The proverb, ‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper’ is often quoted by many. However, it is often discarded to be an old wives tale.
With hectic schedules each morning, breakfast usually tends to fall low on our priority list. To resolve this, we bring you quick and healthy breakfast recipes that will help you kick start your day.
The desire to lose weight is also cited as an excuse to skip breakfast by weight watchers. This, however, is completely untrue and in fact can backfire drastically. It is, therefore, important to opt for well-balanced diet that help in weight loss for your breakfast.
Breaking The Fast ?
Breakfast is an important meal of the day, and this has been proved time and again. Breakfast in the literal sense means, ‘Breaking The Fast’. There is a good 10 to 12 hours gap since last night dinner.
During this lengthy fasting period, our body tends to store energy as fat reserves and utilizes them later as and when required. Skipping breakfast prolongs this fast to 16 or more hours.
First Fuel For The Day
Breakfast provides our body and mind with the necessary fuel after an overnight fast. As per nutritionists, one should have breakfast within two hours of waking.
The sugar levels required to power our body and brain is quite low, and only a good meal can replenish it. Our metabolic needs are comparatively higher during the start of the day and healthy breakfast helps in boosting metabolism.
Our body tends to tap on energy reserves – including what’s stored in our muscles. By mid-day, the intense hunger and low sugar levels lead to a strong yearning for sugar or fatty food.
Ultimately, you feel lethargic and drained out and to make up for your missed calories; you consume more by snacking in between or having a substantial lunch; neither of which is good for weight loss.
Or you can also consume light food like upma, dosa, idli for weight loss.
Necessities Of A Healthy Breakfast For Weight Loss
What exactly constitutes to be a healthy and ideal breakfast for losing weight? A healthy breakfast consists of the following:
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Whole Grains:
Broken Wheat, Brown Oats, whole wheat bread, Ragi, Jowar flakes, Bagels, bran muffins, cereals, whole grain rolls, oats, etc. can be included in the whole grains section.
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Lean Protein:
You can get lean protein from fish, lean meat or poultry. Incase, you are a vegetarian, you can go for low-fat milk, peanut butter, low-fat milk, tofu, low-fat cheese, soy products, dals and pulses.
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Low-Fat Dairy:
Low fat or skimmed milk, low-fat yogurt, natural or low fat cheeses, etc.
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Fruits And Vegetables:
Fresh vegetables and fruits should always be preferred over frozen ones and juices. However, if you want to have juices, you can go for 100% natural juices that have no added preservatives or sweeteners.
When put together, these food categories provide complete nutrition. They include carbohydrates, fiber, protein and a little amount of fat.
Healthy Breakfast Recipes For Weight Loss
Munching just anything for breakfast will not suffice the purpose. It is, therefore, essential to plan your breakfast each day, especially for those looking to lose weight.
A healthy and well-balanced meal should consist of carbohydrates for energy, proteins for muscle building and fiber for enhanced metabolism.
Listed below are some of the best Indian breakfast diet recipes like oats upma, rava dosa, lemon oats, idli for weight loss. These recipes not only get you leaner but also help you lose weight rapidly.
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Lemon Oats:
Lemon Oats is easiest oats recipe compared to other oats breakfast recipes.
Ingredients:
- Oats – 1 cup (dry roasted)
- Water – 3/4 cup
- Lemon juice – 1 1/4 Tbsp.
- Salt to taste
- Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp
- Peanuts – fistful (roasted)
For Seasoning:
- Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
- Oil – 2 tsps.
- Bengal gram – 1 1/2 tsps.
- Green chilies – 2
- Red chilies – 1
- Asafoetida – 1/4 tsp
- Split gram dal – 1 tsp
- Curry leaves – 1 sprig
The Making:
In a pan, heat the oil and add mustard seeds. Once the seeds begin to splutter, combine the dals and fry till it turns light red. Now add asafoetida, curry leaves, green chilies, and red chilies, turmeric powder and mix well.
Add salt and water and bring the water to a boil. Once the water boils, add oats and cook for 4 min. Combine lemon juice and cook for another 2 minutes. Finally, garnish with peanuts and serve warm with pickle or yogurt.
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Appam:
Appam is a spongy pancake which is made with fermented raw rice and coconut batter.
Ingredients:
- Raw Rice – 2 cups
- Cooked rice – Handful
- Yeast – 1/2 spoon
- Shredded coconut – handful
- Sugar – 2-3 tsp
- S:alf to taste
Method:
Wash the raw rice and soak it in water for 2 hours. Later grind it along with coconut until smooth. To this, add the cooked rice and grind everything well.
After adding salt, sugar and yeast and mixing well, let it ferment overnight. Make use of appam kal and make appam. Serve it hot with any kurma or with sweetened coconut milk.
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Rava Dosa:
Rava recipes weight loss works magically and Rava dosa is a simple and easy and healthy south Indian breakfast recipe.
Ingredients:
- Rava/semolina- 2 cups
- Rice flour- ½ cup
- Maida – ½ cup
- Water – 6 cups (app.)
- Green chilies – 2
- Ginger- 1 tsp
- Salt to taste
The Making:
For the dosa batter, combine all the above ingredients in a bowl. Keep aside this mixture for an hour. At the time of making dosa, bring the rava dosa batter to pouring consistency.
Pre-heat the tawa for a minute and pour the ladle full of rava dosa batter onto it. Pour some oil along the edge of dosa and wait till it reaches light golden brown in color. Serve hot with sambar or chutney.
If rava dosa is little tedious to prepare you can raise a question is rava upma good for weight loss? Yes, rava upma is healthy and easy to prepare.
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Oats Upma:
oats upma for weight loss, is a healthy and easy to make the recipe. To increase the nutrition quotient, we can add mixed vegetables we like. Let us see how to make this wonderful recipe.
Ingredients:
- Oats – 1 cup
- Mixed vegetables – 1 cup
- Onion- 1
- Ginger – 1 tsp
- Green chilies – 2
- Turmeric powder- 1/2 tsp
- Water – 1 cup
For Seasoning:
- Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
- Cashew nuts – 4-5
- Curry leaves – 1 sprig
- Oil – 4 tsps.
Method:
In a pan, add oil and heat it. Add the mustard seeds and let them splutter. Now add onion, ginger, green chilies, curry leaves and saute well. Then add turmeric powder, salt and sauté for 4 minutes.
Then add the mixed vegetables and sauté for 2 minutes. Now add water and bring to a boil. It may take 5 minutes. Combine the dry roasted oats to the boiling water and mix well and cook up to 3 minutes.
Garnish and serve warm. Oats upma for weight loss, a healthy and yummy recipie too.
Some qustions arise regarding rava as, is rava upma good for weight loss. Even it is good for health
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Phulka:
Phulka is a flatbread made with wheat flour.
Ingredients:
- Wheat flour: 2 cups
- Water – 3/4 cup (app.)
- Salt – ½ tsp
Method:
Mix wheat flour and salt in a bowl. Pour a little water and knead it to form a soft dough. Let the dough rest for at least 15 minutes. Make small balls outs of dough and roll out each of them into thin disks.
Meanwhile, heat the two and once it is hot, cook the roti on it. Reverse and cook on the other side as well. You can make use of phulkari stand if you are not comfortable with tongs. Serve it hot with any kind curry.
So the bottom line is that the breakfast is a must and should not be excluded from your meals.
It helps you curb your hunger, revives your metabolic rate and helps you lose more calories thus, resulting in quicker and healthier weight loss.Have a strong and Healthy Breakfast Recipes For Weight Loss
Hope you find the above weight loss breakfast ideas beneficial. You could share with us your weight loss recipes in the comments below.