Routine. Routine. Routine.
Morning Routines. Do you have one? I know I have one.
They are what people tout as their “secret sauce” to success in business, life, and health.
Doing the same things every day yields more productivity. The nonnegotiable time.
Everybody wants to know who does what, when, and how. Blogger Tim Ferriss asks about routine on his podcast and “The People’s Shark”, Daymond John, even wrote a book about it, Rise and Grind (comes out in January 2018).
The premise of the book is all about what entrepreneurs do first thing in the morning.
Here is my morning routine:
- Get up between 6:30-7:00am
- Start coffee
- Walk my dog Pete
- Make Bulletproof Coffee*
- Morning reading/writing/emailing
- Workout
- Eat “Breakfast”
(*Bulletproof Coffee = putting healthy fats, like grass-fed butter and coconut oil, in your coffee…it changed my life, I highly recommend it)
And I put “breakfast” in quotes because this first meal of day falls somewhere between 11:00am and 12:30pm. Not a typical breakfast time…but during these hours is when I break my fast.
This routine works for me and fits my lifestyle.
I have had this similar routine for about 4 years now….well only the past 2 1/2 since my wife and I adopted Pete…but you get the drift! I love he is now step 3 in my mornings.
Ok, enough with the puppy-gushy-stuff…
While routines are important, and I could talk for days on the topic, this article focuses on the last step: eating breakfast.
The breakfast detailed below is what I eat after most training days.
On rest days, I play around with intermittent fasting, which means skipping the normal breakfast time and not eating for a period of 12-16 hours. I am not an expert in intermittent fasting, but I find that I am not ravenous hungry and have sustained energy throughout the day.
My breakfast looks like this:
Looks good, right? It’s sooo delicious and packs a punch!
For the foodies and nutrient-heads, here is a rough breakdown of the macronutrients involved:
You may be thinking, “bacon, eggs, oh my!”
…he’s gonna clog his arteries!!!
Not true.
While we are here, let’s dispel a few myths:
- YES, dietary fat is good for you as long as eat the right kind, so stay away from the “trans” fats.
- and NO, dietary fat (or dietary cholesterol) is not linked to heart disease.
- But…YES health guidelines given by “authority figures” are confusing, which is a point for another day
I prep each ingredient in the order listed above. Cooking the same meal time after time is a behavior chain just like the one I described in an article about staying productive in the gym.
One step reinforces, or strengthens, the previous step.
I prepare and plate my food in the following order:
- Heat pan
- Chop and dice vegetables and potatoes
- Sauté veggies
- While veggies are in the pan, I put a bed of spinach on a plate
- When, veggies are done, they go on top of spinach
- Next, bacon is fried and then placed on top of veggies
- Last, fry the eggs (I found that cooking eggs last is best because you can fry them in bacon fat, and they take the no time to cook)
- Top the plate off with shredded cheese
Each link in the chain is strong, has been heavily reinforced, and I pretty much go on auto-pilot when cooking my breakfast.
Sautéing potatoes (step 4) is strengthened by cooking bacon (step 5) , which is strengthened by cooking eggs (step 6), and so on.
All chefs know this, plating and prepping food in the same order allows for consistent timing, appearance, taste, etc…
One quick thing about my breakfast prep before I move on to the benefits of eating the the same meal…
This breakfast has been slowly shaped over time…
I played around with:
- Which types of food to have for breakfast,
- Different brands,
- Different qualities of food (cheap bacon vs good bacon),
- The order of food being prepared,
- Different frying pans, and
- The best cooking temperatures.
Shaping, or slowly changing one thing at time, is the key to long-term maintenance of any target behavior (cooking new foods, lifting more weights). After all, cooking is skill that needs to be trained over time. Those celebrity chefs? Yeah, they have been at it for awhile.
I guess you could go from eating a bowl of cereal every morning to preparing 4-5 food items, but my guess is that it would not stick, and the STRONGER behavior chain would appear again soon.
Ultimately, through the years, I have found that eating the same breakfast provides the following benefits:
#1. Improved Decision-Making – Each tiny decision adds up throughout the course of the day. If I know what food to cook, in what order, for how long, and the way to cook it, then the decisions have already been made. I no longer have to think about what I should eat today. What about tomorrow?
We have more important things to worry about, kicking off the day with indecision is exhausting and not worth the effort. I can use my brain to think about other things.
I need to. I have to read complicated research articles later in the day. You have important stuff too.
Our brains are finite resources so protecting it from the nuances of tiny and unnecessary decision is highly valuable.
#2. Better Self-management/Time-Saving– By preparing the same meal every day, I know exactly how long meal prep, cooking and cleanup take. I can guard this time in my schedule. Some things get moved in my calendar if it bleeds into cleanup. Also, I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store…
You might even be thinking….”Well, Nick you could save even more time by having your groceries delivered…” This is true, but I want remain somewhat human by hunting and gathering my food (even if it is at a grocery store). Plus, I get extra physical activity.
#3. Improved Nutrition – Full disclosure, I am not a nutritionist, but I read about it regularly and know enough to get by. Along the way, I dug into the research and learned a few key rules based on science (again, bacon and eggs are ok to eat!) It’s no secret, avoid processed foods and limit sugar intake.
My breakfast fits the bill. It has a good balance of nutrients and I have slowly increased the amount of fat in my breakfast, which has yielded great results.
Here’s another rule: eat foods that have no nutrition label.
What are the ingredients in a red pepper? There’s only one! A red pepper!
#4. Carbohydrate/Sugar Insight – As an offshoot of nutrition, many trial-and-error breakfasts taught me that eating a high volume of carbohydrates/natural sugars was not good for me. I used to drink a full glass of milk and eat high-sugar fruit like bananas and strawberries. I found that the onslaught of sugar was too much in one meal. So, I cut down the quick digestible sugars. A full glass of milk down to 1/2 glass (which I mix with my leftover coffee), and sugary fruit removed altogether.
A quick story:
I rushed breakfast to attend a wellness fair on campus. The fair gave basic health information to university employees like sleep recommendations, exercise guides, and nutrition services. I stopped by the booth that tested blood sugar.
You can already guess what happened next…
My blood sugar was high!
By having a consistent routine and breakfast, I quickly realized the abnormality that stood out: I slammed a glass of milk 20 about minutes before I left home.
At the moment of the blood-sugar , I felt very light-headed, and my energy was out of whack for the rest of the day.
The lesson: no more sugar onslaughts…and at least if I drink milk, reduce the volume and drink slowly. Hence the 1/2 glass of milk in the table.
Now, my hunger throughout the day is better and I no longer experience the highs and lows of the sugar crash. But these insights are gleaned from the next point.
#5. Abnormalities Stand Out – This is the basis of behavioral science. Can we control enough of our day to determine, if we are not satisfied with something, where to make the change? If chaos is happening between the hours 6am and 12pm, or really any part of our day or week, then how would we know what the active ingredient is?
In general, my hunger and energy levels in a span of 24-48 hours help me determine if what I change is an important variable. With a consistence routine and meal plan, I can have a better idea what may be resposible for health issues like increased hunger or decreased energy:
- Did I eat at a different time of day?
- Did I include fewer eggs in my breakfast?
- Did I train harder leaving me a little more hungry?
With consistent routines, we can easily locate and identify the parts of our day that prevent us from reaching our health goals.
Of these 5 points, finding abnormalities is the most important and useful to me.
In our search for health and wellness, we cannot find what is meaningful to target or change, with inconsistency in our day.
Yes, the world is chaotic and some things we cannot control. But, we can take control of morning routines, exercise programs, and meal time.
If you notice differences in how you feel each morning, afternoon, and evening, can you point your finger to the cause? Was it the morning coffee? Too little protein in the morning? Intense workout from the day before?
With consistent breakfasts (and morning routines for that matter), you take the guesswork out of:
- Why do I feel great today? or
- Why do I feel I like garbage today?
You may know it is because, after eating the same breakfast for a week, you ate too early, did not eat enough, or ate too much (sugary) yogurt to start the day. What small change can YOU make?
Now, this is not a recommendation to follow what I eat or model my morning routine.
It is more a call to action to create consistency if you may be struggling with how to attack breakfast or any part of your day for that matter!
Eat the good fats and keep moving!
-Nick
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