Aprovechar

Belated by a day . . . it’s time for step three in the Year of Self-Care! The coming two weeks, your new self-care goal is to eat breakfast every day. More specifically, your goal these two weeks is to eat a breakfast every day and make sure that it contains protein, complex carbohydrates, and a bit of fat.

At this point, some of you are thinking, “Every day? Seriously? But I’m not usually hungry for a big breakfast.” And we’ll get to that in a moment. Some of you are thinking, “But I already do that.” That’s awesome! There’s an additional challenge for you, should you choose to accept it.  Some of you are thinking, “Will every step in the Year of Self-Care have to do with food?

Not all of the steps will.  The next step won’t.  But I’ve discovered, in the last two years, getting my eating to a positive place where food is providing me energy and balance, and isn’t causing me guilt or headaches or blood sugar crashes, is an important base for my ability to care for myself.  Plus, I’ve spent the last two years learning to care for myself with an emphasis on achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.  So my knowledge in this field is going to include a variety of steps that have to do with dietary choices.

Eating breakfast has been key for my ability to maintain my energy level and manage to make good food choices throughout the day. Besides the enormous number of studies that show that a good breakfast balances our blood sugar, boosts our metabolism, and provides us energy for the day (the book Food & Mood in the resources section gets into all the chemical reactions foods create and affect), I have the anecdotal evidence of my own life.

As I was growing up, breakfast usually made me sick.  To be honest, the idea of cereal with milk makes me feel ill even now; it’s a conditioned response to the nausea and diarrhea I experienced from eating it while I was a child. (Somehow, I eventually learned I couldn’t eat that combination of foods but never thought about it in terms of food allergies until recently.) When you think about breakfast in terms of my allergies/intolerances (dairy, soy, gluten, and eggs), you can imagine that a traditional breakfast leaves me feeling very unwell; in fact, as I told a new friend recently, eating at a restaurant with for breakfast is pretty much impossible for me. (I’m mostly okay with that. I invite people over for breakfast/brunch if I want to spend that time of the day with them.) Breakfast doesn’t have to fit into the American, or Western, stereotype (eggs, bacon, sausage, cheese, waffles, toast, etc.) to be satisfying.  In fact, since overloading on sugar and processed carbs and fat leaves many of us with sleepiness, headaches, and stomach aches, a less traditional breakfast may be just the right thing for many of us.  If you’ve been turned off by trying to force yourself (or having others trying to force you) to eat an enormous, Western breakfast, rest easy here, because that’s not my goal. (Then again, if you find a Western breakfast gives you energy and doesn’t take anything away from you, that’s your choice, too.)

What I discovered, as a child, was that my breakfast situation was a Catch-22.  If I ate breakfast, I felt ill. If I didn’t eat breakfast, I felt ravenous by lunchtime, felt emotionally off, and didn’t make good decisions about what I ate at lunch—or I ate a healthy lunch but then kept snacking all day long.  If I didn’t eat breakfast, from a simple biological standpoint, my blood sugar began to crash, and I began to want food food food food in any form, but particularly forms that offered lots of calories and fat.  From a larger physiological standpoint, my body went into, “We must fend off starvation! Eat! Eat!” mode, wherein my body was not sure if this was going to be a short-term or long-term problem.  Have you ever had your blood sugar crash from hunger, and you feel panicked about getting food into yourself? Where you rush into your kitchen and grab something high in sugar and fat, or you hit the vending machine and get the least healthy, highest-calorie option? That’s a survival mechanism.   It’s not necessary when we live in a time of relative plenty, but it remains ingrained in our bodies nonetheless.

On the other hand, when we eat a good breakfast, we kick our metabolism up (the body wakes up from sleep and goes, “Whew, okay, food coming in; we can start burning it at a good rate again”); we give ourselves energy for the morning activities; and we balance our blood sugar for the morning period so that we go into lunch hungry, but not ravenous.

So what is a good breakfast?

Soapbox Alert

I’m not someone who believes that one particular, exact diet is for everyone.  I believe there are some steps we should all take for better health (and I’m certainly still learning), but as for the specifics, I think that should be left up to each person.  There’s a concept called bio-individuality that says, basically, that despite many of us having a predilection for believing in one universal good, in the case of diet, the answer is more complex than a single one.  (For an interesting, brief discussion of bio-individuality and sustainability, see this article.) What’s good for—and what is a sustainable lifestyle for—someone who lives in the Sahara with a nomadic lifestyle will be different from what’s good for a marathon runner of European descent, which will both be different from the needs of a sedentary office worker from Asia.  Beyond our activity levels and lifestyle, our hereditary backgrounds and our particular backgrounds mean that the same things won’t necessarily work for all of us.  I have to take B-12, iron, and folic acid supplements to get my levels in the normal ranges, even though I have a mostly healthy diet: my specific background means I haven’t absorbed them well and that my gut is still healing from gluten and casein intolerance. (I also take probiotics for that reason.)  You may not need those supplements even if you eat the same diet.  There are some unifying factors for many of us in how our dietary choices will affect us—for example, increased cancer risk with overconsumption of meat. We need to think about how we are making choices that affect our whole society and world in addition to our own diets and lives. However, we are each individual and have to come to our own concusions about how to make the specific, daily choices for our own bodies to best meet our own needs and balance our life’s challenges.

End of Soapbox Alert

So I won’t tell you exactly what to eat for breakfast.  I will tell you to find what works for you; I will tell you that for many of us it’s probably not what we’ve been doing (especially if our health isn’t the greatest and we’re either overweight or underweight); and I will tell you that I believe that nearly universally, we tend to function better, like our bodies have developed to function, if we don’t overload on (or in some cases, eat any) processed carbs.  Though the actual foods vary widely, healthy people around the world seem to run best on a breakfast that includes a bit of protein, a bit of complex carbs, and a bit of fat.  In other words, a breakfast of a sliced apple smeared with natural peanut butter is more likely to keep you satisfied (and serve your body’s needs) than a breakfast of a pancake with maple syrup. Add a protein to that pancake and syrup, and your blood sugar will be more balanced, but that combination still is unlikely to offer you the same nutritional benefits as the apple and pb.  It’s good to think through what balances calories, fat, and nutritional offerings for your own, particular dietary needs.  Here are some breakfast ideas that you may want to try.  There are additional ideas in the resources section.

• Sliced apple or pear with natural peanut butter (one made from just peanuts and, if desired, salt) with maybe a teaspoon of honey added if your apple isn’t sweet enough for you
• 1 or 2 eggs, 2 egg whites, or 1/4 c. to 1/2 c. tofu scrambled with a small bit of cheese, olive pieces, salsa, and/or spinach
• Mixed, steamed vegetables with greens and barley or quinoa
• Millet mashed with greens
• Whole-grain toast with 1-2 tablespoons peanut butter
• Handful of nuts (Two tablespoons of nuts is often my breakfast of choice if I wake up late, since I know I’ll eat lunch fairly shortly but don’t want to be ravenous at lunchtime.)
• Brown rice with steamed greens (Greens are high in protein, a good vegetarian source of it.)
• Miso soup with vegetables (If you enjoy soup, consider other kinds of soup, as well—soup for breakfast is common in some cultures, and broth-based soups are filling while being moderate in calories!)
• Fruit smoothie that includes greens, nut butter, hemp or rice protein powder, or some other type of protein (I wrote a post recently about my new love affair with smoothies.)
• Yogurt (dairy, soy, coconut milk–watch the sugar amounts) mixed with applesauce or chopped fresh or frozen fruit
• 1-2 tablespoons dried fruit mixed with 1-2 tablespoons of nuts
• Oatmeal (preferably rolled or steel-cut, which has more fiber and nutrients than instant) with fruit in it and a bit of nuts, seeds, protein powder, flax meal, or other protein
• Homemade muffins (be aware of the sugar level and how it may affect you) with flax meal, fruit, and nuts or seeds added to the mix

If you are already on track with eating a breakfast that is healthy for you, there is a second part of this step that you may choose to undertake.  Last summer, when I first went to see my acupuncturist, I complained about an inability to get my brain to slow down so that it was focusing on only one task at a time.  I know some people are great at keeping a focus on one thing, but I know I’m not alone in this struggle with it, as well.  All day long, I struggle with what I still have on my to-do list, and sometimes it keeps me from focusing on or enjoying my current activity. Even when I’m sleeping, I’m often dreaming what I call ‘puzzle dreams,’ wherein my mind is racing through intractable problems trying to solve them.

My acupuncturist told me I had to find ways to slow my mind down and develop my ability to focus on one thing at a time.  One of her suggestions was that when I ate my meals, I only ate my meals.  In other words, I shouldn’t surf the web or read a book or plan my groceries:  I should just eat. Doesn’t it sound like a luxury? I already knew that multi-tasking is not actually how our brains work and often leads to all the tasks lacking the proper attention, but the idea of just eating when I ate. . . . I did that at dinner (a habit starting in childhood, where my parents allowed only discussion at dinner—no tv, no books—and we all ate together), but in a life that often seems short on hours, I had never considered it for my other meals.  At first it felt odd to eat my breakfast (and lunch) alone and without another task to engage me.  But letting my mind wander while I ate, and letting myself slow down to enjoy the food I was ingesting, turned out to be great for me.  It made me more capable of telling when I was satisfied with food, and it gave me the right to be still for a little while without feeling any guilt about my to-do list.  Being concentrated on my meal is one of my tasks for the day now, and I’ve come to enjoy it.

If you find yourself scarfing down your breakfast while pulling on your shoes, driving, sitting at your desk at work, etc., and you are someone who feels overloaded, you may also want to ask yourself what you can rearrange, or give up, so that you have a breakfast that involves sitting still, preferably in a pleasant environment, just enjoying your food.  This part of the third step of the Year of Self-Care is optional.  It’s all about finding what works for you—but if you think that might add to your life, I encourage you to make it a priority to give yourself the time to do nothing except enjoy your food.

Overall, eating breakfast daily has certainly been one of the foundational changes in my routine in the last two years.  It has helped balance my mood and energy, and it’s kept me eating more balanced meals at other times. If you’re not a regular breakfast eater who is consuming a balance of protein, carbs, and fat at meals, I hope you’ll join in on this step in the Year of Self-Care.

Those of you who have made breakfast work for you, what are your breakfast routines? Any great recipes or meal ideas to share?

Resources for Step Three

Food & Mood: The Complete Guide for Eating Well And Feeling Your Best by Elizabeth Somer
Is Your Breakfast Making You Fat? in The Independent (One woman tests her reactions to various breakfasts; a doctor then gives commentary on those choices)
Self Magazine’s breakfast recipes
Vegetables for Breakfast from the blog Enlightened Cooking (The slow-roasted tomatoes she mentions are one of my top-ten favorite foods.)
Easy Ways to Add Vegetables to a Healthy Breakfast
Macrobiotic Breakfasts
Breakfast: Why Is It So Important? from the Mayo Clinic
Lose Weight: Eat Breakfast from WebMD
Why a Big Breakfast Matters by Dr. Sanjay Gupta
10 Tasty, Easy and Healthy Breakfast Ideas from the blog Zen Habits
Grocery Guide: 5 Healthy Breakfast Ideas
10 Healthy Breakfast Ideas from the blog Kelly the Kitchen Kop
Healthy Breakfast Ideas from the blog Green & Clean Mom
Finding the Balance: Protein & Carbohydrates Are A Winning Combination in a Sports Diet

Previous Posts in the Year of Self-Care

Intro to the Year of Self-Care
Step One: Embrace Gradual Change
Mid-Point Support for Step One
Step Two: Commit to Weekly Grocery Planning
Mid-Point Support for Step Two