In Search of the Healthy Weekday Breakfast

Breakfast is the most difficult meal to get right.

It is usually the most unhealthy meal we eat each day, chock full of sugar and refined grains, devoid of real food such as meat and fresh produce.

Most of us have to get our asses out the door at the break of dawn and don’t have the luxury to sit down to eat a quality meal. And it’s not exactly easy to find healthy meals to go at 7 am either.

For most Americans, the average weekday breakfast looks something like this: cereal loaded up with sugar (even if you don’t realize it) swimming in a bowl of low-fat (and thus low-nutrient) milk.

This “go-to” meal is a truly bad idea in the long run.

Not only are you overdoing it with metabolism-wrecking sugar, but you are skipping out on the protein and fat you need to really fill up without running out of steam by 10 am and hitting up the vending machine for junk food.

There’s plenty of data that suggests that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but only if you do it right.

The ideal breakfast is:

1. Low in sugar.
2. Low in white flour.
3. High in animal fat and/or plant starch.
4. Mostly meat, eggs, vegetables, and/or fruit.
5. Quick to prepare.
6. Relatively cheap.

Of course, you’re never going to get all six of these in one meal (if only it were that easy), but that doesn’t mean you can’t improve on your breakfast routine nonetheless.

Without further ado, I bring you six healthier weekday breakfast alternatives!

1. Five-Star Cereal: Puffed Rice with Whole Milk and Fresh Berries

There’s about a 99% chance that you ate cereal with milk this morning. Hey, I can’t blame ya. It’s super easy, and requires no willpower whatsoever to throw together.

But make sure you do it right.

I can’t believe how many grown-ass people I know that still eat children’s cereal every morning. This sugar-loaded and neon-colored garbage is just about the worst way to start your day.

The only worse thing would be if you just ate spoonfuls of straight sugar.

If you’re going to eat cereal, do yourself a favor and stick to the “old-school” types. Wheat flakes aren’t the greatest, but corn flakes are better, and puffed rice is best of all.

These types of cereal are as minimally-processed as possible, and don’t have a bunch of added sugar or any other junk.

Also, instead of skim milk, use whole milk for your cereal. Don’t pay money for de-fatted dairy when the good stuff costs the same. Fat is your friend, folks.

A nice touch is to add some fresh fruit to it. Frozen fruit works as well, but don’t use this as an excuse to get cereal with dried “fruit” already added–that stuff often isn’t even made of real fruit.

Cereal and milk is the go-to breakfast for most people–and it’s pretty easy to prepare–but don’t get tricked into thinking that is nearly as healthy and important as you have been told.

The story of how breakfast cereal came to dominate is utterly fascinating, if you’d like to learn about it. It involves vegetarian quack doctors, health-conscious celebrities, and yogurt enemas.

Seriously.

2. The Old Classic: Steel-Cut Oatmeal with Nuts and Fruit

Oatmeal is another classic breakfast staple that most people get wrong.

Instead of going for packets of powdered oats and flavorings (mostly from sugar), it’s much better to go with the more minimally-processed steel cut oats and add your own extras.

The biggest headache most people have with steel-cut oats is the increased time it takes to prepare. It can take up to 45 minutes to cook in a pot, but there’s a cool hack you can use to reduce this.

In the evening, add 1 cup oats to 2 cups milk (or water) in a bowl and let sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning, just heat up the bowl of oatmeal and you’re ready to go! (If you’re in a hurry, you can also eat it cold.)

Dried fruit and nuts are a great quick way to add more flavor and variety to your oatmeal, as is a tiny bit of vanilla extract. Butter or cream is a wonderful addition as well. You can even (gasp!) use a little bit of maple syrup, as long as you can show some restraint.

3. Plain Yogurt with Fresh Berries

Yogurt and berries is yet another common healthy breakfast that is done incorrectly 99% of the time.

Most people just grab the fruit-and-yogurt packs from the supermarket and call it good enough. Like most pre-prepared food, yogurt has WAY too much added sugar.

The only real way around this is to get your own plain yogurt and add the berries yourself. I like to get the big tubs to save on money.

Look very closely to make sure you are getting full-fat yogurt with no added sweetener. Of the hundreds of types of yogurt available at the store, you’ll be lucky if you find two that aren’t labeled “low fat” or “non fat.”

Also, be sure not to buy vanilla yogurt, as simple as it may sound. It is also usually loaded with added sugar. Add some real vanilla extract yourself if that’s your thang.

Like with cereal above, don’t feel shy to substitute frozen berries for fresh. (Fresh just tastes better, IMHO.)

4. Bacon, Eggs, and Fruit

Here’s the most “advanced” weekday breakfast I suggest, even though it takes much less extra time than you’d imagine.

Bacon and eggs is a classic minimalist breakfast. And if you stick with a simple egg prep such as sunnyside up or over easy, it can be remarkably quick to whip up.

I like to start the bacon frying first, as that’s usually what takes the most time to cook. While this is going, I’ll cut up some fresh fruit (grapefruit and strawberries are some of my faves), then cook up the eggs.

Sure, it’s not as gussied-up as the omelettes and home fries you can throw together on the weekends, but this high-protein, high-flavor healthy breakfast (yeah, I said it!) is one of the best ways you can start the day.

5. Last Night’s Leftovers

Most of the problems with the way our culture does breakfast comes from the stubborn insistence that it use foods that we don’t eat for any other meals.

Lunch and dinner are, for the most part, interchangeable. You can eat the same thing at noon and at 7 pm without violating any social customs.

But breakfast’s a whole ’nother story.

Breakfast foods range from pastries drowned in sugar (bad), cereal grains swimming in milk (better), to meat and eggs (best). But you’d rarely eat an Irish stew or pork chop with asparagus for breakfast, even if they’re ready to eat in the fridge.

I know it’s a bit of a mental hurdle, but try eating yesterday’s leftovers for breakfast sometime.

After a while, you’ll get used to it. And you won’t be as tempted by that cereal that turns your skim milk neon colors ever again.

6. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

All through my life until a couple of years ago, I forced myself to eat breakfast every morning.

I was never hungry, but I bought into all the hype that breakfast was the most important meal of the day and I would be doing myself great harm if I skipped it.

Well, I’ve been skipping breakfast most mornings for a couple of years now, and guess what? I have gotten into great shape without the hit to my health I was told I would take.

Don’t get me wrong. Skipping breakfast isn’t for everyone. In fact, it probably isn’t for most people.

That’s why I gave you healthy options rather than completely jumping on the breakfast-skipping bandwagon.

But give it a shot for a week or two and see how it goes. If you can make it until lunch without getting so hungry that it gets in the way of what you are doing, you may want to consider giving it the ol’ heave-ho altogether.

Skipping breakfast isn’t just a healthy option (when done right), but it is probably the easiest approach most of us can take towards breakfast with our busy lifestyles.

Is breakfast truly the most important meal of the day? I’d say it depends on how your body works. What I can say is that the way most people do breakfast is actually doing more harm than good.

This is primarily the result of our busy lifestyles and inability to sit down for a meal of quality food in the morning. But that doesn’t mean you should give up all hope.

One (or more) of these six options is bound to work for you and help get every morning started off on the right foot.

What do you usually do for breakfast during the week?

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