Perhaps the greatest thing you can do to ensure a successful day is to have a good morning routine. Not only do you create good momentum for the remainder of your day, but you also take a lot of pressure off yourself by completing important things before you even finish breakfast. Here is a quick list of breakfast, and the complete routine:
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Breakfast
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Morning Routine
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Elsewhere on this website I have a more detailed morning routine that provides a heavier detox. But here I want to outline my ideal basic routine that I usually do. Looking at the above table, here it is in more detail:
- Wakeup by sunrise. Waking up with the sun, or just before it, is a powerful thing to do for your health. Make sure you actually see the sunlight. Your body will respond to morning sunlight in many positive ways.
- A quick exercise routine (3 or 4 minutes) as soon as I get out of the bed. I have various Tabata routines that I like to do, but sometimes just a bunch of pushups is enough. Getting out the door for a quick run to see the sunrise is very good. Do something to get the blood and lymph flowing. Sometimes I need to use the restroom first, and in that case I will sometimes push my exercise to occur after my lemon water.
- Using the restroom is next, and a perfect bowel movement first thing in the morning is a great indication that your body is in very good health. This is also a great time to inspect your health.
- Oral health care (brushing teeth, etc.) is next. This can vary tremendously for me, so that is another topic altogether. Normally I just brush my teeth.
- Lemon water. I have a separate post on this. A fantastic way to ignite your digestive system, get some vitamin C, and supposedly even trigger some detox. Just use warm water (not hot), with 1/2 a lemon, 1 tblspn of ACV, salt and cinnamon.
- Bone Tea is next, after the lemon water. Nourishing, soothing, and perfect to prepare the digestive system for whatever is coming next.
- Kefir is often the only other thing that I need for breakfast, as normally have a large kefir shake that has other things blended into it.
- Eggs, usually with bacon, cheese, and other healthy natural ingredients are my favorite way to finish my breakfast. Not only are they super healthy foods, but it is so easy to add healthy herbs, spices, veggies, etc. to the mix. Oatmeal is another great breakfast food, but only if prepared properly. I even like to make French Toast sometimes, which again, can be made in a healthy way, using sourdough bread, etc. If you are going to eat something, make sure it is healthy.
- Coffee, tea, or juice. If you think you need the caffein, just have an apple instead, as that will give you more energy and wake you up better than a cup of coffee! Try to avoid the caffein. Opt for water or naturally caffein free tea for your beverage.
Coffee and juice are not exactly healthy, no matter what the quality of the product. A smoothie is much better than juice, or choose juice with ‘pulp’ in it if you feel you must drink juice. Coffee can be a good vehicle for getting more healthy fats, via Bulletproof coffee, but if you can avoid the caffein, definitely do so. Decaf is worse, unless you do it yourself, which you can easily do with teas (soak your teabag or leaves in hot water for about 20 seconds and toss that water away – you will remove over 90% of the caffein that way!).
There are tons of benefits from keeping a routine like this. Just to highlight a few…
- You get a large part of your daily nutritional needs, which means you can be a bit more ‘lazy’ in your eating for the remainder of the day.
- You kickstart your metabolism, which will stay in high gear for at least 24hrs, improving energy, digestion, fat burning, etc.
- You get your exercise ‘out of the way’ so that you don’t feel pressure to find time later. Of course doing more exercise is great, if you have the time.
- You perform some detox, cleaning out your system and giving it the best chance to perform optimally throughout the remainder of the day.
Good luck with your morning routine!
