August 12, 2016 — No Comments

Carb free breakfast bowls – #FeedMeFridays

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This is a little trick I learnt from some of the city based food locations. To keep carb free they were simply making all your favourite breakfast bits and putting them in a bowl together, so easy and so scrummy. Here are just some of my favourites!!

Baked beans, two poached eggs and half an avocado. It’s so easy to make poached eggs in the microwave! A touch of oil in some tea cups, crack an egg in and only a couple of minutes of cooking, done in short 30 second blocks so it doesn’t get overcooked.

How about poached eggs, poached eggs, roasted cherry tomatoes and melted cheese?

The list goes on, put some good things back into your diet, take out the carbs and put them in a bowl for a little bit of mixing it up

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in #FeedMeFridays, Food Tips, General
Tags: avocado, baked beans, beans, bowl, breakfast, carbohydrates, cheese, cooked, egg, eggs, mashed, melt, melted, poached, sauce, tomatoes, yum

January 19, 2016 — No Comments

Day 19 – Breakfast….why?

Sometimes it drives me crazy when people talk to me and ask about losing weight and my first question is always, 'what do you eat for breakfast?' and of course there is simply an awkward silence while they look at me with guilt.

Breakfast is so important it's the first step in any advice or discussions I have with people about their diet.

Let's switch it another way. Would you go 10 hours during the day without eating anything? Probably not. Then would you leave it about 14 hours between your meals? No, you wouldn't. So why would you do it overnight?

No matter how long you sleep for, calculate how long your body has gone without anything going inside. All night it has used what it had to repair, heal and restore your body as much as it can and THEN you make it carry on it's day only using what you had put in it yesterday.

So, it has been scientifically proven that those that skip breakfast are more inclined to be overweight. Why? Lots of reasons, but if you think that overnight your body essentially goes into a form of hibernation. It has to slow everything right down so that it can sleep and heal and restore. So it makes sense that it is still doing that until you wake it back up by eating.

The recommendation is that you should eat 2 hours from the point of waking up. It will wake your body up and kick start that metabolism into what I like to call 'day' mode. Not only that but your breakfast should contain approximately 20-35% of your daily calorie needs (we calculated that in one of the previous posts!).

What should I eat for breakfast?
This can depend a lot on what your day consists of but as a general recommendation, oats and natural cereals are great. By cereals I don't mean those things you find in boxes covered in sugar or honey or chocolate. I mean seeds and oats and mixed nuts, seeds and anything else we might call a grain or cereal.

If I exercise first thing, as I like to swim early, I will have a quick snack before I leave (usually my energy balls that I explained in a previous post) and then after I swim I will try and get some eggs, avocados, tomatoes in me, usually with a bagel or on gluten free toast. If I don't exercise first thing I often eat a homemade oats mix which I will post in a future blog post which will keep me full of energy for most of the morning!

I think for those who don't eat breakfast the key is to start getting some breakfast. I have a few recipe suggestions already with my baked eggs in avocados, smoothie and I'll post some more.

Remember, eat first thing!

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in Food Tips, General
Tags: breakfast, eat, eggs, hibernate, important, key, oats, wake up, weight loss

January 9, 2016 — No Comments

Day 9 – Breakfast baked eggs with avocado and tomatoes

Baked eggs and avocadoWhenever people talk to me about wanting to lose weight, or they are having issues losing weight or they want to be healthier, the first question I always ask is do you have breakfast?

Now, before reading on, do you have breakfast? It still amazes me how many people skip breakfast despite it being so important to your body. Yes if you skip it, it can cause you to put on weight in some situations but breakfast and the importance of it is for another post (even a smoothie shouldn't take too long to sort out).

Now one of my favourite breakfasts is mixing eggs, avocado and tomatoes in fantastic new ways and this recipe is just one of the ones I thought I would share. Obviously I served it with gluten free toast and lashings of butter but it was proper butter, not spread so that's better for you! Give this a go and try your own mixes too, next time I make it I want to add some chilli!

Ingredients
1 Avocado (I used one and a half because I had a spare half in the fridge that needed using)
5/6 cherry tomatoes, finely diced
2 eggs

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsuis and let's get started.

This is a very very simple recipe. Firstly, make sure the avocado is ripe, as if it isn't it will be really hard to mash and can sometimes be quite stringy. A good tip here is if you take the 'stalk' bit off the end of the avocado it can tell you the ripeness. If it's yellow, it's underripe, if it's brown it's overripe and if it's green it's just perfect!

Scoop out the contents of the avocado into a bowl, but keep the skins, making sure you remove the stone from the middle. Mash the avocado and the diced cherry tomatoes and add some salt and pepper to season. This is where I will add chilli in next time, cut very finely!!

Scoop the mix back into the avocado skins and make a small well in the centre. Where you made the well in the middle of both halves, crack your eggs. Now be warned, sometimes if you have small avocado and big eggs this can be a bit messy so I'd suggest putting the avocado skins on the baking tray at this stage so you don't have to move them later and spill the egg.

Put them in the oven to bake and now this timing depends on how you like your eggs. Runny eggs can take 12-15 minutes maybe, I like mine with none of the 'snotty' bits but not too runny a yolk (as I lose it as soon as I start eating it!) so I generally leave mine in for 15-18 minutes. 20 minutes or above will be a hard cooked yolk.

Then simply take out, add another splash of pepper, some buttered toast and devour. The creaminess of the avocado works so well with the sweet and tangy tomatoes and the runny hot yolks it's just delicious!

No more excuses for not eating breakfast!

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in Recipe
Tags: avocado, baked, breakfast, butter, chilli, eat, eggs, feed me, no excuse, toast, tomatoes, yum

  
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