3 million ideas for healthy meals!

The 3 most common questions I encounter on a daily basis are:

  1. "What can I have for breakfast if cereal & toast are going to make me fat & sick?"
  2. "How can I eat a healthy Primal/Paleo lunch when I'm out and about?"
  3. "Don't you find this Primal eating thingy a bit restrictive?"

Well, I'm going to try to answer all 3 questions once and for all by arming you with 2 simple tricks:

Trick #1. Get up earlier! This is REALLY important - saying you don't have time is NOT an excuse. Whatever time you currently get up on a morning, get up half an hour earlier (and go to bed half an hour earlier too if necessary). I like to allow for at least 2 hours of letting the day unfold naturally before getting stuck into my working day. It’s so much less stressful and can put you in a fantastic frame of mind for the rest of the day. Make making breakfast part of your daily ritual - enjoy this time, listen to the radio, relax, be creative...

Trick #2. Make a list of your favourite ingredients. I split mine up into PROTEIN and SALAD. "SALAD!?!" I hear you shriek. "For breakfast?!?" Yes, salad for breakfast. Why not? Here's my list:

[P]rotein

  • Steak
  • Sausages (gluten-free)
  • Chicken
  • Bacon
  • Eggs
  • Smoked Salmon

[S]alad

  • Avocado
  • Red cabbage
  • Rocket
  • Spinach
  • Watercress
  • Blueberries
  • Carrot
  • Olives
  • Avocado oil
  • Olive oil
  • Pumpkin seed butter
  • Almond butter
  • Stilton
  • Peppers
  • Mushrooms
  • Macadamia nuts
  • Pine nuts
  • Chestnuts
  • Wild rice
  • Tomatoes

OK, so you may have noticed there's a distinct lack of grains, sugar & starchy or processed carbohydrates there - don't worry about that. Trust me, you'll get all the carbs you need from the "salad" ingredients, PLUS a stack of vitamins, minerals and healthy energy-giving fats to help your body function the way it was designed to (including burning fat & not storing it).

Now here's the clever bit: simply choose 1 or 2 ingredients from the [P] list and up to 10 from the [S] list. The salad ingredients are all raw (apart from things like wild rice which basically fall into the category of "last night's leftovers"), simply chopped up, thrown in a bowl and mixed up - make it as colourful as you can.

Cook your protein, add that to the mix and eat straight away or let it cool, put some in a sealed tub, refrigerate & take it on your travels for lunch (Questions 1 and 2: TICK, TICK). Oh, and as for question number 3 - I did the maths. The number of different ways of combining 2 ingredients out of the 6 from the [P] list, and then combining that with 10 ingredients from the 20 on the [S] list is... (drum roll)... 2,771,340 different breakfasts or lunches! (TICK)

So, I suppose you MAY get bored of nearly 3 million options(!), but instead of reverting back to the cocktail of lectins, gluten & phytates (AKA toast & cereal) that will make you fat & sick, simply add a couple of your own wholefood ingredients to the list (ask me if you’re unsure about the nutritional value of your choices).

So there we have it - my perfect breakfast/lunch formula:

2[P] + 10[S] = (Health) + (Vitality) + (fat-loss)

Simon Farrar