Dear lazyweb; healthy breakfast snacks?

[denny]

One of the things a lot of people seem to recommend for losing a bit of weight is eating smaller meals more regularly, so your metabolism keeps ticking over. This is a big change from my existing policy of eating one ginormous meal a day. Still, I'm okay(ish) with this new approach once I'm up and moving for the day, but I've always been really bad at breakfast, so getting the 'regular meals' plan underway at the start of the day is proving far trickier.

I did start trying to eat breakfast cereal each day, but most diets seem to frown on that for various reasons (wheat, dairy, sugar)*. I also tried scrambled eggs (with and without smoked salmon) for a couple of weeks, but cooking it was a bit too much effort for me to sustain, and also it was quite heavy going for me to eat something that 'real' early in the day, which resulted in my not eating my first meal until later in the day again.

So, I'm trying to think of other things that (a) would be healthier than cereal, (b) are relatively easy to prepare (without cooking would be ideal) and (c) I'm likely to be willing to eat. Any suggestions?

Please note, factor (c) will lead to my rejecting almost all suggestions because I am a very fussy eater - please don't take it personally! :)

* Anybody who says 'muesli' will be ignored with extreme prejudice. Ick.

Comments

[adamauden]

This page has a nice summary:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-and-nutrition/NU00197

Also:
http://zenhabits.net/10-tasty-easy-and-healthy-breakfast-ideas/
http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus/collections/healthy_breakfast_recipes
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/recipe-collections-favorites/healthy-meals/breakfast-to-go-10000001047596/index.html

[valkyriekaren]

I'm not a breakfast person really - the thought of consuming food within an hour of getting up tends to make me nauseous. But what I usually do when I get to work is have one or two pieces of fruit, and then maybe a cup of tea or coffee mid-morning to keep me going. I usually pick food that I don't need to prepare (bananas, cherries or berries, apples etc) but if you're eating at home you could have a few slices of melon or some tropical fruits like mango, kiwi or guava. If you're feeling very extravagant you could even make fruit salad.

Fruit has the big advantage of being full of fibre, so it will fill you up, and water, so it will start to rehydrate you - which can be important first thing.

[denny]

Isn't fruit also quite calorific? I seem to recall that slow carb fad diet thing is dead set against it for some reason.

[sporky_rat]

Fruit does have a lot of calories, but it's okay in the morning when you're jumping off your metabolism for the day. Not to mention the whole rehydration bit. So an apple or banana in the morning is fine.

You can also cook up a big batch of eggs at night and portion them out and eat them in the morning. Just throw them in the microwave and you're good. (If you have a microwave, that is.)

[denny]

Yeah, anything that you can 'cook' with a microwave definitely gets bonus points.

[pndc]

While most of the energy in fruit is carbohydrate, there's not that much of it as there's plenty of fibre and water too. Fruit typically clocks in at about 50-100kcal/100g, or about 50kcal per piece of fruit. (But watch out for odd edge cases such as avocado which is very fatty and energy-dense.)

Fruit juice is the killer as the fibre's missing. The original fruit has the same calories, but the energy density goes up (given that you took out the zero-calorie filler) and you get more rapid absorbtion.

Pint for pint, fruit juice also contains more calories than beer.

[denny]

+1 informative - thank you :)

[valkyriekaren]

Well, fruit is more calorific than vegetables, obviously, as it's sweeter, but it's still mainly water and has no fat in it. Not all fruits are created equal, anyway, so a banana has about twice the calories of an apple, which has twice a slice of melon, and so on. You might find this useful:
http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories/calorie_counter/fruit.htm

As I frequently say, I'm not doing a proper slow carb/low carb thing because any diet that says I can't have a banana when I want one is clearly bonkers. Fruit's good for you and has lots of vitamins and minerals in that are essential to muscle and bone health, so if you're trying to tone up as well, you need to be getting plenty of fruit and veg.

[alixandrea.livejournal.com]

Well said that Karen - don't avoid fruit due to calories/carbs; that's just mental. My breakfast of choice every weekday morning is peanut butter on seeded wholemeal toast. It's got good fats, protein and low GI carbs to keep you going until lunch and although it's reasonably high in cals, it's about right for a good breakfast. And you need a good breakfast to get your metabolism back up and running from its sleeping rest state.

I second, third and fourth the Zen Habits recommendation BTW, Leo has LOADS of excellent tips on diet, exercise and general lifestyle. I credit him with being one of the people who helped me back on my feet after I finally got up the courage to leave Erik.

[(Anonymous)]

an apple/banana etc?

I go for kellogs special K with berries or a cereal bar though.
The lists above look useful.

I'm surprised at the idea of scrambled eggs, unless you are doing serious body Building, rather than just reshaping...

[denny]

Not going for bulky muscle, no. I started out quite far down on the other side of the scale though, so there's quite a lot of work to be done just to get my musculature to 'average'.

[wildeabandon]

I was gonna say fruit, but that appears to have been covered.

Smoked salmon on toast? Other stuff on toast? Involves less cooking that scrambled eggs - not ideal if you're really low-carbing it, but I think that's generally not a great idea anyway.

[denny]

I think my carb reduction has mostly been about cutting out the mountains of mashed potato that had been a feature of my diet lately. I'm not being particularly religious about it otherwise. Apart from anything else, I'd probably die without pasta in my diet, given the miniscule range of meals I can cook :)

[pndc]

Have you considered learning some new recipes? ;)

[denny]

Considered, yes. Seriously considered, no. It's a sort of mental/emotional block region. I may or may not get over it if/when I get bored of eating salmon.

[pndc]

Do you cook it thus: http://www.tomscott.com/salmon/ ?

[denny]

You can actually microwave it, which is somewhat simpler. If less entertaining. *watches*

[skorpion]

Some good suggestions so far.

If you have a morning where you really can't face food, something like a milkshake can work: I realise they're not ideal (re not drinking your calories, not being 'real food', too many carbs, and so on and so forth...), but as a hack for getting around not having anything at all first thing, they might work ok. Milk-based food contains some fat and protein, which I find I need first thing - cereals and fruit don't last me long enough. Which, on balance, may be perfect for you, I don't know!

[hythloday]

Was going to say müesli but you beat me to it (can I suggest trying it with yoghurt? Quite a different experience to eating it on its own or with milk). I've started having an omelette in the morning - it's quite convenient because I can prepare it (chop 2 tomatoes and some frozen spinach, break and whisk 3 eggs) the night before and just throw it in a pan when I wake up and it's more or less done when I'm out of the shower. I don't share your experience of it being too heavy, though, I'm normally ravenous by 1, so it might not be useful advice.