Healthy Breakfast Ideas + My Healthy Eating Tips & Tricks!

Before we get started into my healthy eating story and tips, here is my video that just went up on my favorite healthy breakfast ideas, the full recipes are also below

Also, here is my playlist of all of my recipe videos, I’ve done breakfast, lunch and dinner videos and my fitness routine:

RECIPES FROM THIS VIDEO

Breakfast Omelet Quiche

(Click to read more!)

version 2 (above) – version 1 (below)

veggie filling – sauté your favorite veggies (I used onion, mushroom, broccoli, zucchini and spinach) and set aside

for version one, just add this veggie filling to a pan with egg whites and your favorite spices

Version two, use a pie crust add your filling and then add a mixture of 5 eggs and 1/3 cup milk. Top with a little grated greyere cheese

Pop these in the oven at 375 for about 20-25 mins – version one will take less time (20 mins and version 2 will take closer to 25 mins). Insert a knife (should come out clean) to test to see when they’re done. These are great to make in advance and eat throughout the week, you get your veggies and protein from the eggs – i’ve been making these every week for the past month and I just love them!

Quinoa Porridge with Berries and Nuts

Ever since I read this article about the health benefits of Quinoa i’ve been eating it almost every day – I didn’t like the taste at first but now that I’ve found some good recipes I really enjoy it!

Rinse 1 cup of quinoa. Add that to your pan with 2 cups milk, I use almond milk

Bring that to a boil then reduce to simmer and cover for 10 mins

Then I add 1 tablespoon of xylitol, my favorite natural sweetener – if you’ve not heard of xylitol, here’s more info 

Then I sprinkle with cinnamon and add my toppings

I like to add a seed, nut mix, fresh strawberries and a little honey to top it off

Tastes similar to oatmeal but much higher in protein and a healthier alternative!

Healthy Mexican Breakfast Burrito 

So start by peeling your potatoes, I got an awesome automatic peeler (Rotato Express) as an xmas gift and I love it!

Start cooking the potatoes first because they take longer, you want to cut them in thin, even slices and season them up – I use salt, pepper, paprika and cayenne

Once they are mostly cooked, 7 mins or so add ¼ cup of black beans just to heat them up

Then remove these and start cooking your eggs, you can use only egg whites if you’d like

Secret to fluffy eggs is to cook on low heat

Then assemble the burrito with filling, eggs then I top off with fresh avocado, cilantro

And you can add siracha or salsa for a little kick

Super tasty and easy to make!

Protein Berry Crepecakes 

I got this recipe from dashingdish.com – so full credit goes to her! Here is the link to the original recipe, I also highly recommend her blog, she has great recipes  https://dashingdish.com/recipe/strawberry-protein-pancake-roll-ups-w-yogurt-filling/ . This recipe makes 3 medium crepecakes, so I recommend doubling or tripling the recipe if you are serving more than one person 🙂

Put the following in your blender and blend it up:

½ cup oats

½ scoop vanilla protein powder

½ tsp baking powder

1 tablespoon xylitol

2 egg whites

4 strawberries

¼ cup greek yogurt

1/8 cup water

Blend these all together, consistency should be slightly thinner than pancake batter then cook these on a skillet. Top with greek yogurt and fresh fruit or whatever you like. You can roll these up and take them with you to go since they are thinner than a pancake! I was skeptical but these taste so good, I made a bunch of extra batter in advance and I’ve been eating them every day. And bonus, each pancake has 7 grams of protein!

MY STORY

Most of my life I was not a healthy eater. My biggest food weakness was sugar -and it got to the point that I would have desserts with every meal (‘breakfast dessert’ is a thing, trust me.)  All was well and good until out of nowhere I started to get severe pain and swelling in the joints in my fingers. I was in so much constant pain that I could not even type on a keyboard and I could barely sleep at night. After a lot of testing the doctors had no answers for me “it’s probably just arthritis, we’ll put you on meds.”  Um….probably? Meds for the rest of my life? I was not okay with this so I decided to do my own research (and you all know by now that I’m the queen of research). I came to the conclusion that my highly unhealthy diet could be the culprit so I decided to try eating an “anti-inflammatory diet” to see if I noticed any changes. 1 week into it my pain started to go away; two weeks later it was completely gone. 

So upon learning this, i’ve basically become forced to eat healthy. If I eat junky food for even a couple days, my join pain and swelling will come back in full force. So my arthritis is a blessing and a curse I guess, it keeps me on the right track.

MOTIVATION FOR EATING HEALTHY

Now, I will assume most people out there don’t have such direct consequences for eating unhealthy food. Motivation tends to be one of the hardest aspects of healthy eating, so here is what I find works: watching a documentary on food/health. Here are some of my favorites (all are streaming on netflix). Every time I watch one of these, I have a renewed desire to eat healthy. I’ve also hooked my family and some close friends onto the healthy eating train using this method – so I suggest you try it!

Forks Over Knives

Food Matters

Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

Hungry for Change

Another thing that I do is listen to Eat to Live book on CD while I am driving (especially when I am on my way to the grocery store) – this helps with constant reinforcement.

RECIPE IDEAS 

One thing i’ve found really helps me get inspiration for new recipes is cooking magazines. I subscribe to a few and I find this is the best method for me. I like that with the magazines I get new ideas every month and unlike a book I can easily tear out the pages of the recipes I like. I save all of the recipes that I make in a book so I can easily go back and refer to it. Here are the magazines I currently get

•  Every Day with Rachael Ray
• Allrecipes
• Fresh & Simple

I got these all in a bundle (eatingwell.com) for $12 for one year subscription!

I also use pinterst for ideas, but I just find having the printed recipe in front of me makes me much more likely to actually make it.

PLANNING

Planning is also very important. A few things that I do is 1) use a meal planner, which I purchased on etsy. I focus on cooking dinner (about 5 days a week) and making extra that I then have for lunch the next day. On Sundays I sit down and pick out my recipes for the week and write them down, along with my shopping list. I also log what I eat in my daily planner (this is new, just starting doing this Jan 1 – I will be doing a “how I organize my life” video and post soon!)

2) I do my food shopping using Amazon Fresh (grocery delivery service). Grocery stores really stress me out, and it’s also easy to get distracted (i.e. “oops, how did I end up in the ice cream isle?!?!”). With Amazon Fresh I can pick out only what I need and it’s SO EASY!! I can also save each recipe as a list on their site so I can just go back and easily repurchase all of the ingredients for it. They also have a great selection of organic produce and deliver to me the next day (and no, this is not sponsored whatsoever!!! I just really like the service).  For my specialty items I go to my local farmer’s market every 2 weeks or so, it’s also just something I enjoy doing.

Okay those are my quick tips for today – I’m not sure if anyone is actually reading my blog posts, so if you are and find them helpful please let me know by leaving me a comment! Also, you can subscribe to my blog on the top right of this page if you want a notice every time a new post goes up (will be about 1 a week). Have a great day!!!!!!