Wellness Makeover: Breakfast

Over the past few years, the wellness habits I had established have for the most part disintegrated. Since my husband Neil and I have been working at home, we have struggled with keeping a good routine and not letting work take over our lives. And unfortunately, his back injury put us on more equal ground when it comes to dealing with chronic pain and maintaining wellness. When you want to improve your sleep, diet and exercise routine, you find yourself in a chicken or the egg situation. Where to begin to stop the crazy train? We’ve decided to pick a few things to focus on: getting up earlier, breakfast, and morning exercise.

Good habits build up a positive momentum in your life and bad habits start a downward spiral. That’s one of the difficult things about injuries and chronic pain. When your life is so radically disrupted, your overall health begins to suffer which only adds to health problems and inhibits healing. When you can’t exercise or even get around for extended periods of time, your fitness and overall health suffer. It can also be more challenging to cook for yourself  and just your diet can have an impact on stress management, quality of sleep and metabolism.

I get frustrated with most books about weight loss, because they assume that my primary issue is food cravings and eating too much. My problem is the opposite. If I don’t put significant focus into planning my food, I forget to eat – especially breakfast and lunch. When I read at Lifehacker.com that making breakfast your biggest meal helps you sleep better, it reminded me that it is also better for your metabolism. Skipping meals in the early part of the day slows your metabolism and eating all your calories towards the end has multiple negative effects. Making sure I have a good breakfast (high protein and some good carbs) has made a big impact in the past so it is one of the places we are starting. Today we had spinach and feta scramble with blueberry bran muffins. Lots of fiber and protein, low sugar.