JJ Virgin (author of The Virgin Diet) walks through how to make healthy choices at a brunch buffet by pointing out common pitfalls (waffles with sugary toppings, muffins, fruit juice, jam, starchy potatoes, sugary cereals, soy milk, and some Greek yogurts) and offering concrete swaps. Recommended options include an omelette with red peppers and tomatoes plus lean protein (or nitrate-free bacon), or — for those who are egg-intolerant — sliced turkey/sausage, berries with nuts and protein, or oatmeal topped with berries and almonds with leftover turkey or salmon. She emphasizes avoiding concentrated sugars (jam, juice), warns that some breakfast items can spike blood sugar, and reminds viewers to use the Virgin Diet elimination/rechallenge process to identify personal intolerances.
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Hey, it's JJ Virgin, New York Times best selling author of the Virgin Diet. And I am here having brunch. You've had this happen. You got invited to brunch and you thought, you know what, it's the weekend, I'll just cheat a little bit. Well, let's walk through that. I'm going to show you where the pitfalls can be and then how easy it is to make the right choices so that you don't need a nap all afternoon. And it's starting to diet again on Monday. Deal. All right, Obviously there's some challenges over here, starting with the waffle. The waffle loaded with Nutella berries and sugar, candied nuts. The only redeeming thing here would be the strawberries with the butter, but you don't really want that alone. Now, if you're having that with a glass of orange juice, you might as well be having a soda because this has as much sugar as a soda does. So don't think that you're getting your vitamin C this way. Much better to get your vitamin C by having an omelette with some red peppers. Highest vitamin C that you're going to get in a vegetable. Some sliced tomatoes, which help you eat by the virgin diet plate because they are loaded with fiber and they're a nice slow, low carb. And then some clean, lean protein in the eggs. Now remember, if you're egg intolerant, you're going to skip the eggs and you can jump on over to something like sliced turkey or sausage. But let's go back over to the dark side, the muffin. And you know, so often I hear in the morning, well, I'm just going to have a coffee and I'll have a healthy morning muffin. But I want you to look at this muffin because if this muffin had icing, what would it be? That's right, it'd be a cupcake. So consider it the same. And by the way, those Hostess cupcakes, they actually have the same amount of sugar as one of these does. Now, if you add some potatoes in here, I want you to think of you are what you eat. Look at what a potato looks like. You want to be a potato, eat more potatoes. So you could have here a little bit of eggs and a little bit of uncured nitrate free bacon. But be sure to skip the dessert because when you take jam, which is just a concentrated hit of fructose, which tells your body to store fat, not burn it, and then put it on toast, which actually can raise your blood sugar more than straight table sugar can. You just had cake with your eggs. Now, if you think you're going to be good and just have some soy milk with some Cheerios. After all, they are whole grain. Again, just like the bread, cereal can raise your blood sugar more than straight table sugar can. And then if you're going to douse it with soy, which is also loaded with sugar, this can lower your thyroid function, so it makes your metabolism slow down. Besides, people who do a lot of soy, the studies show, can shrink their brain. And that's not something that you want smaller. And we've heard a lot about Greek style yogurt. Of course, you take Greek style yogurt, you add in the strawberries. This here has 70 calories and nearly half of it is from sugar. So don't think this is a healthy morning option. It's not. So what do you do instead? So instead, again, I talked about the easy omelette. Again, that's if you're not egg intolerant. And how do you know if you're egg intolerant? You got to go through the virgin diet. Don't think just because you've been eating them, it's okay. That's not the case. You pull them out for three weeks and then you go back and you re challenge so that you can go through your personal discovery process to find the foods that work for you for the long haul. Now, if you know that eggs don't work for you, which they don't work for me, here's a couple other easy options. You can do some berries, which are awesome because they're low sugar impact, loaded with fiber. And then I threw in some nuts because remember, in the virgin diet plate and in the sugar impact plate, we want slow low carbs. Like fruit is a great one, as long as it's low sugar impact, healthy fats like nuts. So I put some almonds in there and then of course, some protein. So I've got some chicken, breakfast sausage. And finally, if that does not make your heart sing, then try some oatmeal. Slow, low carbs, berries, great source of nutrients, loaded with antioxidants. And some sliced almonds on top of and a little bit of turkey. And this is a great thing, by the way, because we always have leftover protein from the night before. So if you want to have a little bit of oatmeal, you want to have a little bit of fruit, you want some sliced tomatoes, you know, you do not need to eat breakfast foods for breakfast. You can actually eat lunch or dinner for breakfast and sliced turkey. Sliced chicken breasts and leftover salmon is a great way to go. There it is. You see how easy this is to do? How easy it is to move from the dark side into the light. Your body will thank you and you'll live younger, longer.
