Not hungry in the morning?

3

You must eat Breakfast!

Your metabolism has slowed down over night.
You have been fasting for 8+ hours.
You’re dehydrated.
You have no fuel left in your tank.

How could it possibly be OK to go to work without refuelling?

You’re not hungry? Well lets get that metabolism kick started.
As soon as you wake up, go to the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of warm water and then squeeze in 1/4 fresh lemon juice and drink it.

Now, go and have your shower and get ready and then you should find that the idea of food is a little more inviting.

Have breakfast before you have a coffee.

Coffee can often supress the appetite and also cause you to feel a little jittery on an empty stomach so always have your coffee after breakfast. You may even find that once you start eating in the morning you won’t even feel like a coffee.

Prepare your breakfast the night before.

If your excuse for skipping breakfast is that you’re in too much of a rush in the morning you have three options.
Option one, you can get up half an hour early so that you can prepare your breakfast and sit down to eat it.
Option two, you can prepare something before bed such as my chia pudding or amuesli bar or almond muffin.
Option three have a good quality protein shake.
Option two and three mean that you can take your breakfast with you if you’re running late. No excuses 

Start with a liquid breakfast.

Some people who have gone years without eating breakfast really struggle with the idea of eating in the morning. Work yourself up to solids and start with a veggie juice or a smoothie. You might be surprised by how satisfying and sustaining a vegetable juice can be. Try to make sure that your juice is mostly vegetables rather than fruit to keep the sugar content down. Try kale, cucumber, mint and apple for a yummy combo to get you started.

Smoothies are quick and easy to make using milk, banana, seeds and maybe even some kale.. Check out two of my recipes here.

What other tricks do you use to get your appetite started? I’d love you to share your tips in the comment box below.

Breakfast

Are you uninspired and unenthused when it comes to breakfast? Read on because your world is about to be changed forever...

I used to hate breakfast. Even on the days when I was eating something nice, breakfast just didn't interest me. Growing up, my two favourite things to eat for breakfast were pancakes with lemon and sugar or porridge with brown sugar.. Notice a theme? Yep, massive sugar addict! It's no wonder I used to have hypoglycaemia!

Once I realised that these sugar loaded foods were no good for me I just became uninterested and in my early days of being a Naturopath my breakfast was usually a protein shake or a protein bar.

But now I love breakfast HURRAH!!

What changed? Maybe me... Or maybe I just discovered some really yummy breakfast options! In summer I love a smoothie, in winter its my hot breakfast bowl and on the days I know I'm going to in a manic rush its my pre-made chia pudding on the go. And the best thing about these 3 options is that you can change the ingredients every time you make it so that you don't have to have the exact same thing day in and day out. Perfection :)

Ohh and the pancakes? I now have the best pancake recipe in the world and i can eat as many as I want without feeling sick or guilty. Life is wonderful and breakfast is soooo fun!

So now you have 4 delicious breakfast recipes to try out and I really recommend that you do try them. A few of my friends and clients have given them a whirl and the feedback has been great so far. I only eat yummy food so I promise they are good!

But what if you haven't done the weekly shop, you have no chia seeds, no oats and no milk! How can we tart up your standard breakfast to make it that little bit more nutritious? Here are a few things you can do to improve the quality of the most important meal of the day:

Peanut butter on toast

I'm a little bit anti-peanut butter but to try and make this exercise realistic I would suggest going for a natural peanut butter rather than the highly processed scarily combined peanut butter that lots of people buy.. You want your peanut butter to be made from Peanuts. FULL STOP.

Here is the ingredients list from what I think is probably the most popular peanut butter brand in Australia : Roasted peanuts (65%), maltodextrin (from tapioca), sugar, vegetable oil (antioxidant (320)), salt, emulsifier (471)

65% Peanuts!! Seriously?! That is just wrong.. Next time you buy peanut butter please read the ingredietns list and buy one that has 100% peanuts.

My preferred option would be that you ditch the peanut butter and go for almond butter, cashew butter or the combo ABC which has almonds, brazil and cashew nuts. These options should be easy to find in the health food section of your supermarket.

The most important rule when you come to bread is absolutely no white bread. White bread is highly processed and refined, it breaks down into sugar in your body and it provides very little fibre. Have you ever noticed that when you chew white bread it turns into a paste in your mouth? Now imagine when you swallow this how it sticks to your digestive tract and clogs it up.. ewww... Now think about when you eat wholemeal or wholegrain bread, how it stays pretty rough in your mouth and when you swallow it, it moves through your digestive tract acting like a brush all the way through.

These are the little pictures I like to plant in peoples heads to help them make the right food choice ;)

 Muesli

No two muesli's are created equal. Again it all comes down to reading the packaging. What you want is for your ingredients list to only contain words that you understand and can pronounce. And you don't want any sugar on the ingredients list. With all of the dried fruit in muesli there is no need to add sugar to it.

Carman's fruit and nut muesli does not have added sugar and can be found at your supermarket. They also have fruit free and gluten free options as well as a bircher style.

I used to make my own muesli and while it was costly, it was the best muesli I have ever had. I would just buy oats, puffed rice, dried fruit, coconut, nuts and seeds and mix it up to my liking. This is the best way to go if you want to know exactly what's in your bowl.

For really good quality health-ful breakfast cereal that comes out of a packet, you can't go past forage. Forage was designed by Australian Naturopath Dr Damien Kristof and while it's fairly expensive at $17.90 for a 500g bag, it is very well balanced, high quality and tasty. Really, you're paying for the quality and health benefits of this one..

Nothing

Lets face it, lots of you skip breakfast and just have a coffee.. And, from my experience in clinic, most of you know that this is not OK! Your body has just been shut down over night and when you wake up it is time to break the fast... Breakfast!

If you find it difficult to stomach breakky, just have a protein shake or my magic smoothie. Something is better than nothing and we want to get your metabolism started to fuel you through the day. Here is a blog post all about how to wake up your appetite in the morning

Here are some of the awesome breakfast photos my clients have sent me this week

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