This Week's Recipe

Breakfast Ideas

My personal training clients often ask me for suggestions on what to eat for breakfast.

My first tip would be, don't skip breakfast. Your body needs nutrients after 8 hours of no food. But equally, choose things that will flood your system with nutrients, and give you energy for the day ahead. Coffee and croissants are not the way forward! Not unless you want to become fat and stressed out. Nor are so-called 'energy drinks', they don't give you energy in the healthy nutritional sense, just an artificial high of nasty chemicals, followed by a huge slump in energy shortly afterwards.

Before eating anything, I suggest you drink half a litre of water as soon as you wake up. Most people are dehydrated first thing in the morning, and this will ensure get your day off to a good start. Keep a small 50cl (ie half a litre) bottle of water by your bed, and drink it down straight away as you're waking up.

As for breakfast, try raw porridge oats in cold semi-skimmed milk, with a piece of fruit chopped in, and a handful of almonds thrown in for a dose of good fats and protein. It's so quick and easy, and my personal training clients who make this their regular breakfast say it's filling and satisfying.

Alternatively If you've time to poach a couple of eggs, pop them on wholemeal toast and drizzle a dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar, and dijon mustard over the lot. I tend to use an equal measure of oil and vinegar, and half a teaspoon size dollop of mustard. Experiment to see what proportions suit you. And have a piece of fruit to follow.

Another quick and easy breakfast is plain live low fat yoghurt with blueberries and raspberries, with a couple of slices of wholemeal toast on the side.

If you want something hot, low salt/sugar beans on toast with a side serving of grilled mushrooms and tomatoes goes down a treat.

Rather than ordinary tea or coffee, try herbal tea or green tea, full of antioxidants and less caffeine.

What do you have for breakfast? Let me know!

 Check this page for a new recipe every week. You can print it out too. Enjoy!

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For weight loss tips, see my weight loss blog.