Where to find London’s healthy breakfast options?

Healthy breakfast with time on your hands;

When being healthy in a rush;

Take a look at our favourite dishes at the bottom of the page!

How to fit-in a healthy breakfast

There are arguments both for and against eating “a good breakfast” each morning. For some, an early workout may mean that eating a substantial breakfast beforehand risks seeing it again on the gym floor. If this is you, of course I encourage you to find lighter and less potentially embarrassing alternatives. For others, mental agility at the office is a priority and therefore a healthy, high-protein breakfast is worth making time to enjoy. As our personal training facility exists to produce great fat loss results, we are very much in favour of planning a healthy breakfast whenever possible.

Very few of us now make and eat breakfast at home every day. Time in the morning is precious and cooking breakfast at home is often reserved for the weekend. To increase our odds of fitting in a healthy breakfast each morning, most of us now rely on the restaurants and eateries close to our office to provide us with healthy options. As I’m sure you know, it’s not always easy to find what we are looking for.

How to choose a healthy breakfast.

The words ‘healthy’, ‘organic’ and ‘low-sugar/fat’ now feature on so many food items that it’s often difficult to determine a great- from a not-so-great option. Nutrition and health can be a confusing terrain to navigate. Finding set nutritional rules or guidelines that apply to everyone is challenging. For health-conscious individuals, looking and feeling great are typically the reason behind most of the food choices we make. With this in mind, there are at least several important factors to consider when choosing a healthy breakfast.

photo credit – www.pure.co.uk/menus/breakfast/

Choose higher-protein breakfasts.

You will notice that all of our favourite ‘Healthy City Breakfast’ options are higher in protein. It is not essential that your breakfast provides large quantities of protein, as the total amount of protein you consume across your day is more important than how much you are averaging during each meal. However, if building or maintaining muscle tissue is part of your fitness goal it can be challenging to achieve your daily protein requirements if one of your meals is low in protein.

As well as supporting and repairing muscle tissue, we advise that our trainees choose a high-protein breakfast because this will help to increase early feelings of satiety (fullness). Working towards your daily protein requirements at breakfast makes it easier to achieve targets by the end of the day.

Choose higher fibre breakfasts

Speed is often a priority when buying and eating breakfast in the city. As a result, many reach for yogurts, smoothies or shakes. This may be a convenient option and one that ensures you can at least find time to eat something before work. However, fibre also significantly improves satiety, works miracles controlling your blood sugar and helps to sustain your energy levels through the morning. As a side note, the benefits that various companies use as a marketing tool regarding “sustainable sources of energy” are often due to the fibre content within the breakfast product.

We prefer that our trainees add spinach and peppers (for example) to their morning omelette, and choose ‘overnight oats’ (for example) instead of yogurts or shakes where possible. Adding a generous portion of fibre to your breakfast has a variety of health benefits.

Watch-out for excessive healthy fats.

All but gone are the days when we believed that fat was bad for us. Fat is back and popular among the health-conscious, especially on local breakfast menus. One of the most popular breakfast dishes in restaurants catering to the health-conscious is egg with avocado. If great quality, the fats in both eggs and avocados are fantastic for your health. However, we have to be careful not to consume too much of a good thing! At 9-calories per gram of fat, high-fat foods are by far the most calorically dense and are some of the most likely to cause over consumption. This may hinder your efforts to maintain a lean, healthy body.

If the restaurant cooks your eggs in butter, then butters the rye toast beneath your smashed avocado, you are likely consuming a deceptively high amount of energy (kcals) for the relatively small portion in front of you. We prefer that our trainees use these higher-fat foods more sparingly. We encourage the consumption of high-quality eggs, avocados, oils and nuts but always suggest that these food items be eaten with an understanding of the potential for overconsumption. Many trip at this hurdle. There are more [interesting] options for a high-protein breakfast than eggs! In fact, many of our trainees are pleased to learn they are not stuck with eggs every morning for the entirety of their training programme.