Can you believe we’re already in Week 3 of Beat the Bulge?! That’s plenty of time to produce a noticeable weight loss! A friend of mine who I met for dinner last night is also on a mission to lose weight. She is already down 18 kgs which is great, but I was blown away when she confessed the eternal weight loss sin:
“I never eat breakfast because it’s a waste of calories.”
In theory that makes sense but in reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth! One of the most important weight loss and maintenance tips I can offer to anyone is to eat breakfast every day. When you wake up, your body hasn’t received food in over 8 hours, which means your metabolism is resting. In other words, your metabolism is burning almost no calories. The minute you eat something, you are revving up your metabolism to start burning calories. Hence waiting till lunchtime to eat is merely a waste of potential calorie-burning.
Regularly eating a healthy breakfast can also reduce your hunger later on in the day, get you on track to make healthy choices all day, and give you energy to stay active during the day. And for those of you who claim you can’t stomach food in the morning, I bet that’s not the case with pancakes 
!
Healthy Oatmeal Pancakes serves 3, makes 6 pancakes
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups oats
- 1 cup nonfat milk
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 4 large egg whites, well-beaten
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
Method
- Heat milk until hot. Add oats and set aside.
- Combine the remaining dry ingredients with the oatmeal mixture.
- Pour in the egg whites and mix until blended. If you’re finding the batter too thick, add a little water to thin it out.
- Pour the batter on a heated skillet.
- Cook on both sides until golden brown
Healthy pancake toppers:
- Nuts
- Fresh fruit like berries, banana slices, grilled pear or apple
- Greek yogurt
- Honey or maple syrup
- Peanut butter
- Fruit preserves
