Jeremiah Farias (00:00.138)
Breakfast is an important meal for a variety of reasons. And today we’ll review how to create the best breakfast if you have diabetes or you’re just looking to optimize your blood sugar health. We’ll also look at five examples of balanced breakfast that you can start adding to your mornings. Hi, my name is Jeremiah Farias. I’m a functional registered dietitian and I help adults get to the root of their blood sugar issues, conditions like diabetes and pre -diabetes, using a bio -energetic approach to optimize cellular energy production.

this channel, I dive into the science and mechanisms behind optimizing health and blood sugar metabolism while also providing you with practical takeaways. I hope you enjoy today’s content. To eat or not to eat breakfast is a controversial topic which is why I created a previous video answering the question should those with diabetes skip breakfast or follow intermittent fasting. You can check out that video after you’re done with this one.

But as you can imagine, I do believe we should eat breakfast. And here are three reasons why I believe we should eat breakfast. The first one has to do with eating a balanced breakfast is going to lower counter regulatory or stress hormones that are elevated in a fasted state. So these are hormones like cortisol, glugan, and adrenaline. And by chronic relying on these hormones to meet energy or glucose demands of the body, it comes with consequences. And I’ve covered those in previous videos. The second reason is having breakfast.

is going to provide more opportunities to meet our caloric, macronutrient, and micronutrient needs. And those are all important in optimizing our overall health. And the third reason is because we are meeting our body’s caloric, macro, and micronutrient needs, we’re less likely to experience cravings for sugar. We’re also less likely to experience health conditions that come as a result of not nourishing or sufficiently nourishing our bodies. Before we dive into some examples of breakfasts, let’s talk about how to create a balanced breakfast.

In a previous video, I highlighted the importance of having balanced meals. Having a balanced meal is going to reduce the likelihood of one experiencing a spike in blood sugar. A balanced meal will contain a high quality protein source, a whole food carbohydrate, a fat source, and possibly a non -starchy vegetable. In the description, I’ll link to some previous videos where I review examples of high quality protein sources, whole food carbohydrate sources, and fat sources.

Jeremiah Farias (02:09.294)
So we briefly reviewed what we want a balanced meal to contain and the benefits that having balanced meals provide as it relates to blood sugar stability. In a moment, we’ll look at five examples of breakfast that you can add to your diet. But before we look at those examples, I’m curious, are you someone who eats breakfast or skips breakfast? And if you do eat breakfast, what do you typically have for breakfast? Let me know down in the comments. Now let’s jump into the five balanced breakfast ideas. So the software that we’ll be using when looking at these meals is called Chronometer.

It’s a free app that you can download on your smartphone and you can pull it up on your desktop. And that’s how I’m looking at it right now on my desktop. And the first meal we’re gonna look at is a ham, spinach, and cheese omelet with a couple of oranges for carbohydrates. This meal, as you can see, provides you with 38 grams of protein, a similar amount of carbohydrates, and about 28 grams of fat. Protein -wise, you’re getting that primarily from the eggs, the ham, and the cheddar cheese, and then carbohydrates, as I mentioned.

primarily the oranges and then fat. That’s coming from a variety of things, but the cheese, eggs, butter, the ham. And you can make a variety of changes to this meal to reduce the fat. You can change the meat and of course you can change the vegetable. I just use spinach in this example. The next meal is a very easy meal consisting of cottage cheese and some fruit. And the portions for this meal can also be reduced and you can use this as a snack. This is one of two breakfasts that do not include a serving of vegetables, which…

I argue is not a problem, but you can feel free to of course add vegetables. Cottage cheese is gonna give you around 33 grams of protein. You’re also gonna be getting about 35 grams of carbohydrates and 12, 13 grams of fat. You can easily substitute the cantaloupe, the melon for another fruit or carbohydrate source that you prefer. If you notice you get hungry less than three hours after having this meal, it might be due to not having enough fat. So,

you can then make some adjustments to this meal, adding some macadamia nuts to increase the fat content to add more satiety. The third meal we’ll look at is similar to the second, where we’re relying on a high protein dairy. This time it’s Greek yogurt. Again, the protein at this meal is around 33 grams. Carbohydrates from the fruit and the honey are going to be giving us around 42 grams, and fat is at 15 grams. And,

Jeremiah Farias (04:30.702)
I use full fat yogurt, otherwise the fat would likely be too low and result in hunger quickly after the meal. And for some, the fat may in fact still be too low. As I mentioned in the previous meal, feel free to add some fat like macadamia nuts or macadamia nut butter. You may wonder if those with diabetes should use honey. And based on the literature, it appears that honey can actually have anti -diabetic effects. Therefore, I think if one is using a conservative serving of

honey, just being wise with it, pairing it with sufficient protein and monitoring their glucose to assess tolerance, there’s no issue and instead you can actually benefit. The fourth breakfast example is breakfast sausage where I use ground beef as the protein source along with some sauteed sweet potatoes and zucchini. You can use another meat to make the breakfast sausage. You can exchange the zucchini for another non -starchy vegetable and you can even use regular potatoes instead of sweet potatoes. With this meal you’re getting around 36 grams of protein.

43 grams of carbohydrates and around 19 grams of fat. As you’re probably noticing, you can make a number of modifications to any of these meals based on your palate. The fifth and final breakfast example is a butternut squash hash. I used again ground beef for the breakfast sausage with spinach, butternut squash, and a couple of eggs. There are again many items you can exchange. If you don’t like butternut squash, you can use a potato.

sweet potato. This meal you’re getting around 32 grams of protein, 35 grams of carbohydrates, and 21 grams of fat. You may have noticed that a lot of the meals that we reviewed have a similar amount of carbohydrates as they do protein. So it’s close to a one -to -one ratio. If you’re having around 30 grams of protein, it was close to 30 -35 grams of carbohydrates. I’m by no means saying that this is an ideal ratio. It could be a very helpful ratio for people to start with.

and then they can slowly increase the amount of carbohydrates that they’re having relative to protein over that one to one ratio. Many that I work with come to me after following low carbohydrate or ketogenic diets for an extended period of time. And with these individuals, we actually slowly increase carbohydrates. This can be anywhere from 15, 20, 25 grams of carbohydrates at a time. And we spend about a week there. And this is going to allow the body to up -regulate glucose metabolism processes,

Jeremiah Farias (06:52.75)
and to not overstress the body. Depending where you’re at with your carbohydrate intake, the amount of carbohydrates that are included in these meals might be a bit too high. Now, if you historically have been having, let’s say at breakfast, around five to 10 grams of carbohydrates, then jumping to 40 might be a bit too much. You might want to increase by another five to 10 grams and slowly increase each meal by around five to 10 grams.

stay there for a week, and then again, continue that process until you find the amount of carbohydrates that you need per meal and overall in the day to meet your body’s needs and to feel your best. If this process sounds a bit overwhelming to you, I completely understand. This is why I work with people one -on -one, not only to guide them in identifying what their root causes of their diabetes or blood sugar dysregulation issues are, but to also help them begin incrementally.

implementing diet and lifestyle changes. Additionally, since the diagnosis of diabetes or pre -diabetes, your doctor may have told you that you need to make changes or improve your diet. However, you’re not sure what improving your diet means. Maybe the internet or other health professionals have told you that means watching your portions, drinking more water, cutting out carbohydrates. Maybe this is cutting out eggs, red meat, or all animal products altogether and following a vegan, vegetarian, plant -based diet.

I’m here to tell you, you don’t need to do any of those things. If you’re interested in working with me to truly reverse your type 2 diabetes, pre -diabetes or other blood sugar dysregulation issues, you can schedule a free 30 minute discovery call with me. In it, I’ll go over how I can help you reach your absolute best health. The link for that will be down in the description below. You should now have a better idea of how to structure the best breakfast for diabetes and overall blood sugar stability. I created a free guide that goes along with this video. In this guide, you have the breakfast examples that we reviewed.

but also examples of the macronutrients that I argue we should be prioritizing and use to construct balanced meals. You can get that guide in the description below. The software that I was using to review the meals is called Chronometer. And what I really like about Chronometer, it’s why I use it with all the clients that I work with, is it gives you not only the macronutrients, protein, carbs, and fats in your meals, but it also gives you vitamins and minerals, the micronutrients. And micronutrients are responsible for running our metabolism.

Jeremiah Farias (09:09.55)
turning things like glucose and fats into energy, cellular energy ATP. And I created a previous video that I’ll link to at the end that goes over four crucial nutrients, vitamins and minerals, for diabetes or for those with diabetes. I think you’ll really enjoy it. If you enjoyed today’s video, please hit that like button, subscribe and turn on notifications so you don’t miss any future videos. Take care and I’ll see you next week.