Meal One: Breaking the Fast

French toast, waffles with lots of syrup, pancakes with lots of syrup, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, fried potatoes, Pop-Tarts, Cocoa Pebbles, Strawberry Nutra-Grain Bars, Nature Valley Fruit and Nut Trail Mix Bars, NV Protein Bars with Peanut and Chocolate, NV Sweet and Salty Peanut and Almond Bars, these are some of the breakfast foods I tended to enjoy, leaning more heavily on the prepared foods so I wouldn't have to cook as much unless I really, really felt like cooking. Thinking back through them, there's really no way that just the toast, pancakes or waffles alone were going to get me through my day, and for the most part - they didn't. That's where the granola bars and protein bars and nut bars kicked in to pick up the slack.

They say it's sometime easier to plan menus around "meal one, meal two, and meal three" than its as "breakfast, lunch, and dinner" because we're preconditioned to expect certain foods at certain times of the day. Everyone knows that Breakfast for Dinner is amazing. Why wait the whole day to go without? But I'm also learning to re-think what makes breakfast, well, meal one.

For me, time is always iffy. Some mornings I can invest in however long it takes to get everything made. Others - I pretty much have to eat on the fly, so having already prepared food is a must. On those mornings, I need protein. I have a long day ahead of me and that's the only thing that'll fuel me through it all. But it's important to get in fruits and veggies - proper nutrition is about the vitamins and nutrients that come from the real deal. So whatever I make - on the days I can make it - I have to make enough of it to last for the days where I can't make much of anything.

I'm going to have to learn to give up the idea of a waffles, pancakes, doughnuts, pastries, and most cereals for breakfast - they're not nutritious enough. So Meal one might be more of a lunch or a dinner in the future - but I'll find a way to make it work.