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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Return to Health - Challenge 1

In effort to achieve more energy and health I've decided I need "progress" (my goal for this year) points of small things I can add to my daily routine.

For this week and maybe the next few week my challenge is:

Eat whole grains for breakfast

I am a cereal lover and could eat it every meal let alone every morning for breakfast. Now, potentially, there is nothing wrong with cereal, but as the start to the day and as a mainstay food it falls short in the nutrition category. I'm sure there are healthy, wonderful cereals that categorize as whole grain (like All-Fiber, but seriously, who could really eat that every day - gag).
What I mean by whole grains is "whole" as in not processed - which even rolled oats are stretching it because they are processed - they are rolled. The more whole version of rolled oats are steel cut oats, which, by the way, are 10 times better than rolled oats - I felt so jipped when I found out about steel cut oats. All this time I thought I hated oatmeal, but really I just don't prefer rolled oats that are cooked.

So far one of my favorite whole grains that I've found is actually a medley of grains - corn, wheat, oats, nuts, dried fruit - it's called "Dee's Cereal" and I buy it at Harmons. Because all the grains are cut small (not processed, just cut) it cooks quickly. My kids love oatmeal and whole wheat pancakes, so that is what I usually feed them.

So here's to my first challenge - if you like, join with me on my adventure and we'll do this together. Let me know what other great breakfast options there are - what are your favorites.

1 comment:

Marne said...

I recently found out about steel cut oats too and how much better they are go figure. Good info to know, though.

My kids love oatmeal and whole wheat pancakes too, so I make those a lot. We also eat things like breakfast burritos (eggs, shredded potatoes, etc in whole wheat tortillas), homemade muffins and biscuits (my kids love these), healthy smoothies, omelets, fruit and yogurt to name a few.

We love cold cereal here too. I try not to buy the junkie stuff. I mostly get chex, cheerios, grape nuts and better things like that when we have our cold cereal cravings.

Good goals! It's hard, I know. But you are really motivated. :)