Breakfast is a tricky meal for a lot of people. There has been a lot of buzz lately about how you should skip breakfast and how breakfast is making you fat….breakfast is not making you fat. In fact, some newly published research out of the University of Missouri which used functional MRI brain scanning shows that eating a high protein breakfast decreases reward driven eating later in the day. Reward driven eating is not eating because your body need more calories to function but eating because you just walked by a your favorite pizza joint and the smells seduced you to go in. The short course on breakfast is that I think it is an important meal and one that you should eat.
The problem with breakfast for many people has to do with convenience Morning are busy (and crazy if you have kids). Unfortunately, the ‘ready-to-eat’ breakfast options are mediocre nutrition choices at best and are completely devoid of protein (minus the milk you would add to them). Up until now, my only solution for clients in need of a high protein and fast breakfast was a shake. Shakes are great and if you make them right they can be loaded with nutrition. But that isn’t an appealing option for many people all the time.
Here is my new answer.
I received the heads up on this mason jar housed oatmeal from the chef of one of my clients. I played around with the recipe, tweaking it some to make it Dr. Mike Approved and here is what I came up with. I make a slightly lower calorie version for my wife and you can make a lot of different variations by modifying the fruit used or flavor or protein powder. Regardless of what you choose to do, this dish is great. You can make it in advance and then just pull it out of the refrigerator to eat as needed.
Simple Cold Blueberry Oatmeal Breakfast
Makes 2 servings
- 2 1/2 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup fat free plain Greek yogurt
- 2 tbsp chia seeds
- 2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)
- 2 cups unsweetened almond milk
- 4 scoops vanilla protein powder (I used Low Carb Metabolic Drive)