Ok, so I don’t often get excited about weight loss strategies or weight loss books – but I have a new theory on how to get my clients in shape fast and I am pretty excited about it.

It has to do with breakfast (the most important meal of the day) and salad (one of the easiest ways to get your veggies into you).

If weight loss is important to you, this may be the easiest and fastest way to make a positive change in the relationship between you and your bathroom scale.

The new most important meal of the day:  the breakfast salad!

Now, before you scoff heartily at my preposterous suggestion, ponder this. What do you normally eat for breakfast?  Chances are it’s a high carb, quick burning meal that you scoff down without really chewing or enjoying.  Or nothing.

When do you normally eat lunch?

Is there a lot of activity you need to do (mental and/or physical) that might require a sharp mind and/or energized body?

If you were to run a marathon, would you eat nothing for 14 hours beforehand?

If you eat dinner then skip breakfast, that is exactly what you are doing when you show up to work with an empty stomach, work for 3-4 hours then desperately claw at the starbucks counter for something less than healthy to quickly refill your energy stores (9pm dinner, 11am lunch = 14 hours time difference – you never thought of it like that, did you?)

The whole ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ battle is not what I want this article to be about, so if you don’t believe me then try finding research that supports NOT eating breakfast.   I would be interested to hear what you find…

Back to my brekky salad suggestion. I am going to make it easy for you.  Just watch this video and you will see exactly how I make it.  This is in two parts because it is all done in one shot.

I haven’t used any tv magic or any ‘here’s one we made earlier’ tricks like that.  Just throwing it together and getting it done.

Right about now would probably be a good time to note that I am no Giada (I certainly don’t have her cooking skills, nor do I have her cleavage) but hopefully what you see you will find useful and will inspire you to believe that you can do it too.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzztOXZFH0g]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6x3y-rIUYU]

Making time for being healthy is a matter of priorities.  Here’s a tip for those that are tight on time:

Get to bed 15 minutes earlier so you can get up 15 minutes earlier so you have 15 minutes in the morning to make this salad.

Alternatively, you can always prepare things on sunday and cook them up monday tuesday if you are really strapped for time early in the morning.   There really is no excuse for not at least trying this.  Let me say that again:

There really is no excuse for not at least trying this.  What’s the worst that could happen?

Or maybe I should ask you this: If you were  to start eating a high fiber, healthy filling and nutritious breakfast salad, what’s the best thing that might happen?

And now, for your cooking pleasure/amusement (drumroll please)

Jamie’s Breakfast Salad!

Big ol’ handful of spinach

2 rashers of turkey bacon, sliced into 1 x 2 inch strips

2 spoonfuls of onion, diced & washed

1/4 avocado, chopped

1 ‘drizzling’ of olive oil (reminds me of a joke – why does snoop dogg carry an umbrella?  Fo’ drizzle.  If you don’t get that one, tell your kids.  I will let them explain it to you).

salt/pepper/braggs amino acids to taste

Heat pan to medium.  Cook turkey bacon, then eggs, then onions.

Stir in frypan until done.

Think happy thoughts about your own health.

Chop egg into small pieces and place over salad with onion and bacon.

Flavor, drizzle, enjoy.

Not too hard, right?  Just toss together (literally!) some healthy ingredients and you have a salad ready to go!

And of course, what is one of the tenements, the most sacred of commandments when trying to lose weight and get into your skinny jeans?

Eat your veggies!  Eat more fiber!  Eat breakfast!  Eat healthy foods!  Well, dear reader – welcome to the jackpot 🙂

Want to try it for yourself or make your own Brekky Salad?

Here’s what you need:

BASE:

Base of spinach/lettuce/some kind of leafy green

PROTEIN:

A smattering of protein, could be beef, chicken, egg, salmon, manatee, anything works really.

If you are vegetarian you could use sesame seeds/walnuts/almonds/pine nuts/soy bacon/garbanzo beans – want me to keep going?

OTHER VEGGIE GOODNESS:

Some other (possibly sauteed) veggies  such as peppers/onions/grape tomatoes/cucumber/asparagus… the list is really only limited by your imagination.

EXTRA FLAVOR:

You can use Braggs amino acids as I have recommended in the video, but alternatively you could just use herbs/spices/fat free dressing/fat filled dressing.

Really can’t go wrong here folks, just don’t go crazy with it and let the flavors of the salad shine through rather than drench it in dressing.

If you want to be leaner than where you are, you can help yourself out by eating better than what you are.

So what inspired this spark of nutritional creativity?  Well, to be honest the concept of eating veggies at breakfast isn’t anything new.  All I have done is proposed a larger ratio of vegetables to protein (ever had an omelet with veggies folded into it?  This is just like that but with more veggies and without the muffin and jam on the side).

We all know we need our veggies, this is just a way to get them in at the start of the day – you get a great filling meal, the confidence of knowing you are already well on your way to having lots of veggies and fiber for the day (just like all those healthy eating commercials say you are supposed to) and hopefully it didn’t take too long to make and enjoy!

EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

Before you start getting defensive and waving your Captain Crunch box above your head and saying something about “prying it from my cold, dead hands” just think of this.

Don’t Overcomplicate This

You don’t have to eat a salad for brekky every day.  But wouldn’t it be great it you did it just a couple of times a week? I think that is something any of us can manage to do.

If not because it is quick and easy, then because your body will thank you for it, your energy level will be higher and your hair will be shinier and the opposite sex will find you immediately more attractive.

Ok, some of those promises may or may not necessarily be true… but if you believed they could be, would that make you make and eat your very own brekky salad?  That’s what I thought 🙂

Yours in health,

Jamie Atlas

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