The Hemp Connection:
breakfast

What a find! I have a thing for thrift stores, dollar stores, etc., and on a recent cruise through the local 99 Cent Store, I found these salmon cups. They're perfectly portable to work, the gym, on a business trip…and they're cheap and yummy!

I happened to try the salmon/mandarin orange variety, but as you can see by the photo, there are also tuna varieties including cajun and teriyaki.

One of my biggest mantras when teaching healthy eating is to break your rules--about what defines breakfast, snacks, etc. You can eat"lunch" food for a snack, and"dinner" food at breakfast, if that suits you better. (I happen to love leftover Chinese food for breakfast!)

Besides the point that this is a wonderful option for a meal you need to pack, I also wanted to reinforce that better food choices do not have to be expensive. Check out your own 99 Cent Store and see what great bargains can get you started on your own journey of better eating.

An abstract for an article soon to be published hit the Internet late last week. It was a scientific study that correlated reproductive problems with skipping breakfast.

Both dysmenorrhea (painful periods) and missing cycles was worse in a population of college students if they reported skipping breakfast. This group of women also appeared to have more problems with constipation than women who ate breakfast (which makes sense, because breakfast foods tend to be higher in fiber than what we go for later in the day.)

I could write several blog posts about why this is, but rather than get stuck in"analysis paralysis", I'd rather focus on what you can do to be sure breakfast is not skipped.

1. Define breakfast as something you eat before 10 am. If you define it as what you eat before you leave the house, you limit yourself. It can be in your car, in your office, in the break room at work.

2. Breakfast does not have to be made of breakfast food! It can be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or your leftover Chinese food from the night before. Throw out that pretty picture on the side of the cereal box! It just needs to be something you know you will eat.

3. Pay attention to your sleep hygiene. A very high percentage of my clients skip breakfast because they're not sleeping well, and they're barely getting up in time to get ready for work. If you structure your evenings so that you go to sleep earlier, breakfast is something you will naturally evolve toward having time for.

4. Once you get in the habit of sleeping more and eating in the morning…THEN you can focus on WHAT you eat. Trying to change too many things first thing in the morning can feel overwhelming and be just too much to maintain over the long haul.

Tomoko Fujiwaraa, and Rieko Nakatab Skipping breakfast is associated with reproductive dysfunction in post-adolescent female college students.