BREAD ISN'T BREAKFAST

Nutrition

Aug 30

We’ve been working-out a lot lately. I’m not talking about lifting weights or doing pull-ups, I mean that since we sold our house and haven’t moved into our new place in Boise we’ve been working from a lot coffee shops and breakfast places.

We’re oddly productive when working out of coffee shops despite all of the distractions. Anyway, you get to do some pretty good people watching / observing in these places. As nutrition coaches we are always noticing people's choices when it comes to the foods that they go for.

From what we see, a common breakfast for people is a pastry and a sweetened coffee drink. The pastries are usually something like a muffin, croissant, scone or donut. The coffee is usually a mixture of coffee and cream (or milk) and a sugar or honey sweetened syrup mixed in.

Let’s talk about why this is a suboptimal breakfast routine.

We’re all busy people. Some of y’all are skipping breakfast completely because you’re busy. That’s not a good excuse, but it’s a fact. Many others rely on getting all of their daily food from the three main meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) because they don’t make time for or don’t prefer snacks. If that’s you, you need to make all 3 meals count. You need to get adequate calories of protein, carbohydrates and fat in each of those 3 meals in order to reach the daily goals that ultimately get you moving toward your overall goals.

So what’s wrong with the pastry + coffee breakfast?

Let’s look at a croissant. It’s a flour and butter based pastry with about 230 calories, 12g of fat, 26g of carbs and about 5g of protein.

How about a blueberry muffin? We’re looking at about 360 calories, 15g of fat, 52g of carbohydrates and 5g of protein.

Lastly, how about a bagel with cream cheese? 380 calories, 11g of fat, 57g of carbohydrates and 13g of protein

So what’s the problem? Well, what’s your goal?

Most of the people we work with intend to improve their overall health, strength, body composition and physique.

Nutritionally, the recipe for that is a moderately high protein diet, moderate carbohydrate levels and low to moderate dietary fat levels.

So if breakfast is 1/3 of your daily nutrition, it probably needs to look a lot like your lunch and dinner as far as the number of calories and the quantity of protein, carbs and fat that you need for the day.

If you are starting your day off with only 5 or 6 grams of protein, you’re shoveling snow with a spoon.

Let’s zoom back out and look at the big picture with a real life example… Jonathan will be the guinea pig:

Currently his goal is to eat about 2200 calories per day.
He tries to get 190g of protein, 225g of carbs and 60g of fat.
Let’s say he hits Starbucks for a working breakfast and gets an apple bran muffin and a Grande Caramel Macchiato with 2% milk.
After that meal he is sitting at 600 calories, 16g of protein, 90g of carbs and 16g of fat.
He has already eaten about 27% of his daily calories but has gone through 40% of his carbs for the day, and only about 9% of the protein that he needs for the day.

Can you see how that breakfast is going to make it hard to reach his goals?

So why do we care? We care about our body composition. We care about how much body fat we have because excess body fat is tied to just about every chronic disease. We care about being strong and muscular.

Unfortunately the muffin and macchiato low protein, high carb routine is the recipe for the rampant “skinny fat” epidemic sweeping the nation, and the high calorie low nutrient aspect of breakfasts like this make it easy to over-consume total calories during the day.

So what would be a better option?

Let’s stay at Starbucks and see what we can do:

What if he got a grande Blonde Roast with some almond milk and an order of their Classic Oatmeal and 2 orders of the Sous Vide Egg Bites.
First of all, that’s a lot more food. It’s more nutrient dense and has less “empty” calories like sugar.
Total for the meal? About 500 calories, 31g of protein, 54 carbs and 17g of fat.
He has doubled his protein, cut his carbs nearly in half and saved 100 calories in the process.
Not to mention, he ate more food and set himself for success to strive toward reaching his goals for the total day.

So buck the trend.

Avoid the pastry display next time you have a working breakfast.

Skip the sugary, high calorie coffee drink and look for a more balanced option.