I have a bad sugar addiction which I’m still working on. In the meantime, the one thing I have mastered is how to have a very healthy breakfast.
I’m sure you’ve already heard that a healthy breakfast is important for your brain and energy, “Yadda, yadda, yadda”. And this is all so true and so essential, but I’m guessing if you’re reading this blog then you’re also concerned about your skin. So you don’t want to eat anything that will aggravate your acne, cause a breakout, or contribute to premature aging.
To eat for our skin, we want to follow three simple rules -
- Eat low Glycemic Index foods
- Avoid refined sugars
- Eat as many nutrients as possible
These three simple rules are all very easy to follow for each meal that you eat throughout the day. And breakfast is probably the easiest.
If you want to be ridiculously healthy, then you can follow a raw food diet and drink a powered up green smoothie, or you could make a savory grain ‘porridge’ out of something like amaranth or quinoa.
I’m not quite there yet myself, so I’ll give you my daily breakfast which tastes amazingly good, is exceptionally nutritious, and of course one of the best ways to start the day.
What I eat every day for breakfast
I love oatmeal. Now before you groan and click away, hear me out.
Oatmeal never used to be something that I loved. I liked how my mother used to make thick creamy oats in winter (that I used to cover in sugar), but when I grew up and tried to make it myself, it was always a bland disaster.
There is no fine art to making good oatmeal, but there are a few secrets that can turn your boring-bland-cardboard-tasting oatmeal into a meal that you’re going to go to bed at night dreaming about waking up to in the morning. And you don’t have to coat it in sugar to make it taste good.
I have even converted my travel buddy into an oatmeal-aholic. In the first few weeks of traveling together, he took one look at my oatmeal and opened a box of Cheerios or Wheatabix. And then one day he actually tasted my oatmeal. He’s since never gone a day without eating it!
Fran’s the best breakfast ever oatmeal
Serves 1
3/4 cups raw oats
filtered water
milk or milk substitute
1 Tablespoon of puffed amaranth
1 Tablespoon of sprouted flax
1 Tablespoon of flaked or shredded coconut
1/2 Tablespoon of goji berries
a small handful of fresh or frozen berries
1/2 banana, sliced
1 teaspoon of raw honey
kefir or yoghurt to taste
Loving preparation
- Pour oats into a medium sized saucepan and add enough water and milk to turn it into a watery soup. You will need to experiment with how much liquid you prefer. The more liquid you use, the creamier the oatmeal will be.
- Heat on medium-high until boiling, then reduce to simmer on low until thick and creamy.
- Pour into a serving bowl then add the remainder of the ingredients. Stir to combine.
I like to add a lot of kefir to give it a very creamy consistency, but again this is up to how you prefer it. You can also use your chosen milk type instead of the kefir or yoghurt.
This is an amazing breakfast that will give you an awesome energy boost and stop those mid morning sugar cravings. Enjoy!
Fran Kerr is the founding editor of High on Health. To cure your acne, sign up to Fran's FREE acne cure mini-course or download her latest how to guide, Eat Away Your Acne.
12 responses ↓
Wow this looks amazingly good!
I’m going to try it one day.
I’ve been looking for a good breakfast to eat when school starts.
So thanks so much
I have oatmeal almost every day, I love it too! I used to always put brown sugar, or maple syrup in it and I loved it. But now sometimes I eat it plain. It was hard to get used to. Now I put canola oil in it (because it’s good for me) and sometimes olive oil (but usually it’s too strong), at one point I put plain yoghurt in it, but that made it to sour or something. I put cinnamon in it too, and/or peanut butter (good for me right?), and I’ve put cocoa in it before too. Then I eat it with a wheat piece of toast. I really like it with cinnamon and peanut butter. I never put sugar in it anymore, though I’ve been tempted.
I’m kind of weird I guess, I’ve experimented a lot with it.
I’ve also put it in shakes and I really like that. A banana is a great sweetener. Sometimes I do shakes that have milk (or a sub), oatmeal, banana (if I have one), peanut butter, cocoa, sometimes a protein powder or an egg, and canola oil. They usually turn out well.
I don’t have as many ingredients available as you do Fran, but that looks great!
I read that an egg is a great way to start out your day too. But it seems that there is a lot of controversy on eggs.
I hope this made sense!
That oatmeal sounds really good. It seems like too much work for me in the morning. I usually grab a banana and go. I have been having yogurt with bananas strawberries and blueberries all week but I have to wake up a bit earlier so that I can get to work in time. What is kefir? Is it a yogurt substitute because I am in the process of becoming vegan. I recently quit cow’s milk. Then I will quit cheese and lastly I will stop eating yogurt. It’s so hard though.
That sounds delicious if you have time in the the morning i suppose. I only have a short time in the morning to have breakfast, i think that’s one of the problems why i suffer from acne.
Is there a way you can shorten it down somehow?
There seems to be alot of ingredients there aswell i wouldn’t thing i could eat it all as i am not used to big portiens of food.
Is it a cooked egg in the morning that’s supposed to be better for you?
I’ll definatly try it on the weekend though.
Thanks
Holly
I am a little confused by kifer. I have seen it in the grocery store. Is it used to make yogurt? Do you use it in its store bought form? I have read about its benefits and would love to know how to use it.
Much thanks.
I read somewhere that bananas give you acne… I don’t know if it’s true, but i hope not.
paperwings- kefir is like yoghut but better for you. It contains more cultures. Usually kefir is made with milk which is why it appears to be yoghurt, and tastes very similar. But kefir can be made me a lot of liquids, like coconut water.
Holly- eggs are good for you, especially the yolk. But they are a saturated animal fat so currently I don’t like to eat more than 2-4 per week. But that depends on each person individually
The way I made my oatmeal, it’s far more nutritious because I’m adding in superfoods!
Chase- Bananas are considered an ‘inflammatory’ food, along with mangoes. In Dr. Perricone’s acne free diet, he says not to eat bananas because of this reason. I personally don’t like the idea of giving up any nutritious foods forever, so I’d rather deal with the inflammatory problem on a surface level. I have avoided bananas in the past because I don’t LOVE the taste. But I currently eat 1/2 banana every day in my oatmeal and it hasn’t broken me out
My Acne is a result of liver problems. When I took vitamins for my liver my acne went away. There is an excelent oil for acne in USA. Its called ortho sport by young living. I used it at night before bed. You just have to be careful not to get it into the eyes.
Hey. I am dying to know what supplements you are taking. I also take vitamins for liver support: milk thistle and burdock root. Are there any I am missing?
Much thanks!
paperwings- At the moment not a lot. I take a multi every day from NewChapters and some chinese herbal pills for acne from my herbalist back in Brisbane (he gave me enough to last 6 months before I left for my trip). I also have sprouted flax, bee pollen, goji berries and cacao beans every day.
At the moment it’s all I need.
There are somethings you need to know about the body, I mean how it works correctly,biologically correct.
Eating insoluble fiber/grain like oat meal you are causing your body to over produce triglyserides. The out of balance cholesterol then has to be delt with. Hence acne!
The oat meal being high in starch is also causing another negitive event in side, it is raising your hydrocloric acid levels. One more thing that is happening is the oat meal does not digest very quickly and ends up in the small intestines still in the fermenting stage, causing the vili of the intestines to get mucused up with the undigested fiber.
I could go on but you may get the drift.
Hi Will,
Thanks for your comment
While I still think that raw oats are awesome for our bodies if we have a healthy inner ecology (and I know that 95% of us don’t), I understand that cooked oats may not be quite AS good. However, for a teenager, or someone that is Candida free, I don’t think the oats are going to cause acne. They don’t in me.
And when writing this blog I have to keep in mind that not everyone is ready to (or like me in the position to) go from a standard American diet to a amazingly healthy one just yet, so this breakfast option is a good stepping stone for my readers. Much better than white toast and jam or cocoa pops
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