Feel amazing with a delicious healthy breakfast boost
Let’s get right down to just exactly how to feel amazing with a delicious healthy breakfast boost! The wisdom of Asian medicine is used to create a delicious healthy breakfast that boosts metabolism and soothes digestion. It’s easy to make and cooks while you sleep so you wake up to an amazing breakfast ready and waiting.
Water Metabolism for a healthy balance
A concept in Asian medicine that’s really important for understanding how Breakfast Cure works is water metabolism. It’s part of your regular metabolism, but it’s specific to what we would call the transformation and transportation of fluids. This matters because when it isn’t working well the results in the body are bloating, water weight gain, and swelling, and who wants that?
Whole grains are excellent at resolving what we call “dampness.” Warm foods are a good way to keep this dampness from originating in the first place. You really don’t want this dampness because it makes you feel uncomfortable. It makes you feel sluggish, and it makes you feel tired.
The major organs of digestion in Asian medicine are the Spleen and Stomach.
It’s so important to keep our Spleen and Stomach happy. Foods that support the spleen and stomach are these warm foods that are easy to digest. Giving your whole digestive system a break, while delivering excellent nutrition, is one of the benefits of congee.
Warm foods are healthy and boost metabolism
Boost your metabolic furnace by eating warm foods and by adding warming spices, such as ginger and nutmeg. I’ll talk about that more another time, but we understand that there’s both the temperature and the nature of food. The temperature is what you eat it at. Is it boiling, or is it freezing?
There’s also the inherent nature that doesn’t change. If you freeze ginger or make it into ice cream, there’s still this warming quality underneath it.
Same with cayenne or other hot spicy foods. Also, many of the more subtle, culinary spices like nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, are all excellent for digestion and warm the digestion and the system in general. You want to incorporate those whenever you can. You make cucumbers into soup. They’re still cooling. If you’re eating warm food that feels warm in your belly, you are on the right track.
The Yin and Yang of Digestion
I like to talk about the benefits of warm, well-cooked food because most people I talk to haven’t thought much about how much of their diet is cooked versus how much is raw and cold. Yet, this is such an important distinction made in Asian nutritional wisdom. If you missed my article on the Yin and Yang of Digestion, I talk more about my beloved topic.
Break your fast wisely
First thing in the morning of course is one of the most important times to have a warming meal. You’ve just fasted overnight. To break this fast, the best thing you can do is have a really warm, nourishing breakfast that’s easy to digest.
How much of your breakfast is cooked and how much is raw or cold? How did you get here? Do you base what you eat on information or on how it feels in your belly and how it sustains your energy through the day? Are convenience and ease the biggest factor?
Congee is comforting and satisfying for good reason.
“Cooking… is something we have no choice but to do, if we are to feed our big, energy-guzzling brains. For our species, cooking is not a turn away from nature – it is our nature, by now as obligatory as nest building is for the birds.”
— Michael Pollan, Cooked, A Natural History of Transformation
Photo courtesy of Kati Hernandez Cuban Dance, A Joyous Celebration of Cuban Culture