(But you only need one)
After a good night’s sleep you wake refreshed, and soon are ready to break your healthy fast and nourish the body and brain. What to eat? Is there time? How long will it take? The priority is a healthy breakfast that’s quick and easy to prepare.
The breakfast of champions is not some convenient, highly processed cereal with skim milk, junk food pancakes or just a cup of black coffee. In fact, eating these types of meals to break your night long fast could be devastating for your body and brain. Food like this can trash your health and fitness. Here are some reasons why: Even as you’re still eating a junk food breakfast, the rapid conversion of processed flour to sugar will trigger too much insulin, converting up to half of that carbohydrate meal into stored fat. This prevents you body from getting more energy from fat, relying more on glucose (which is limiting). For many people, this will be such a profound metabolic stress that, regardless of how good your next meal is you could still overproduce insulin. The drop in blood sugar that quickly follows can make you hungry all day long. Even if you eat, you’ll be hungry, so you’ll probably eat more. The adrenal glands will try to adapt to the cascade of biochemical stresses. If this is your only stress of the day, the adrenals will handle it fairly well. Brain function can plummet, sometimes from the first bite. This is not a problem unless you’re driving a vehicle, want to be creative, need to multi-task, and don’t want to get sleepy or lose concentration.
For those not yet eating the right breakfast, or if you just want some healthy options, here are three meals that are quick, nourishing, and will improve your human performance no matter the tasks ahead. Adjust each to your particular needs. How long these meals last until you need to eat again depends on your metabolism and state of health.
1. Phil’s Shake
Here’s a large one-serving recipe. In a good blender add:
- 2 very soft cooked eggs
- 1 apple, pear, peach, or the best in-season fruits
- ½ cup blueberries
- 1 tablespoon raw whole sesame and or flax seeds
- 1 small or medium carrot
- Fresh greens: varying amounts of parsley, young kale, spinach, or broccoli sprouts or others
- ½-inch piece of fresh ginger root
- 8 ounces water
- Mix well.
(Lightly soft-boil a dozen eggs at a time and keep them refrigerated, which makes preparation for this shake about five or six minutes.)
2. Hearty Omelet
- Dice onions, red peppers, mushrooms or other vegetables and sauté in butter or ghee.
- When half-cooked add two eggs and mix well. Cover until done.
- Options: add cheese, top with sour cream and or tomatoes.
- Total time is under seven minutes.
3. Phil’s Fat-Burning Coffee
This recipe is for 1½ to 2 cups of coffee.
- In a tall jar, add about ¼ cup heavy cream, a raw egg yolk, and a tablespoon of raw organic coconut oil.
- Add a small amount of hot coffee and mix with a hand blender.
- Add the remaining coffee, pour into a relaxing mug, and enjoy!
- (Total time is about a minute more than it takes to brew the coffee.)
