The first PC breakfast

Walking to my car after a doctor’s appointment around 2010, our conversation went as follows: “At your age, weight gain is a problem. If you could lose 20 pounds or more, I wouldn’t have to prescribe this medication for your blood pressure. You should consider joining a gym or, like I do, a personal trainer.” A gym, a personal trainer, yikes - there are two chances of me hiring a personal trainer (borrowing some diet dialect) fat and slim! I was watching what I ate; almost no cheeseburgers, the rare hot dog, a lot of Asian food, but I had been getting bigger as time marched on, so something had to give. That evening, discussing the problem with the fetching Lucia, who is also suffering from the getting older and bigger syndrome, we decided to take action. Full disclosure, we had been for some time now making fruit smoothies for breakfast, thinking this was a clever way to eat plenty of fruit and have an easy, satisfying breakfast. They were easy and tasty, but we did not lose any weight. After several months of this, we both found ourselves snacking in the mid-morning just like before because of a general drop in energy with an aggressive hunger that demanded to be fed. I had for a very long time been craving “ a real breakfast” that would include eggs, meat, toast, etc and as we all know “traditional” breakfasts were supposed to kill us very quickly with heart disease, obesity, gout, the clap and everything else the busy body food police could think of. Thankfully, mature thought has been applied to nutrition, and the egg is not now public enemy number one.

So, here we are needing to lose weight and needing a breakfast that will carry us through the day without being hungry by 10AM.  I had been cooking breakfasts on weekends, bacon-wrapped scallops with eggs, freshly cut hash browns and corn with toast, and some of Taiwan’s best teas, or maybe scrambled eggs with feta cheese and hot sausage links, freshly sliced fried potatoes with caramelized onions and toast. Of course, with a fine Chinese Tea! Or maybe pancakes, or omelets, etc. We would both go about our day without feeling hungry until mid afternoon and most often not eat again until dinner. Holy eating satisfaction Batman, what have we learned! In a sober moment, I was looking at a sushi plate and thinking, what if I made this kind of breakfast every day but only enough to fill this little plate. Would it, could it work?

This is PC (portion controlled) breakfast number 1. I did sneak a small grapefruit salad onto the spice plate for the first one but subsequent breakfasts have been served on one small sushi plate (portion control). Typical servings are 1 egg, 1 small portion of meat, small green or fruit salad and 1 piece of toast. That is the schematic of my PC breakfast. We did both lose about five pounds each over the course of six weeks then went to Toronto/Prince Edwards Island where we gained it all back in 10 days. Now were back on the beam and I will keep you updated on what I cook and how it’s working.

As stated this behavior change occurred about 15 years ago, as time rolled on we stuck to our PC breakfasts until we started living full time in our motorhome. We have found as we get older we don't eat as much so we didn't gain a lot when we stopped. We now live in a house and are bringing it back online.