You’re Trapped in a Breakfast Cliche?! Breakout! by Joan Kent, PhD
I’ve written articles describing fruit as the “final frontier” in quitting sugar. But something else can cause just as much trouble as fruit, or even more.
Breakfast.
Even people who are fully committed to healthful eating can be trapped in breakfast clichés.
In a recent coaching session, a client asked what I eat for breakfast. My breakfast that morning was fairly typical for me: egg whites plus a salad of kale, spinach, walnuts, real sauerkraut (for the probiotics), olive oil, and wine vinegar.
She found it unusual, but I follow the same guidelines I recommend for my clients.
I just do it in the morning, too.
Does Your Breakfast Look Like Dinner? Perfect!
In the U.S., we seem to think eating vegetables should be reserved for lunch and dinner. We want our breakfasts to resemble those of our childhood.
But many of us grew up when breakfasts were not healthful.
Back then, standard breakfasts were pancakes, French toast, waffles, or junky cereal. About the cereal, some people joked, “You could get more nutrition from eating the box.”
An alternative was eggs and toast, with or without bacon. Compared to the other options above, that would have been the wisest choice.
As the World’s Foremost (Then) Sugar Addict, I preferred French toast, pancakes or waffles. Breakfast used to be my first chance of the day to eat white flour and sugar – with plenty of syrup! Those were truly the bad old days. But I digress.
Contemporary breakfasts still resemble traditional ones. They’ve just morphed into “healthier” versions – say, granola instead of Fruit Loops.
In many places, however – Scandinavian countries, Asian countries, midwestern U.S. states, for example – residents eat fish for breakfast.
So who says a kale-and-spinach salad can’t be a morning meal? Or lentil soup and tofu? I used to make a terrific vegetable soup that my husband loved to eat first thing in the morning. Breakfast does not have to look like a photo from the IHOP pancake menu.
The most compliant clients I work with have always been bodybuilders. They’re focused on results, so they’ll eat whatever I recommend. And they don’t care what time of day they eat it.
Addiction Can Make People Do Strange Things
Several years ago, I had a client who was quite addicted to fruit. During our in-person coaching sessions or any presentations of mine that he attended, this gentleman resisted my anti-fruit remarks by giving me a cold, angry stare.
He also resisted my suggestions to switch to a breakfast that looked like a lunch or a dinner. He claimed he wanted oatmeal.
During a phone coaching session, I finally discovered the facts. He said he planned to change his brand of oatmeal to one that was lower in fat.
Well, oatmeal is low in fat. When I mentioned that my brand of oatmeal had much less fat than his new replacement, my client confessed: He wasn’t eating oatmeal for breakfast. He was eating granola.
As you probably know, granola contains nuts. The fat listed on his label came mostly from the nuts. But granola also contains dried fruit.
This client had lied in his food logs (and in our coaching sessions) to cover up his fruit consumption. His resistance to my suggestions came from his fruit addiction.
As a recovered sugar addict, I understood his addiction completely. It took a while for this client to decide to quit fruit. When he did quit, his breakfasts started looking like dinners. He started losing weight. His lab tests improved. And he stopped the angry stares.
If you’re struggling with any type of food addiction, I can help. I’m committed to helping you conquer food addictions so you can reverse metabolic conditions, transform your moods, and more. Just visit LastResortNutrition.com and grab your free copy of “3 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Trying to Quit Sugar.”
Brought to you by Dr. Joan Kent, best-selling author of Stronger Than Sugar: 7 Simple Steps to Defeat Sugar Addiction, Lift Your Mood, and Transform Your Health.
