Great Starts

A healthy breakfast is an essential part of losing weight!

"People skip breakfast thinking they're cutting calories, but by mid-morning and lunch, that person is starved," says Milton Stokes, RD, MPH, chief dietitian for St. Barnabas Hospital in New York City. "Breakfast skippers replace calories during the day with mindless nibbling, bingeing at lunch and dinner. They set themselves up for failure."


It makes sense: Eating early in the day keeps us from "starvation eating" later on. But it also jump-starts your metabolism, says Elisabetta Politi, RD, MPH, nutrition manager for the Duke Diet & Fitness Center at Duke University Medical School. "When you don't eat breakfast, you're actually fasting for 15 to 20 hours, so you're not producing the enzymes needed to metabolize fat to lose weight."


Read the article here.
Another good article.

Having never been a "breakfast person", I wasn't sure how I'd feel about filling my stomach first thing in the morning, but it has quickly become my favorite meal of the day. Here are some examples of food that I regularly eat for breakfast:

SCRAMBLED EGG WHITES AND SPINACH
2 Egg whites
1 Handful of spinach
Splash of unsweetened almond milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix and cook in a non-stick skillet so no oil is needed. If I'm feeling carb-weak, I'll pair it with a whole wheat and corn blend tortilla with salsa on the side. Feel free to add other veggies, too!

QUICK OATMEAL
1/2 c Rolled Oats
Enough water to just cover the oats in a microwave-safe bowl.
1/4 c Unsweetened almond milk
Honey or cinnamon or fruit
Zap oats and water for 60-90 seconds, add other ingredients and stir. So quick and so satisfying!

WHEY SMOOTHIE
1/2 c Unsweetened almond milk
1 Scoop chocolate whey protein
1/2 banana
1 c Ice
Blend until smooth and thoroughly enjoy. Tastes so amazing. As you can imagine, you can mix things up with vanilla whey and other fruit. 

Oat-Banana Bread

Today I threw together a bunch of substitute ingredients to make my favorite Betty Crocker Banana Bread more diet friendly and health-conscious. Things I've tried like mad to avoid are sugar, mainly, and flour. Both go straight to my poochie (aka stubborn lower belly) and that's just not okay any more.

So, without further ado:

OAT-BANANA BREAD

1/2 c   Unsweetened applesauce

2         Eggs

1/2 c   Raw Honey

2 c      Mashed Ripe Banana

1 t       Vanilla Extract

3 c      Ground Oatmeal

1/2 c   Flour

1/2 t    Salt

2 t       Baking Powder

1/4 t    Baking Soda

Prep:

Mash bananas, approx 3 or 4. Grind up oatmeal in blender, a cup at a time, until you have 3 cups of powdery and fine oat flour. Grease bottoms of 1-2 loaf pans, depending on size. Preheat oven to 350.

Mix: 

Combine all wet ingredients, until thoroughly mixed, add dry ingredients. Badda-boom. Should be pasty like cake batter, just chunkier. Slap into loaf pan, bake for 1 hour.  

Less sweet than the original, but every bit as good with a moist, satisfying texture and oatmeal cookie-like crunchy crust. Delish!

Sick Day

Nothing to make your motivation to exercise and diet go down the toilet like being sick. I guess on the upside, I had very little appetite. Lol. What am I saying? I have been so sick that it in no way made up for loss of appetite. Anyway, I'm on the mend again and ready to maybe stretch out my post-bronchitis lungs with a bit of light cardio tomorrow. I've hovered around the same weight as before, give or take, with ten more pounds to go until I reach my goal.

While I was sick, though, I really enjoyed my hot cups of honey-lemon to soothe my throat and acquired blues-singer bass voice. I'm a lucky girl, too, because my awesome grandpa harvests organic clover honey and keeps me in stock. Anyway, I digress... I knew that drinking honey-lemon was not only yummy and made my aching throat feel better, but I had no clue that honey could be used as an energy-booster, as an immune-builder, or as a treatment for sleeplessness, among other things.

Benefits of Honey
Katrina's Kitchen

I resolve to use more honey!

HONEY-LEMON "TEA":
For those of you who haven't tried honey-lemon tea as a cold remedy, I'd insist you do. It's natural and really helps soothe sore throats and coughs. I have no magic recipe, I just get some water singing in my teapot, then pour a mug half-full of hot water. I drip in about 1T lemon juice, give or take, and a spoonful of honey, taste, and adjust the sweetness-to-tart ratio to my personal liking.