Theresa's Big Bowl

Good morning! You've probably heard that Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? I am not a very good breakfast eater, but I'm working on it. Most overweight people do not eat breakfast and then come 4pm and through the evening your body goes wacky and you start eating everything in sight; Packing on a bunch of calories with no nutritional value. Can we say Red Barron Special Deluxe pizza and Cool Ranch Doritos? Mmm.... no wait, yuck! O.kay no, I'm not there yet, I still like them... I'll just avoid them for now until I can have them in moderation. ;)

This morning I thought I would share one of my favorite power packed breakfasts with you. I got the recipe from the Engine 2 Diet dvd and I love it, although I had to cut down the portion sizes considerably because it was too many calories and I couldn't eat it all. The 1/8 cup amounts are kind of fussy but to keep this breakfast just around 300 calories and still get the variety the recipe called for, I adjusted accordingly.

Ingredients w/ their calorie break down:

• 1/8 cup Kashi Go Lean Crunch (25 calories)
• 8 squaresKashi Wheat squares (50 calories)
• 1/8 cup Grape Nuts (50 calories)
• 1/8 cup Old Fashioned Oats - 1/8 cup (40 calories)
• 1 tsp. Ground Flax (10 calories)
• 1/2 of a banana cut into small pieces (45 calories)
• 1/8 cup of raisins (65 calories)
• 1/2 cup of Silk Pure Almond milk, unsweetened (18 calories

Total calories for this breakfast 303 calories, fiber is 8.5 grams and protein is a little over 7 grams. See, it is a power packed breakfast!

If you are not concerned about caloric intake or ususally allot yourself more breakfast calories, then by all means adjust the amounts, add a little more ground flax or might I suggest adding more fresh fruit. You could do sliced strawberries, mango, kiwi and blueberries. This is one breakfast that will fuel your system for the day and wont have you crashing a couple of hours later.

Using the Almond milk keeps this a vegan breakfast and truly I don't think you will miss the regular taste of milk in this cereal, plus how can you beat the calories in this. Dairy skim milk has 90 calories for a 1 cup serving. Almond milk has 35 calories. I found that 1 entire cup was a little too much milk for this breakfast and I didn't want unnecessary calories so I kept it to 1/2 a cup only.

Because assembling this breakfast can be a little fussy, I usually like to save time and pre-package 3 -4 of these breakfast ahead of time. I add all of the ingredients, minus the raisins, banana and milk, into the Ziplock snack size bags and store them in the cupboard. Then in the morning I just grab a bowl, empty the bag, dice up my bananna, raisins and milk and my healthy breakfast is ready in less than 3 minutes. :)