Breakfast is Hard. Make it Easy.

I've never been a big breakfast eater. I was usually not hungry, so I'd skip it, and then eat at around 2 p.m. when I was ravenous. I had slumps in energy this way, but it was just so hard to eat when I wasn't hungry. Bobby finally convinced me about a year ago to just start trying to eat something small, even just a piece of fruit. I did that for one week, and all of a sudden I started waking up ravenous. My metabolism kicked up, my energy evened out, and I didn't get cranky headaches late in the day. I'm a bit believer in eating only when you're hungry, but this experience showed me that sometimes one may need to kick start things. Now I couldn't skip breakfast if I wanted to, because my growling stomach flat out won't let me.

All that being said, I'm still not going to tuck into a mound of food at the crack of dawn. A light and simple breakfast is still easiest for me to eat. As a result, the first meal of the day (after a big glass of water) usually looks like this:

 My standby has become either an apple or a banana, sliced, sprinkled in apple pie spice (this doesn't have sugar) and chia seeds. I round it out with one tablespoon each of almond butter and peanut butter. The "rules" of combining proteins don't really apply as long as you're eating a varied diet, but I like to eat almond and peanut butter together because it is a complete protein, and if I'm eating one or the other, I may as well eat them together. This gets me through my morning run, or an hour of power yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays mornings. After those activities I'm much more interested in a larger meal. Plus, between the chia seeds and the nut butter I get a good head start on protein for the day, and the fiber of the apple keeps me full through my morning workout. Last but not least, a day started with apple pie spice is guaranteed to be a bit more awesome than a day without, right? Right.