Probably the biggest single thing you can do (if you aren’t doing it already). It took me till my junior year of high school to realize that feeling exhausted and light-headed till lunch isn’t normal.
I find that I do not want to eat until at least an hour after waking up in the morning, and if I do anyway, it doesn’t settle properly in my stomach or something and I feel sort of nauseated until midafternoon.
On the other hand, I find that if I don’t eat shortly after waking up I’m unlikely to remember to eat at all for the rest of the day unless something prompts me to do so, which tends to result in further difficulties the following day when I’m ravenous and can’t think straight. If I do eat within an hour or so of waking up, I’m much more likely to notice hunger-signals for the rest of the day.
I’ve always had the same problem, which is why I went that long without eating breakfast in the first place. Eating a small amount of something liquid-ish like a fruit smoothie or oatmeal/fine cereal makes a big difference.
Hmm… I usually don’t feel awake enough in the early morning to make a smoothie. I’ve tried oatmeal and didn’t find that I reacted any differently to it than to solid breakfasts eaten too early. Perhaps I should just drink juice or something? Might that do the trick?
Depending on where you are and what your schedule is like in the morning, you could also bring along something portable (granola bar, fruit, boiled egg as jimrandomh suggests) and eat it whenever your stomach is ready for it.
I leave the house once a week, and don’t need to get up at any particular time in the morning. I do eat once I want food—the question is whether I’m depriving myself of some of the value of breakfast by waiting as long as that takes.
Ok. I ask in part because it took me a while to recognize the (in retrospect quite strong and obvious) correlation between not leaving my apartment for > 24 hours and serious negative effects on my emotional state. Internet based social interaction did not alleviate the negative effects for me.
Ah, got it. Not knowing that is why I’d refrained from making that suggestion in the first place; I figured other commenters knew something I didn’t. :)
My suspicion is that you’re fine, unless you’re doing some severely energy-intensive tasks in between getting up and feeling hungry.
I usually don’t feel awake enough in the early morning to make a smoothie
Make it in advance and refrigerate. If it has too short a shelf life for that, experiment with recipes and/or storage conditions until you find one that lasts long enough. I had the same issue with making eggs, until I realized that they have a pretty long shelf life when boiled and it was stupid to let laziness affect my diet when I could just make two batches per week in the evenings and have a constant supply.
I don’t think there are any storage conditions that would let a smoothie the way I make them last that long. I like them with equal parts ice, frozen fruit, and fresh fruit, plus a dollop of yogurt and three good squirts of agave—all of which items are stored at a variety of temperatures. It’d freeze solid in the freezer, melt in the fridge, and lose texture in a thermos.
Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be simplified all the way down to zero preparation. What if you premixed two containers, one frozen and the other refrigerated, so that only one mixing and one blending step had to be done in the morning? For maximum simplicity, one of those containers could be a piece of the blender itself.
I’m pretty sure that a puree of ice and frozen banana (or whatever) would freeze solid in the freezer overnight, and not be amenable to blending in the morning with the other ingredients. (Also, I use a stick blender.)
Actually, boiled eggs have a shorter shelf-life than raw eggs. Raw eggs can last for weeks—even a couple of months—so long as they stay in the same cool temperature. Boiled eggs will last 4-6 days tops, in my experience. They get slimy, then rot.
I didn’t mean to imply that boiling increased their shelf life; rather, boiling in advance is necessary to make them convenient enough to have for breakfast, and the shortened shelf life is still long enough for that purpose. (The 4-6 day range agrees with my experience, hence two batches per week.)
I just make a couple of fried eggs for breakfast usually. Takes less than 5 minutes and can be done in parallel with making my morning cup of tea. Advance preparation looks like overkill to me—why not just get up 3 minutes earlier?
We had chickens for a while before they were all murdered by a mink. A freshly-laid egg would last 3 months in a constant temperature. A fiend of mine keeps his eggs on the counter. He lives in a country with a hot climate, and his eggs last for weeks and weeks, too. I think it’s amazing : )
To go bad, it has to undergo processes which make it go bad. For most food, the primary ones are consumption by microbes—bacteria or yeast, typically. Eggs are pretty good at keeping these out.
I’ve heard that as an egg sits, the yolk slowly descends and as soon as the yolk sits against the shell, it’ll go bad. If you keep turning the eggs every week or so, they’ll keep for months even at room temperature. I’ve never tested this, but someone I know found that eggs could last at least 8 weeks this way.
This is the Mother Earth News study that often comes up on Google that fertile eggs, and possibly infertile eggs, could keep as long as 7 months if you refrigerate them and don’t wash off their natural coating.
Actually, boiled eggs have a shorter shelf-life than raw eggs. Raw eggs can last for weeks—even a couple of months—so long as they stay in the same cool temperature. Boiled eggs will last 4-6 days tops, in my experience. They get slimy, then rot.
You could try ultra-fine oats. I make a drink thing with them and some fruit juice, and it only takes some shaking if you can cope with that first thing. Maybe cooking makes a difference?
I’ve been mean to make some of my own, when I’ve got my own place.
Or palatinose, but that is more expensive. Unsure of US suppliers.
I am aware of that (except that I suspect I dislike bottled water at least in part because of something leaching out of the plastic). However, there is a correlation between packaging and certain food types, and I’ve trained myself to steer away from the type that is indicated by those pouches.
Edit: I am puzzled by downvotes to this comment. Is it off topic? Are my packaging neuroses bothering someone?
Odd, I hadn’t come across this type of packaging before that website.
Different social conventions? Seriously all that packaging says to me is bulk purchase of goods from website where packaging isn’t really compared to others on the shelf, so no incentive for people to make it fancy to signal worth.
The package is opaque and apparently airtight plastic. This rarely corresponds with food I prefer to eat: if it’s opaque, it should be metal or paper, and if it’s plastic, it should let me see the food, or at least have a photorealistic picture of the food on it. I can override this preference if I want to, especially if I’m familiar with the food, but it makes me uncomfortable (I got slightly weirded out by buying Hood milk last week, which came in an opaque plastic container). I just went down my grocery list and expect to get everything on it in packages that meet these constraints, with the possible exception of milk (I might get Hood again) and the non-diastatic malt powder, which I have no idea how it comes but I’m informed by the Internet that I need it to make bagels.
Since most of the products on the website a colourless powder of one variety or another having pictures of them are not very illuminating. Like a picture of sugar doesn’t help you figure out whether it is sugar or salt. It is a website for people into sports that care about the precise chemicals they ingest, which visual inspection means very little.
Feel free to be weirded out about it, it is a little weird. The question is, is it a bad idea. Would you convince me to not buy it?
No, I wouldn’t convince you not to buy it. They’re my snobbish food heuristics, not yours; only me and the people I cook for need live with them. But all my food-related algorithms together are, I’m told, doing something right...
Out of curiousity, If they came in pill form would the same heuristics kick in?
I suppose I am trying to say I wouldn’t eat the stuff for pleasure, but because it gives me nutrients in a convenient form I stick it in the same category as vitamins.
If they came in pill form, then no, the opaque plastic would not be problematic. I prefer to avoid taking vast arrays of pills, though. I take iron because when I didn’t I was so anemic that I ought to have been fainting on a daily basis, and I take vitamin D because my M.D. uncle said I should; that’s all. But pills don’t take up space that I use for enjoyable food. I love food! I don’t want to replace it with displeasing things.
Ever since I bore a child, I’ve been more-or-less unable to stomach food until 9 am. Even weak tea. (Might be psychological, for all I know.) Yet recently, I tried tea with two pieces of lozenge-like candy, and it worked.
I have the same problem but it seems to mostly apply to larger meals and certain types of food. I don’t know how well this will work for others but I found that a single protein/breakfast bar usually works ok.
I can drink juice without a problem—this is usually what I do if I need to bolt out the door soon after waking and don’t anticipate having a chance to eat anytime soon, so I can get some calories into me.
Breakfast. Discuss:
Probably the biggest single thing you can do (if you aren’t doing it already). It took me till my junior year of high school to realize that feeling exhausted and light-headed till lunch isn’t normal.
I find that I do not want to eat until at least an hour after waking up in the morning, and if I do anyway, it doesn’t settle properly in my stomach or something and I feel sort of nauseated until midafternoon.
On the other hand, I find that if I don’t eat shortly after waking up I’m unlikely to remember to eat at all for the rest of the day unless something prompts me to do so, which tends to result in further difficulties the following day when I’m ravenous and can’t think straight. If I do eat within an hour or so of waking up, I’m much more likely to notice hunger-signals for the rest of the day.
I’ve always had the same problem, which is why I went that long without eating breakfast in the first place. Eating a small amount of something liquid-ish like a fruit smoothie or oatmeal/fine cereal makes a big difference.
Hmm… I usually don’t feel awake enough in the early morning to make a smoothie. I’ve tried oatmeal and didn’t find that I reacted any differently to it than to solid breakfasts eaten too early. Perhaps I should just drink juice or something? Might that do the trick?
Depending on where you are and what your schedule is like in the morning, you could also bring along something portable (granola bar, fruit, boiled egg as jimrandomh suggests) and eat it whenever your stomach is ready for it.
I leave the house once a week, and don’t need to get up at any particular time in the morning. I do eat once I want food—the question is whether I’m depriving myself of some of the value of breakfast by waiting as long as that takes.
This seems a strangely hermit-like lifestyle for a self-professed extrovert. Does this not affect your happiness?
The Internet “counts” for me as far as my dose of social interaction. Also, I have roommates.
Ok. I ask in part because it took me a while to recognize the (in retrospect quite strong and obvious) correlation between not leaving my apartment for > 24 hours and serious negative effects on my emotional state. Internet based social interaction did not alleviate the negative effects for me.
Ah, got it. Not knowing that is why I’d refrained from making that suggestion in the first place; I figured other commenters knew something I didn’t. :)
My suspicion is that you’re fine, unless you’re doing some severely energy-intensive tasks in between getting up and feeling hungry.
Make it in advance and refrigerate. If it has too short a shelf life for that, experiment with recipes and/or storage conditions until you find one that lasts long enough. I had the same issue with making eggs, until I realized that they have a pretty long shelf life when boiled and it was stupid to let laziness affect my diet when I could just make two batches per week in the evenings and have a constant supply.
I don’t think there are any storage conditions that would let a smoothie the way I make them last that long. I like them with equal parts ice, frozen fruit, and fresh fruit, plus a dollop of yogurt and three good squirts of agave—all of which items are stored at a variety of temperatures. It’d freeze solid in the freezer, melt in the fridge, and lose texture in a thermos.
Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be simplified all the way down to zero preparation. What if you premixed two containers, one frozen and the other refrigerated, so that only one mixing and one blending step had to be done in the morning? For maximum simplicity, one of those containers could be a piece of the blender itself.
I’m pretty sure that a puree of ice and frozen banana (or whatever) would freeze solid in the freezer overnight, and not be amenable to blending in the morning with the other ingredients. (Also, I use a stick blender.)
Boiled eggs have a shorter shelf-life than raw eggs (4-6 days tops). Raw eggs can last for weeks, if the temperature is stable.
Actually, boiled eggs have a shorter shelf-life than raw eggs. Raw eggs can last for weeks—even a couple of months—so long as they stay in the same cool temperature. Boiled eggs will last 4-6 days tops, in my experience. They get slimy, then rot.
I didn’t mean to imply that boiling increased their shelf life; rather, boiling in advance is necessary to make them convenient enough to have for breakfast, and the shortened shelf life is still long enough for that purpose. (The 4-6 day range agrees with my experience, hence two batches per week.)
I just make a couple of fried eggs for breakfast usually. Takes less than 5 minutes and can be done in parallel with making my morning cup of tea. Advance preparation looks like overkill to me—why not just get up 3 minutes earlier?
We had chickens for a while before they were all murdered by a mink. A freshly-laid egg would last 3 months in a constant temperature. A fiend of mine keeps his eggs on the counter. He lives in a country with a hot climate, and his eggs last for weeks and weeks, too. I think it’s amazing : )
An egg has to be able to stay fresh while a chick is developing in it.-- about 3 weeks, and the hen will be keeping it quite warm.
It’s amazing that something which isn’t alive, and is full of fat and protein and water doesn’t go bad in that time.
To go bad, it has to undergo processes which make it go bad. For most food, the primary ones are consumption by microbes—bacteria or yeast, typically. Eggs are pretty good at keeping these out.
I’ve heard that as an egg sits, the yolk slowly descends and as soon as the yolk sits against the shell, it’ll go bad. If you keep turning the eggs every week or so, they’ll keep for months even at room temperature. I’ve never tested this, but someone I know found that eggs could last at least 8 weeks this way.
This is the Mother Earth News study that often comes up on Google that fertile eggs, and possibly infertile eggs, could keep as long as 7 months if you refrigerate them and don’t wash off their natural coating.
Actually, boiled eggs have a shorter shelf-life than raw eggs. Raw eggs can last for weeks—even a couple of months—so long as they stay in the same cool temperature. Boiled eggs will last 4-6 days tops, in my experience. They get slimy, then rot.
You could try ultra-fine oats. I make a drink thing with them and some fruit juice, and it only takes some shaking if you can cope with that first thing. Maybe cooking makes a difference?
I’ve been mean to make some of my own, when I’ve got my own place.
Or palatinose, but that is more expensive. Unsure of US suppliers.
Those pouches make my snobby food heuristics scream.
Food is just a mixture of chemicals of one variety or another… their containers have no causal power on the nature of the chemicals.
I am aware of that (except that I suspect I dislike bottled water at least in part because of something leaching out of the plastic). However, there is a correlation between packaging and certain food types, and I’ve trained myself to steer away from the type that is indicated by those pouches.
Edit: I am puzzled by downvotes to this comment. Is it off topic? Are my packaging neuroses bothering someone?
Odd, I hadn’t come across this type of packaging before that website.
Different social conventions? Seriously all that packaging says to me is bulk purchase of goods from website where packaging isn’t really compared to others on the shelf, so no incentive for people to make it fancy to signal worth.
The package is opaque and apparently airtight plastic. This rarely corresponds with food I prefer to eat: if it’s opaque, it should be metal or paper, and if it’s plastic, it should let me see the food, or at least have a photorealistic picture of the food on it. I can override this preference if I want to, especially if I’m familiar with the food, but it makes me uncomfortable (I got slightly weirded out by buying Hood milk last week, which came in an opaque plastic container). I just went down my grocery list and expect to get everything on it in packages that meet these constraints, with the possible exception of milk (I might get Hood again) and the non-diastatic malt powder, which I have no idea how it comes but I’m informed by the Internet that I need it to make bagels.
This is a cultural bias that Hood is trying to fight. Light damages milk, but the public wants to see their milk when it’s sold in plastic.
What damage does light do to milk?
It damages both nutrition and flavor. article
Since most of the products on the website a colourless powder of one variety or another having pictures of them are not very illuminating. Like a picture of sugar doesn’t help you figure out whether it is sugar or salt. It is a website for people into sports that care about the precise chemicals they ingest, which visual inspection means very little.
Feel free to be weirded out about it, it is a little weird. The question is, is it a bad idea. Would you convince me to not buy it?
No, I wouldn’t convince you not to buy it. They’re my snobbish food heuristics, not yours; only me and the people I cook for need live with them. But all my food-related algorithms together are, I’m told, doing something right...
Out of curiousity, If they came in pill form would the same heuristics kick in?
I suppose I am trying to say I wouldn’t eat the stuff for pleasure, but because it gives me nutrients in a convenient form I stick it in the same category as vitamins.
If they came in pill form, then no, the opaque plastic would not be problematic. I prefer to avoid taking vast arrays of pills, though. I take iron because when I didn’t I was so anemic that I ought to have been fainting on a daily basis, and I take vitamin D because my M.D. uncle said I should; that’s all. But pills don’t take up space that I use for enjoyable food. I love food! I don’t want to replace it with displeasing things.
Ever since I bore a child, I’ve been more-or-less unable to stomach food until 9 am. Even weak tea. (Might be psychological, for all I know.) Yet recently, I tried tea with two pieces of lozenge-like candy, and it worked.
I have the same problem but it seems to mostly apply to larger meals and certain types of food. I don’t know how well this will work for others but I found that a single protein/breakfast bar usually works ok.
I can drink juice without a problem—this is usually what I do if I need to bolt out the door soon after waking and don’t anticipate having a chance to eat anytime soon, so I can get some calories into me.
Not just carbohydrates. Fat and protein.