Breakfast has always been an issue for me. The opinion seems to be strongly divided as to whether it’s actually good for you or not. Most the studies that state clearly that breakfast is a must are sponsored, surprise surprise, by cereal companies and the likes.
For what I think is a nicely balanced summary on the breakfast issue, check out this post.
It’s important to remember however that scientific evidence is strictly an average, so any anomalies that may exist in any of the studies are cancelled out. So if the majority of the people need breakfast, but you don’t for one health reason or another, the study will not show this. This is why I think personal experience holds just as much credibility as those figures. Yes, there is the danger of any true effects being masked by a placebo effect, but scientific literature has its problems too.
Best to try to achieve a happy medium.
Anyways, I still don’t know what to make of breakfast. I find that eating straight after waking up isn’t too great for me. My stomach still feels asleep. Whilst skipping breakfast makes me actually feel strong, light and clear headed, the only issue is that around 10am I start to get *very* hungry. Now if I were running around or exercising in the morning, no breakfast is absolutely fine – I don’t eat breakfast on the weekends as I workout in the mornings. But the reality is I spend most of my day sitting and teaching, and the hunger pangs can be very distracting.
My gut (ha-ha) instinct is that I do better without breakfast, but I need to reach a happy medium again based on my job. The next issue I face is sugar. When I wake up that is really all I want. A lot of paleo advocates eat protein such as eggs and fish for breakfast. My stomach can’t handle that in the morning.
However, eating sugary things also makes me sugar crash. So what could be the best breakfast for me?
I’ll try out a series of different types of breakfasts and will report the results here.
Today: Paleo Cinnamon Toast Crush (recipe here)
Paleo cinnamon toast crunch cereal w/ hazelnut milk.
9:10am: Started making them
9:45am: Consumed w/ hazelnut milk. Flavour is ok, could have done with more cinnamon but then again I was in such a rush to get it done quickly I didn’t follow the recipe properly. Despite the fact that I’d burnt 1/4 of the batch and had to discard the charred ones, I was still full half way through eating the remaining cereal.
9:55am: Feel a bit of pain in my stomach. Happens quite often. Never know where it comes from and it could be due to a variety of reasons. Maybe I don’t digest chia seeds well – I’ll have to isolate it and find out. I have this pain for flaxseeds too.
10:00am: Pain gone. I’m feeling full, but do have a very strong sugar craving. I want chocolate, haha. I wonder whether it’s because my sugar levels are genuinely low or whether it’s the sugar addiction. I usually give into these cravings but I’ll try to hold it out till lunch today.
11:30am: I’m hungry. Gonna start making lunch.
12pm: Et voila. Salmon Eggs Benedict, roughly based on the recipe here.
Salmon Eggs Benedict
I get a bad reaction from almonds, so I used sunflower seeds instead. Also I only had one egg left to poach….
Conclusion:
I don’t think the breakfast really helped. I felt heavy and was hungry after an hour an a half. I’ll keep on searching for the perfect paleo breakfast solution.
I also have been wondering about how healthy nuts and seeds are. I know they are high in nutritional content, but I think if you over roast them all healthy nutrients may be lost. Also, I’ve read it’s important to soak nuts and seeds to remove substances (Phytic Acid) that stop your body from digesting the good stuff in the foods. I didn’t soak the seeds this time round. So it’s clear that if I want to make any seed or nut based foods I’ll need to plan in advance in order to get the maximum benefits from them.
Also, I worry about the calorie content. While I’m a person who doesn’t really care about calories, I do know that nuts and seeds are super high energy, and I wonder whether eating a cereal bowl full of them is really good for me given that I don’t exercise as much when I’m working.
Peace out.