What's For Breakfast?

by Donielle Wilson, ND, of TheHolisticOption.com

Breakfast is the key to starting your day feeling both healthy and energetic. Whether you are focused on balancing your blood sugar, lowering cholesterol, losing weight, avoiding gluten and dairy, fighting off yeast or improving your mood and focus, the breakfast recommendations are basically the same! This may come as a surprise, but these three simple concepts really do control all of the above:

1. Make sure to include protein.
2. Minimize carbohydrates.
3. Include healthy fat and fiber if possible.

Ok, with those three points in mind, let's build a breakfast for you. I would like to encourage you to think outside the breakfast box! Forget about cereals, pancakes, waffles and the like. They are simply too high in carbohydrates, have a high glycemic index and, furthermore, tend to contain gluten (an all too common grain that many people can't eat).

Set aside American breakfast concepts, and those advertised on TV and start thinking of breakfast in a whole new way. How about wild salmon for breakfast? (that is one of my favorites) Or left over chicken and roasted vegetables.

Here are my favorite breakfast choices:

1. Protein shake (Metagenics Sustain or Thorne Mediclear Plus) with flax seed oil, ground flax seeds and ProBerry
2. Turkey Bacon (hormone and antibiotic free)
3. Frozen turkey sausage (hormone and antibiotic free)
4. Wild Salmon, sauteed with onions
5. Turkey Bologna (hormone and antibiotic free)
6. Whole, Organic egg (if you are not intolerant to eggs) poached or sauteed with arugula and goat cheese

How much you ask? My recommendation is to eat half. Eat half as much as you think you need or half as much as you usually have. What is the worst possibility? You might feel hungry in an hour or two? Great, then eat a second breakfast.

It is better to spread out the calories and eat every 3 to 4 hours throughout the day, so for those of you like me, who love breakfast, I don't think it will take much convincing to switch to breakfast twice! That is right, eat half, and eat the other half (or something else) in a couple hours.

To drink? Stay away from juices. They are basically sugar, adding to your carbohydrate load and making a tasty breakfast for yeast, encouraging them to stay instead of go away. A much healthier option is green tea. It helps regulate blood sugar and metabolism, and prevents cancer at the same time.

Otherwise water, filtered of course, is a great place to start your day, especially if you consume caffeine, which is a diuretic. Minimize the caffeine, but at the same time I think you will find that the longer you stick to these breakfast items, you won't be needing that caffeine to boost your energy so much anymore.

By following these recommendations, you will likely notice a difference in how you feel even the very first day you try it. From then on, I bet you won't look back!

Dr. Donielle Wilson's website is www.doctordoni.com.