Eat more Protein for Breakfast

A study done by the University of Alabama at Birmingham last year showed that eating a high protein, high fat breakfast increased the body's ability to burn protein and fat throughout the day.  The trend of low fat diets is certainly dying out but the high carb endurance athlete is running at full speed.  Training for a marathon does not give you the right to eat a bunch of pasta.  Over doing the carbs jacks up your insulin levels and throws your system out of whack.  The Paleo for Athlete's book recommends eating a ratio of 4:1 carbs to protein post workout.  Aside from post workout and sometimes preworkout the best diet to eat is a Zone diet.  That means you should be eating a Carb:Protein:Fat ratio of 40:30:30.  This ratio gives you more energy and makes you leaner.  Dr. Barry Sears came up with it and introduced it in his book The Zone Diet.  If you follow the Zone diet you will feel better and become leaner guaranteed. 

But I digress.  This post is about breakfast.  What is a better breakfast?  One with more protein and fat!!  Think of a typical breakfast and you think of what?  Bagels?  Cereal?  Carboriffic!!   Waking in the fasted state that we all do, the last thing we want to be doing is eating a bunch of carbs and boosting our insulin levels (storage hormone) which tells the body to store the carbs as fat so add some meat or eggs to it!  Here are a few ideas:

Bacon and Egg Breakfast Burrito (eggs cooked in grassfed butter)
Cottage cheese and fruit and almonds
Sausage and Oatmeal and almonds
Leftover Dinner from the night before...yes that's right, dinner for breakfast.  A lot of people have a hard time with this but eating a more "lunch-like" meal for breakfast gives you a lot more choices.  Most of us are going to have a hard time eating a tuna sandwich for breakfast though :).

Check out the CF Journal Issue 21 for some great meal ideas.

Summary:  Eat protein at every meal and eat more than you are eating.  If you are not thinking about your protein intake I can almost guarantee you are not eating enough of it.  Get rid of the carb-centric breakfast and add some Fat (think butter, yeah I said it...more on why you shouldn't worry about  saturated fat and cholesterol later) and Protein and you will get leaner and more proficient at burning fat while gaining muscle.