Do you travel much? Hotels? Restaurants? They can play havoc with your nutrition plan. And with the hotel industry being som competitive, pretty well every hotel offers a complimentary continental breakfast.
I travel a bit -- races, confernces, etc., and I know that the "breakfasts" offered does not meet my nutritional needs.
The compliemntary breakfast buffer may seem to be "free", but if you partake, you are probably consumering a day's worth of calories in just one meal.
Waffles are a popular choice at the breakfast buffer. But they contain 375 calories, 11 g of fat, and 68 g of carbohydrates. And all of those little waffle pockets are great at capturing and holding butter, margarine, and syrop, adding to your carbohydrate, sugar, and calorie count. Avoid.
Orange Juice? 110 calories, 33 g of sugars. Skip the fruit juice and ear whole fruit instead. The fiber in fruit helps to mitigate the effects of the sugar, but there is minimal figer in juice, so basically you are drinking sugar water.
Melon? A very popular fruit choice on breakfast buffet tables. But not a strong nutrition choice. 3 small wedges contian 135 calories and 30 g of sugars. Nutrionally inferior to many other fruits, such as grapes. The equivelant surving of grapes contains 68 calories and 16g of sugars.
Like those single-serving boxes of cereals? Remind you of your childhood and Saturday morning cartoons? Well, a single-serving box of Corn Flakes contains 267 calories, 10g of protein, and 57g of carbs. Minimal real fiber, minimal protein, this will spike your blood sugar and insulin levels and leave you hungry as you hit the road.
If your breakfast buffer offers scrambled eggs--take it. 2 eggs scrambled contain 204 calories, 14g of fat, and 2g of carbohydrates, and will satiate your hunger for a longer period of time than creal, waffles, pastries, etc.
Breakfast proteins. With all the positive publicity that meat and proteins have been receiving recently, we may forget that not all meat and protein products are created equally.
Breakfast Sausages are an excellent example. Although they may be protein rich, they are also full of sodium and fat. 2 links contain 250 calories, 14g of fat (6g of saturated fat), 24g of protein and 958mg of sodium!
Muffins--as a kid I used to love muffins for breakfast. Especially when I was out with my dad. I was beginning my "health consciousness" and thought I was making a healthy choice choosing a muffin over a donut. Well turns out that most muffins available at hotel breakfast, restaurants, etc. and nothing more that creatively disguised cupcakes. The average muffin contians 444 calories, 22g of fat, and 56g of carbohydrates. Can you say blood sugar and insulin spike?
I love yogurt. Protein and calcium rich, active priobiotic cultures. Lots of good stuff. But watch out for the yogurt served at the complimentar breakfast. Many choices contain "fruit", a.k.a. sugar. The average fruit (flavoured) yogurt contains 388 calories, 10g of fat, 15g of protein, and 53g of sugars. Fruit-flavoured yogurt is laced with high-fructorse corn syrup--known to play havoc with blood sugar and insulin levels, and screw with your metabolism.
If plain yogurt is offered, take it, and if you like, add almonds and whole berries to it.
My favourite breakfast while travelling? A protein Vi-Shake. I have travel-size individual serving packets of Vi-Shake mix so I do not have to worry about taking my big bag of shake mix on the road. Sometime I take my travel "Magic-Bullit" single-serving blender with me, in which case I will grab some of the fresh fruit from the buffet and throw it in my shake. Sometimes I just mix the shake in my "shaker" cup, and eat the fruit on it's own.
Either way, my morning nutritional needs have been met; and more importantly, I do not get theose low-blood sugar cravings later in the day causing me to eat crap, or over-eat and sabotage my nutrional plan.
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