Last week I talked about the love/hate relationship I have with Apple Cider vinegar. I hate the way it tastes but love the positive effects it's having on me.
So after I down the awful shot and a glass of water I head to the basement for my daily workout. I'll go into detail on what the workout regimen consists of in future health and fitness posts.
Now it's time for breakfast. Call me boring but I eat the same thing for breakfast every morning. Ok, there's those special occasions on the weekend when I might fry up some eggs and bacon but that's rare.
I've been eating oatmeal every morning for nearly ten years. I'd been eating the wrong kind though. Not that flavored crap which is hardly good for you, but instant oatmeal. You look at the ingredients and all it says is oatmeal. You think, "that's good, right?". Wrong. My doctor set me straight.
He'd told me to switch to steel-cut oatmeal some time ago. I hesitated because it's more of a hassle. It takes much longer to prepare. Besides, if you look at the size of the round containers it would appear the steel-cut oats are quite a bit more expensive.
So last time I was at the doctor I asked him why the instant wasn't any good. In order to make those oats cook up quickly they grind away the outer husks, all that fibrous material gone, leaving the poor oat hardly an oat at all and not the healthy nourishment it should be.
He suggested I cook them up in a crockpot then refridgerate it. That way I have about a week's worth of oatmeal ready for the microwave. I was surprised to find out that steel-cut oatmeal yields much more than instant, so the price isn't exhorbitant at all.
I cook the steel-cut oats with unsweetened almond milk, having given up dairy products a couple of years ago. Another healthy move you should consider. Oh, I indulge in ice cream once in a great while but it's, again, one of those rare treats. And believe me, I was a fan of ice cream.
So after the workout I scoop out a chunk of the coagulated oatmeal and plop it into a bowl. To it I add a tablespoon of natural peatnut butter. Make sure the ingredients list peanuts as the only ingredient, no salt, nothing else. Then it's a pinch of ground flax seed which is good for combating cholesterol. Finally a handful of blueberries which might just be the healthiest fruit around, containing lots of antioxidants. I heat it up thoroughly then stir it all together for a really great tasting and nutritious breakfast.
The complex fiber of the whole grain oats makes your body work hard at breaking it down and digesting it over the next couple of hours. That's very good for your body. It also keeps you regular, as in getting that business out of the way before you head out for the day.
I used to wash it down with orange juice. I loved orange juice but, again, my doctor told me it's too much sugar. I was giving myself harmful sugar spikes. So I stopped drinking orange juice at the same time I switched to steel-cut oatmeal.
Guess what happened? My weight, which had leveled off even with a ramped up fitness program and what I had perceived to be a perfectly healthy diet, began dropping once more.
Next time I'll talk about my workout routine.
