Fried Eggs and Sweet Potato Rounds

Fried Eggs and Sweet Potato Rounds

Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. I have a variation on the above theme everyday, I simply don't function well without a good, well balanced breakfast. I'm not alone....there are plenty of studies showing that people have more strength and endurance after eating a good breakfast; your brain performs better allowing you to concentrate and focus more;  you make healthier food choices throughout the rest of the day; it's linked to improved weight loss and children perform better in exams and have less incidents of poor behaviour. To be honest I don't think the incidents of behaviour are solely linked to children, anyone else get hangry? With the sheer number of steps I cover teaching a Food and Nutrition practical lesson I need something akin to rocketfuel! 

This only takes me around 5-10 minutes to make and we've now worked it into our daily routine. Even Richard has this most weekdays now (I've got to admit I did a happy dance when he announced he was going to start joining me in my breakfast habits, anyone I love eating less processed, junk cereals is a winner in my book)  

Eggs are a great source of protein and a source of vitamin D. It's important to have a source of protein in the morning as protein takes longer to digest, stays in your stomach longer because of this and as a result leaves you feeling fuller for the first half of the day. I have a friend who has sorted out her afternoon crashes and overwhelming need to nap during this time by changing her breakfast and adding in an 'egg o'clock' which involves a boiled egg around 11-12 ish.

Eggs may be challenging for those on full AIP, but can be easily replaced with wild smoked salmon, undyed smoked haddock or even a tin of sardines. Mix that with a healthy fat (coconut oil in this case, but a sliced avocado wouldn't go amiss either) and a bit of greenery and your set for the day. The sweet potato rounds are lightly fried both sides, we pop a lid on to help them cook a bit quicker. You don't want them too well cooked as there'd  be too many readily available carbs then. Green plantains are another good alternative and fried courgettes or marrows are handy if you want to bypass more of the carbs. 

I think it's important to avoid the traditional refined carbohydrates breakfast (by this I mean anything with grains in, high levels of fructose, sugar etc.) we have in our culture. They shove you onto a hormonal roller coaster that controls our choices for the rest of the day, leaving us feeling tired, washed out and unable to cope. Eating any refined carb that the body can easily convert to glucose spikes our insulin levels and then cause them to plummet. I've come to realise our hormones are all linked in an intricate spiders web, one gets out of balance and the ensuing ripple is far-reaching and invariably detrimental! Dr Alan Christianson has a great book The Adrenal Reset Diet which talks more about this. He suggests eating more healthy carbs in the evening as the leave you feeling tired. 

If time really is difficult for you in the mornings and you don't think you can spare the 5-10 minutes it takes to cook this. You can always batch bake a load of mini fritatta's on a Sunday night and grab and go during the week. I'll post a recipe for these soon.