Nourishing Proteinaceous Ayurveda Breakfasts

Nourishing proteinaceous Ayurveda breakfasts can help you live more easily within natural circadian rhythms. Intermittent fasting has become very popular. Yet when you begin the fast, and when you end it can make all the difference in terms of health.

When are you naturally hungry?

This lets you know when your digestive fire is rising. Appetite rises with agni, digestive fire. Agni naturally follows the sun. It is strongest in daylight hours.

Eating within 2 – 3 hours of when you rise, and close to sundown, you can align yourself with these rhythms. This could be as early as breakfast at 7:30 am and dinner at 5:30 pm. Or you may eat a little later. If you find yourself hungry between 8 and 10 am, trust this. If you can, eat breakfast then. If you are intermittent fasting 14 hours between your first meal and your last, this means finishing your last meal somewhere between 6 and 8 pm in summer months, earlier in winter ones, here at the lower latitudes.

If you’ve been intermittent fasting yet not eating your first meal until noon and your last meal later in the evening, this could be counter-productive. You could be training yourself to eat when digestive fire is weak. From an Ayurvedic perspective, eating later meals contributes to accumulation of toxins, weaker agni, and weight gain.

To shift this pattern, try working your dinner time backwards, even just fifteen to twenty minutes at a time. As you start to eat earlier, you are likely to find yourself getting hungry earlier in the day as well. What’s natural can shift to something that’s also more healthy.

Maintaining muscle mass

As we age, maintaining muscle becomes more challenging. Skeletal muscles are hungry earlier in the day; they absorb protein more effectively after an overnight fast. Nourishing proteinaceous Ayurveda breakfasts can be a part of both maintaining and building healthy muscle mass.

Benefits of nourishing proteinaceous Ayurveda breakfasts

Having an easy to digest breakfast with 15 – 30 grams of protein can ground you heading into the day, stabilize blood sugar, and minimize mid-day fatigue. It can give you longer “last”. It also supports healthy digestive fire throughout the day. It’s particularly helpful for maintaining healthy weight, both for those who are looking to shed and those that are wanting to gain. It’s a practice that is most useful for Vata and Pitta constitutions, within a pattern of three regular meals per day. Kapha constitution may find two meals and lighter eating is more what they need.

If you find that this practice does not work for you, trust that.

Spices & digestibility

In Ayurveda herbs and spices are used to encourage digestive fire, which enhances the digestion and absorption of proteins and other nutrients. I’ll put a little spice in the majority of dishes I make.

Most spices and herbs tend to be warming; it’s a familiar practice to add cinnamon to oatmeal and/or hot milk in winter. Yet hot weather can depress agni and too many warming spices may just aggravate your mood or gut in summer

How to spark your fire and keep your doshas calm? Use more cooling digestive spices with your favorite warming herbs in summer. Coriander, cumin and fennel are the classic cooling digestives; caraway and mint are others. Not to abandon your favorite basil, cardamom, fenugreek, marjoram, turmeric, or oregano. Try pairing coriander with cardamom or ginger, cumin with basil, mint with basil, fennel with fenugreek. Ideas for how to do this follow in the links below.

A variety of healthy digestible possibilities

1. What we’re looking for is a protein anchor, small carbs, greens or fruit, and a little spice. There’s a great blog here about this. Think eggs and greens and a whole grain workable for you, or scrambled tofu with cumin and turmeric, or sage and green onion, again with some grain. Kichadi.

2. Here’s 8 delicious East Indian style nourishing Ayurveda proteinaceous breakfasts from the Drs Chauhan.

3. If you read French, the very best Ayurveda breakfast book I know is here: Mes matinees ayurvediques by Michele Schulz. Imaginative and inspiring, it offers a wide variety of meals, from light to substantial. Check it out!

Michele Schulz and Amadea, 2009

4. Kate O’Donnell has a nice take on Ayurveda breakfasts, ranging from veggie to not, here. She puts in a good word for grass-fed whey protein.

5. What about me? Well, this whole healthy breakfast story was part of what spurred us to create Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda. Ojas Milk (p 119), Black Sesame Shake (116), Delicata Cilantro Smoothie (113), Hari Mint Lassi (88), Speedy Pachak Lassi (67), the Vata Classico (49) and Golden Milk (27) all provide strong supports toward a healthy breakfast.

As I’ve aged, my needs have changed. The lighter breakfasts in The Ayurvedic Cookbook and Ayurvedic Cooking for Westerners I now enhance with a serving of protein. I still aim to rotate my proteins and grains: the proteins being eggs, tofu, non-soy tofu, goat yogurt, plant yogurt paired with carbs like brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, a little granola, this time of year. As cooler weather arrives, the warmer carbs like buckwheat, millet, and corn get woven in more.

Be practical about what works for you

Beans and fruit or animal dairy and fruit can be problematic (translate gassy) for many. If your smoothie of fruit and pea protein is attacking you later in the day, or you find yourself stuporous after a shake of cow yogurt and fruit, other options may serve you better. A high-protein plain Greek coconut yogurt like Foragers might be an easy substitute for the cow dairy. Or you could use freshly ground soaked nuts or seeds like hemp or pumpkin seeds in place of a legume-based protein powder.

You may be living somewhere where many of these foods are not available. It may be that looking at the timing of your eating, your choice of spices, and local proteins are your best bets.

What about the toast breakfast?

Some of us just adore tea and toast, and that’s it. If you’re one of these and are curious about shifting a bit, you could consider searching for higher protein breads, even brain-friendly grain-free ones and pair your toast with a warm more proteinaceous drink, like some of the Easy Healing Drinks mentioned above.

What are your favorite healthy digestible nourishing proteinaceous breakfasts?

Feel free to comment here.

Image: Allison, Laurie, Zoe, APTYI cooking intensive 2009, thanks to them and the blessed sister who took this. I confess we were making lunch! Yet it could have served as an excellent Ayurveda breakfast.

Bio: I’m a writer and health educator in Santa Fe, NM. My latest cookbook Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda is on special here.