Healthy Eating / Self Care / Self-Care

The quick-fix breakfast ideas every working woman needs

. 2 min read . Written by Shobhna Deepak
The quick-fix breakfast ideas every working woman needs

Priorities, time constraints, deadlines – all of these are excuses we give for our irregular and unhealthy eating habits. It all starts when we skip our breakfast.

I too was starting my day without giving my body any nourishment. But you realise your folly when your tummy embarrasses you by rumbling loud and clear right in the middle of an important meeting. So, I figured it’s best to find quick fixes for a healthy breakfast.

My family played the role of designated guinea pigs and suffered through my morning experiments. Turns out, having more than one chef in the kitchen doesn’t necessarily spoil the meal!

My family became more involved, now that they were at the receiving end. They took interest in the ingredients and gave ideas to better the taste. It became a fun family activity every morning and we ended up enjoying breakfast more than we ever did.

Here are four tips which will make sure you never miss breakfast again.

The blender is your best friend

It takes time to consume a big bowl of fruit salad with yoghurt. But what if you could blend them into a large mug! So, I just started cutting different fruits and blending it with yoghurt.

On days when I needed a sweeter drink, I would add honey. The days I needed a change I would add dry fruits or pumpkin/watermelon/flax seeds, even soaked basil seeds to the blend. This multi-nutrient treat turned out to be the quickest intro to a healthy lifestyle!

Avoid sugar, add fruit

Anyone with a sweet tooth like mine will know how bland life feels without sugar. But your journey to health begins by giving up sugar.

It’s easier to make the transition if you can find a healthy alternative to it. I absolutely love pancakes for breakfast, and they are extremely quick to prepare and consume. With just two minor replacements to the pancakes, I could turn them into a healthy meal.

  • I replaced processed flour (maida) with Oats/Ragi/Sattu flour
  • I replaced sugar with ripe bananas/mangoes/dates or figs.
  • I added eggs or replaced them with flax seed powder.

This became my all-time sweet fix, high on fibre with natural sweeteners which energised me for the day!

Prep a multipurpose batter

This one is open to individual food choices, creativity and experiments. You can add anything and everything on your kitchen shelf to this recipe.

  • Soak a combination of various whole lentils (can be soaked and sprouted to make it even healthier) with different unpolished grains (rice/barley) overnight.
  • Blend it the next morning with spices of your choice.
  • You can choose a unique combination every night to make it interesting.
  • You could add grated/mashed veggies of your choice for a change.
  • Cook it like pancakes or dosas.
  • Blend it over the weekend and use it through the week – if refrigerated, the batter will last for days.

Read your labels

I ended up buying a lot of ready-to-eat ingredients to aid my quick fix preparations. When I read the labels, it came as a shocker that most of the ingredients were not what I expected them to be. For the longest time I believed we were using the ‘all-natural peanut butter’; it was only later that I understood that most brands sold peanut butter with vegetable oil – they extracted the groundnut oil and sold that separately at a higher cost!

Since then, I make sure I read the ingredients listed on packaged goods, just so I don’t get carried away by the white lies of smart marketers.