Dietary Shift: Breakfast

After reading The 4 Hour Body, I’ve made some changes to my eating habits.  I’m also working my way through In Defense of Food, which contains some similar (but not identical) recommendations.

Working from home, I ate a very consistent breakfast and lunch.  Some would call the lack of variety boring but I liked my meals.  For breakfast I would have a fruit smoothie and cereal.  The smoothie would have half a banana, frozen blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries, orange juice, milk, and a little bit of protein powder.  The cereal would be a little bit of granola, a generous pour of Honey Bunches of Oats with Strawberries, and the rest of the banana.

Both books rail against the evils of processed carbohydrates (bread, cereal, pasta, rice, etc.), and Tim Ferriss even argues that fruit and fruit juice contain more sugar than your body needs, so I thought I’d experiment with something new.

My new breakfast consists of a protein shake first thing in the morning.  This tides me over for a couple hours.  After that, I scramble 2 egg whites, 1 whole egg, and spinach, and then add some turkey bacon and steamed lentils.  Serve with a pile of salsa and enjoy.

There was no specific goal in mind.  I’m not trying to lose weight, and the abstract aim of “feeling healthier” is hard to measure.  (The other change I made was a significant decrease in running cardio.)  Over the past couple months, I can’t say I’ve noticed a huge difference in body composition, but there is a general feeling of better well being.  Could be 100% placebo, but maybe this dietary shift had some effect.

I don’t feel like I have more energy or less energy, which is significant given the sheer volume of calories taken out of my breakfast.  I rarely feel disgustingly full anymore, you know the feeling where you’ve eaten way too much.

It was really interesting putting together these numbers.  I’ve never really paid much attention (and have been known to select foods based on how many calories you can get for the price).  The new breakfast is lower in fat and sugars and higher in protein.  The big increase in cholesterol comes almost entirely from that one egg, and the potassium loss is almost entirely from removing that one banana.  Surprisingly, lot of the sodium in the new breakfast came from the salsa.

I think I’ll continue with my new routine, tweaking as I see fit.  We’ll take a look at lunch next.

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