by Vika Valter, cornflakes by Just Maria, berry smoothie by terriseesthings and boiled egg by sidereal.
22 August, 2008
Comments
I too have found that something with eggs makes me stay satisfied until lunch. Having scrambled eggs on toast is a very easy and filling breakfast for me. However, if I have an extra 5 minutes in the morning, I throw together a breakfast burrito. Not only do I get full, but I get a treat of a small potato, my favorite carb. It literally only takes 5 minutes to make this:
1 baby red or yukon gold potato
1 egg
1 tortilla wrap
herb of choice (basil, chives, cilantro, etc)
optional: cheese, salsa
1. Prick potato several times with a fork and microwave for 3-4 minutes, until tender when pierced with a fork.
2. While the potato is cooking, scramble an egg. It will be done by the time the potato is done
3. Mash the potato with the back of a fork and add salt & pepper to taste.
4. Slide the potato, egg, and chopped herb of choice onto a tortilla. At this point you can add optional cheese and salsa. Wrap like a burrito and enjoy!
I’m happy with my muesli and yoghurt or porridge. Either keep me going till lunchtime, or at least that plus some fruit at 10:30 does. Toast and spreads, yoghurt and fruit, any other cereal leave me starving at 10. And while I have those options I’m just not going to take the time on a weekday morning to cook eggs.
About time I got some more variety though. I’ll aim for eggs Sunday and that brown rice suggestion (sounds good with tinned apricots) sometime next week.
Wholegrain and some kinda protein usually keeps me going until lunch time. Smoothies/cereal/fruit/yoghurt/pastries just don’t cut it for me. Usually hungry again in an hour or two.
Favourite breakfasts of late:
Vegemite, avocado and tomato on toast
Sardines and cheese jaffle
Plain quick oats with a piece of fruit chopped into it made with hot water
Today’s breakfast: baked beans with an egg microwaved and liberally splashed with chilli sauce with a piece of toast
I’ve been known to eat a tuna salad sandwich for breakfast too. Yum.
Chopped fruit with a dollop of yoghurt and sprinkled with chopped nuts is definitely my favourite breakfast. I try to vary the nuts to benefit from the range of vitamins and minerals they can offer. Ditto the fruit.
Strangely, if I have a more ‘stodgy’ breakfast like porridge or toast, I get hungry again much sooner. It also puts me well on the way to getting all my fruit and veg portions in!
I like whole grains, usually whole oat groats, nuts and fruit. For awhile my “easy” breakfast was a whole-grain, sugar free cereal like Ezekial brand, but that’s a second best option for sure. I’ve also experimented with breakfast cookies made from millet and whole grain flours.
Oh, and if I forget and decide to go for some pancakes at a Sunday brunch with friends? I’m lethargic and foggy for the rest of the day!
It’s interesting that many of you have noted the different response to different breakfast foods already. And what a variety.
As part of my breakfast experimenting I’m going to try Heidi’s Grandma Grains mix this week – and see how long that keeps me going.
I have a great Circulon fry pan that allows me to cook myself an awesome breakfast each day. I add two cubes of chopped frozen spinach ( Coles Brand), 1/4 capsicum sliced, 1 tomatoes sliced, a few mushrooms quartered, seasoning ( Salt pepper, rosemary, tumeric, nutmeg on the spinach) and about 1/2 cup of water, then I add an egg ( If I have fresh basil I will add this too). I put the lid on and come back in about 10 mins and breakfast is done! If I feel really hungry I also have a slice of wholegrain toast.
I don’t feel hungry at all during the morning and sometimes even at lunch.
Des – I like the way you put together your breakfast – and the fact it virtually cooks itself. Just time to have a shower, or scan the newspaper and it’s done.
I make and refrigerate oatmeal ahead of time, usually on a Sunday night, so I can pop a cup into the microwave with a splash of unsweetened vanilla soymilk for about 1.5 mins, then mix in a tablespoon or two of ground flaxseeds and enjoy. I cook a cup of steel cut (Irish style) oatmeal, which lasts me 4 to 5 days. A cup of yoghurt with Grape Nuts is my substitute on days I don’t have oatmeal prepared. These two are the most reliable breakfasts for me. The oatmeal is the more rejuvinating and long-lasting of the two.
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