Brekkie

Breakfast is without a doubt the most important meal of the day. I have decided that Wednesday morning breakfast should be my biggest challenge of the week and this week am heading off for a networking breakfast at Shangri La Hotel, which is to become part of my regular schedule.

As a guest to the breakfast last week I was challenged to find healthy choices that would set me up for the day ahead amongst the buffet fare that is provided by the hotel.

But it CAN be done.

When travelling for business this is no doubt a challenge that you will encounter often, and it's good to have a few basic ground rules to keep you on track.

1. Choose the food that looks as close to its natural packaging as possible. Freshly cut fruit, boiled or poached eggs, grilled tomato, cold cuts of lean turkey, or roast beef or lamb.

2. If cereal is what you're after then look for one that is likely to have a higher nutritional quality such as a museli containing a variety of nuts and grains. Stay away from generic type puffed rice and corn flakes - these won't sustain you for the morning and you may find yourself reaching for a high energy, high fat snack before morning tea.

3. Don't eat the fried stuff! For whatever reason hotels think that the more fat something has at breakfast the better. This is not true. Stay away from the fried eggs, fried bacon, sausages, hashbrowns, pancakes, waffles etc. These are not breakfast foods and they will load you up with unecessary calories with low nutritional value. I looked a clieint's food diary last week to discover that buffet supplied food for breakfast blew their calorie count out to almost 1,000 and that was just for breakfast!!!

4. Keep it simple and control your portion size. Your stomach is small, about the size of your clenched fist. What you eat for breakfast should be roughly the same size.

A little bit of sensible thinking early in the morning and you will set yourself up for a great day by choosing quality, nutritional foods that will fuel both your body and your brain.

I'm off to take on the challenge.

Hope you have a great day!