Blueberry smoothie mornings start your day right with a brightening healthy boost. They can also make a great afternoon dessert with low or no added sugar other than natural fruit.
A dessert blueberry smoothie is super easy to put together in minutes. No baking needed and cool enough for hot temperature days.
And smoothie ingredients in this blueberry cheesecake one are simple and healthy. 🫐 So often we want something sweet in the day.
And instead of going for a high calorie and refined sugar shake or food dessert bite, a blueberry cheesecake smoothie could be the fix for our sweet tooth.
The sugar source is all-natural fruit.
The healthy notes:
Blueberries that have AA goodness in Anthocyanin Antioxidants.
And another great point with blueberries is there is no traces of fruit leftover. So you can enjoy the fruit and not have to think about disposing a seed or core, or recycling a can.
Blueberries are a super smart food choice for more reasons than one!
And this blueberry treat is combined with cottage cheese that gives a balanced cheese “cake” taste. Plus, you’re getting protein, B-vitamins (B-6, B-9, and b-12), calcium, and more.
Blending in a ripe peach 🍑 is the perfect pair (not pear 🍐).
Peaches have lycopene antioxidants like tomatoes. And for a tad more sweetness and Vitamin C, pineapple juice will do the trick.
Hope you give the blueberry smoothie a try and instead of being loaded down, enjoy the healthy energy. ✨
And if your body craves more sugar, adding a little maple syrup sweetness is a good balance to tip this over to the happy dessert edge you deserve while staying cool to your body.
Orange juice vs. mango juice is hard to tell the difference when squeezed. But easy to tell when tasted. Mango is also much thicker.
This is fresh mango juice. 🥭
And today orange juice is making waves and not much juice. The OJ shelves are not full like they’ve always been. There are always grocery food item shortages, but this one was a shocker!
Or is it?
That’s up for debate.
And that doesn’t change the grocery shelves.
With orange juice on the tight squeeze, a refreshing juice alternative option that’s affordable is mango juice that you can easily squeeze at home.
The NEW debate can be orange juice vs. mango juice.
Both these are mango juice and not orange juice.
Yes, FRESH mango juice in seconds.
Mango has the same color as orange juice in a glass and looks like orange juice with extra extra pulp.
But this is such a refreshing and sweet beverage.
You may never go back! 🧡
It’s also easy to tell when a mango fruit is ripe. Because it’s soft when ripe. And when unripe, hard like a softball (…btw, why do they call them softballs?). ⚾️
Anyway, when the mango turns soft to the touch where you can push your fingers into the mango, then it’s SWEET and ready for your eating OR DRINKING enjoyment!
Don’t worry, mangoes aren’t bruise sensitive like apples.
The tricky part is getting around the slippery fruit after the skin is peeled off.
There is always an irregular shaped flat seed in the middle. You’re best off to use a butter knife just in case the mango slips away from you.
Cut off small chunks and slivers and add to your blender or Magic Bullet that I use.
And then as you get closer to the seed, you can leave the fruit alone and enjoy for yourself like corn on the cob before it slips away from you! 😋
And if that doesn’t appeal to you, how about squeezing your own ORANGE + JUICE. I think it tastes so much better and without added sugar.
There’s nothing that screams luxury breakfast more than freshly squeezed juice.
When’s the last time you saw that on the menu?
So, lesson learned: a fruit juice shortage is an opportunity to seek abundance and make your own fruit juices like juice from oranges.
Or mangoes that are healthy fruits with Vitamins A, C, K, beta-carotene and minerals to name a few nutrients.
Whether it’s orange juice vs. mango, both are great! And maybe you get used to no-added sugar as a bonus. 🎉
Plant-based breakfast ideas encourage our better low sugar healthy habits that help our bodies protect us against inflammation and preventable lifestyle diseases like Type 2 Diabetes.
Plant-based can be delicious and filling like a Three Sisters dish where the trifecta effect is proteins, carbs, and fiber.
Net healthy plant-forward 3 Sisters dish with butternut squash, corn, and black beans. Imagine starting your day with this trifecta!
Eating more plant-based foods also help our warming planet and climate change causes.
And when we align all of those intentions with farm-to-table delicious eating and seasonal food preferences, we’re restoring our Ayurvedic body balance…
Some simple examples are: we want to eat and drink lighter, cool foods like cereals, smoothies, and cold brew beverages on warm days. And prefer comfort, warm porridge and potato food on cold days.
With rapid climate change these days, we often flip flop back and forth daily and seasonally. We use our internal body cues and external clues to keep us balanced.
It’s good to be aware how all this healthy information helps us.
And the good news is there’s a plant-based fix for all of us.
Below are some plant-based breakfast ideas that can get you excited about your health, energy, and planet with unusual climate changes… plus help you lower your sugar intake.
Like an Earth Day layered drink helps us appreciate all the constantly changing stratospheres in our planet. And this is a metaphor for our lives where nothing stays the same.
Lowering Your Sugar in Breakfasts
Firstly, if you started out like I did as a sweet tooth (or still are one 😋), you know there’s definitely hope if you want to change your tastes from sugary sweet to lower sugar, healthy plant-based breakfast ideas…
Many years ago, I had a guest coming over for the holidays that I learned was diabetic. I knew I had to come up with a sweet option for this special guest. That was the only option for this former party planner (where finding a way was the only way and “once a food planner, always a planner”).
I sympathized because I couldn’t imagine going through life without sweets! 🍭
So around town I drove and picked up a bag of diabetic cookies (substituting refined sugar with maltitol). If you’re not familiar, monk fruit sugar is commonly used today as the new maltitol ingredient. I use monk fruit sugar often out of healthy preference. You don’t have to be diabetic.
And anyway, I fell in love with those diabetic cookies. I figured the guest would be as excited as I would to have an after dinner dessert with the rest of us.
Those were the days when AllRecipes was one of the very few online sites you could find recipes besides OG Martha Stewart and offline cookbooks that never grow old.
There weren’t diabetic recipe sites.
…And so, when the holiday dinner rolled around, I mentioned the cookies to the diabetic guest, and I learned something very profound I’ll never forget when he declined the sweet offer…
💡The sweet taste was no longer even a category for this person who hadn’t had a sweet bite since his diagnosis.
That was an eye-opener. Because previously I thought people were born with a sweet tooth or they weren’t (and could do nothing about their sweet sentence). And I definitely was in the first category.
When I started upon my own journey to reduce daily sugar intake, I was reminded of those lessons.
I then knew I could gradually wean off of sugar as others had (like the diabetic guest) from changing habits.
And if I knew that sooner, I probably would’ve done so sooner.
And that’s like how most of us are with our areas we want to change: we don’t know what we don’t know. 🤔
When I gradually took in less sugar, I found I craved sugar less.
I didn’t have to do the heavy lifting all myself.
My body helped me and it helps all of us when we don’t keep overfeeding our sugar cravings.
…A light cookie with a sweet tea flavor without extra sugar will do the trick. It doesn’t have to be the portions served at restaurants.
And baking your own sweet goods can save you because you don’t have a large box sitting around tempting you.
You can simply make less and then you’ve taught yourself that working for a sweet is a reward.
You satiate your sweet craving with a tiny bite that’s also the most delicious bite.
💡In economic terms, that’s: the marginal utility wears off with each bite.
💡In nutrition terms, that’s: intuitive and mindful eating helps you appreciate your food as part of daily joy and helps build a healthy relationship with food.
And in my first tries, making it through those habit forming days where I reached for a low-sugar cereal over cookies was sobering but still doable. One step forward, two steps back.
But I knew deeper down I could go a day without sugar.
And the opportunity arose where I chose to fast from sugar with a church-wide fast event. This was for our spiritual growth. We could choose anything that was addictive to us.
I was in a Bible book club then studying the book of Isaiah and learned that the people in that day were addicted to idols that caused their problems.
And without a moment’s hesitation, I picked sweets as the first thought that came to mind.
From the sweet fast experience, I learned I didn’t even crave sweets when I had an intention and was determined for a desired outcome.
But I was still stunned at what happened.
Because that was a new concept to me: what… not desire sweets!?…that would’ve shocked all my closest friends as I always had a piece of candy or something sweet on me even when I wasn’t aware.
It’s no surprise that when I was younger, I was a sucker for mosquitoes that loved my sweet blood.
And then in 2021, I started baking weekly. I added less and less sugar into my bakes. And sometimes not using refined sugar or monk fruit sugar at all and only using whole fruits, spices, and other healthy natural powder ingredients.
It was hard for me to add spoonfuls of sugar when I knew how harmful sugar is for both the body and mind.
And that became my healthy way out of sugar when my skin became inflamed with eczema during the uncertain early days of the pandemic when I was also building up a pantry and starting to home cook more.
Eczema was my wake up call.
It was my body’s warning to me that I took seriously.
And the effect was a much lighter consequence than a destroying gut microbiome outcome, Diabetes or other chronic disease diagnosis.
I used healthy teeth as one of my motivators for a comeback to heathy eating.
…As a kid I loved eating spoonfuls of white sugar straight out of the glass sugar jar. I always had cavities, and that thought alone makes me run to celery or carrots.
And yeah that was many decades ago, but that’s pretty much what we’re doing when we buy processed sweets or sugary sodas. It’s not our fault because they’re in our face all the time.
And in America and the Western world cultures, that’s just a gimme.
Plus, Vata bodies love sweets! Others do too, but it’s a given with a Vata. We were born with this desire that we can turn into a healthy one.
And you and I can survive on fruit and natural powder only sweets that are loaded with polyphenol antioxidants. I haven’t met a fruit yet that didn’t have antioxidant vitamins. 😊
This works over fighting willpower that never works. Because what you tell yourself “no” to only builds energy more toward the thought.
If you’re jonesing for southern-style Devils Food Cake, you’re not going to head for white cloud Angel Cake without a higher intervention. ☁️
Distraction and replacement are sweet answers for sugary and processed snack food cravings.
You can turn to plant-based foods, like popcorn for potato chips… and get into an activity that takes your mind off food, like a fasting habit or gardening.
If someone tells me they have a sweet tooth craving they think they could never satiate or change, I know that’s not true. It’s all made up in the mind.
You can live with a lower, healthy amount of sugar every day. That starts with your first meal where you break the fast or breakfast.
Easy Low-Sugar Plant Based Breakfast Ideas For Starters
For starters, opt for a protein. You can start with a protein shake if that fits your preferences like a layered drink that has protein powder.
As you age, your body need to increase your intake of essential amino acids to compensate for muscle loss.
Add a healthy fat like avocado that’s great when you break a fast, first thing at breakfast, or if you’ve been fasting overnight or longer.
During my catering work days, we always had a Crudite platter available for vegetarians. Raw veggies are a great way to prime the stomach first and add some roughage fiber that the gut needs.
Raw carrots, bell peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, and asparagus are great examples.
They’re easy to put together on a plate. And if you need a dipping sauce, you can always use a Greek yogurt with dill as a savory healthy beginning.
And if you take vitamins, you do better taking fat-soluble Vitamins A, D, E, and K with some fat in your body. So it’s better to take those after or with your meal where you’ve had some avocado, oil, nut, or seeds in your system.
Black bean quinoa cereal. Both ingredients have protein. Add cocoa powder if you want brownie bite tastes and top with chia, flax, hemp, sunflower, etc.
Greek yogurt sundae. Add your whole fruits like banana and berries.
Sprinkle with your favorite nuts like sliced almonds, walnuts, or pistachios. Don’t be shy with your seeds. Cantaloupe and melon seeds loaded with vitamins are a nice vitamin addition too.
Oatmeal with apples or applesauce. If you’re leaning toward a little sweet taste, add Ceylon cinnamon (our Ayurvedic Vata go-to spice). This will set you up for a sweet bite without tipping the scales.
Chocolate avocado mousse. This is a great one you can blend up in seconds with dark cocoa and a ripe avocado.
Main Points
Be easy on yourself.
Be open to give the plant-based breakfast ideas a try. Pick a few more of your favorite healthy ingredients such as a banana or an avocado and let your creative breakfast imagination go wild!
Don’t give up. Not creating a deadline or rules can be the magic formula that eliminates the pressure.
Change your words and thoughts. Say, “Yum this tastes great even when it tastes odd to you.” That helps your mind to agree with you when you’re trying to be healthy.
Then next time, introduce a new healthy food or spice. Let the odd new tastes take over until they win you over.
And if you want to learn how to add fasting to your sustainable healthy habits to eliminate snacking, sweets, and extra pounds, check out the free IF guide.
If you still have a sweet hankering, you can enjoy your plant-based breakfast ideas with a decadent aroma tea like the chocolate mint black tea I’m sipping on. 🧉 And you can pair with a healthy start.
unsweetened 70% cocoa (natural, not dutch processed)
raspberries
shredded coconut
Instructions
Blend milk, avocado, and cocoa.
Zhugh with raspberries. These are anti-inflammatory ingredient pairings.
Notes
To make this healthy version is 3 main ingredients: ripe avocado, almond milk, and unsweetened cocoa (garnished with raspberries and shredded coconut).
Layer and freeze each layer before adding another layer.
Layer 1: milk
Layer 2: layer with black cocoa, gluten-free flour, and milk (or cream) that's more creamy and good for beverages.
Layer 3: cold blueberry tea
Layer 4: cold brew coffee (or coffee of choice)
Layer 5: milk
Add a few blueberries if you like.
Make plant-based pandan ice cube. Add pandan mixed with water and freeze
Add the ice cube to the top frozen layer.
Bring drink out to regular room temperature about 10-15 minutes before you want to consume if semi-frozen and 30 minutes or longer if frozen solid. Watch your planet beverage change before your very eyes! For kids, you can swap cocoa or chocolate milk for the coffee layer.
Crow Pose is one yoga pose that can help you feel strong along with the messages you feed yourself. Learn about how in this article.
Do good and Be kind are heart action messages worth taking into the day!
Maybe when you start your balance pose initially, you’re not able to hold the Crow Pose without your feet or toes touching the mat or floor.
…But as you practice regularly, you’ll be able to! 🐦⬛
Crow Pose could be a goal this week that gets your mojo back to blood flowing activity and to keep moving and growing. 🥅
Building Strength Stability
If you want to become stronger, gaining arm strength is one impactful way. Strength represents resilience that’s needed to get through tough times… and build stability and progress.
One starter exercise way is to be in your push up pose. Alternating legs, pull one knee at a time closer up to your shoulders one side at a time.
Then like a push up, push straight up and down. Your hiked up leg is extra body weight to use as muscle weights for your arm. 😉
Then switch leg sides. After a weekly habit of doing arm strength building exercises, your muscle memory will remember (fostering stable reinforcements) and that’ll help you in your Crow Pose…
If only you could see how cool you look!
This exercise I just described (that I’m not sure if it has a name) helps you get to used to vertical arm strength that Crow Pose needs. Chataranga pose is another.
In good form, vertical arms will support your body along with your strong ab muscles. And speaking of the gut, I share below some strong food ways that complement your pose.
…But let’s not got ahead of ourselves. For starters, you may want to see where you’re at with your Crow Pose today. So give it a try today (or now) and fail forward or beam in your Crow!
Keep reading 👇 for tips…
Crow Pose For Beginners (Or Starting Again)
As a beginner, you can have a yoga block in front of you for strength and moral support. Set the soft-place-to-fall security block on the floor on the lowest setting side where your forehead would fall on… don’t worry, as this likely won’t happen.
The placebo effect is a confidence booster. 🤸🏻
…And that way you can enter the pose confidently without fear of injury that can stall your progress or hold you back unintentionally.
Especially when you want Crow Pose to build your confidence (and not build a fine line wall divide that keeps you stuck).
And when you move into your first Crow Pose moments, you can feel like you can handle the world in all its cruel ways that can sometimes make any of us feel like we’re broken down. Stay at peace. ✌️
When you look up and out with a grin on your face knowing you’re able to support yourself, the weight of the world crumbles into the mat.
Plus, you’re building up arms that are becoming more chiseled. 😊
And after you’ve mastered Crow Pose, you can advance to a taller Crane Pose or take a slight bend (detour break) into Side Crow.
There’s always a next or side step. Before you know it, you’ll be flying! 🕊️
Side Crow Pose and Crane Pose
In Side Crow Pose, you crouch down and tip your body to the side where the back of your upper arms catch your legs and side buttock. So you get a different muscle workout and perspective.
And if you want to lengthen taller and gain more stability in your moves, you can try a more advanced pose: Crane Pose.
Cranes are the tallest flying birds. They’re powerful so the pose matches the yoga pose name.
What I like about these two other poses is what they’ll tell you more about your core and arm muscle state.
Many women think they’ll build Popeye arms with regular 10 lb weights, but that’s not the case.
We underestimate ourselves and what we can lift. If you can lift your travel carry-on luggage up to the compact overhead bin, then daily 10 pound weights should be no problem.
If you look more compact, then you could have more muscle that’s lean mass which means it will become denser or smaller.
Think of a compact ball of yarn versus a loose skein that yarn is usually sold in. On the shelves, it’s soft. But if you take it home and unravel the yarn and make a tight ball 🧶, then it becomes hard like a rubber ball.
We want our muscles to have shape, tone, and hard compactness that a rubber ball represents. In between, it can be like a squishy stress ball.
Our arm muscles are easy to scope out, but the hidden body muscles that give us the most trouble and least strength are the ones we don’t use or stretch often. And in yoga, you can discover those small areas in poses.
Balancing Food Macros to Support Crow Pose Moves
If you’re like many trying to lose weight, be sure to amp up your protein so your body stays full longer. Proteins burn more calories.
Taking a step further, the body burns fat for energy after it runs out of glucose. And that’s why I’m so gung-ho on intermittent fasting for metabolic flexibility. On and off switching teaches the body who’s boss. 😊
As we age, we lose muscle. Our protein macros help make up the deficit, for especially women. We can include large doses of protein foods with specific amino acids to help us restore what’s lost.
Protein food sources also keep us feeling full that saves us time from taking time to eat so we can spend more time doing other activities we want to get to.
If you’re like me, after graduating from baby milk as nutrients, I started out life with sugary bowls of cereal and milk as a breakfast meal. That was what I woke up to, growing up. Protein wasn’t a priority.
With cereal, it’s not the sugary sides that’s the biggest problem… it was the starting with cereal as a meal. Cereal wasn’t and isn’t filling enough and also begs us wanting more sugar in our veins.
But as a snack treat to fulfill sweet cravings, low-sugar cereals are better and I prefer them over sweet alternatives like cookies (my love 💕). Many cereals are fortified with macros and minerals while cookies are mostly empty calories (unless you bake them with healthy goodness like I do these days).
Gluten-free coconut flour, cocoa, shredded coconut, cinnamon, coconut oil, and water make this cookie batter.
But in my earlier years, I was in double trouble working in catering food management at the Doubletree Hotel known for their large paper weight-dense cookies. 🍪
And that’s how I started my breakfast morning at 8 am…
But decades later with better intentions and experiencing a season of excess sugar bothering my skin with eczema, I changed my ways. I didn’t think I could ever switch to starting mornings with a savory meal.
…I mean, forget protein like lean meats. But I let health motivate me and after many bites, savory foods grew on me.
…So I started adding proteins from leftover meals. Because eggs, tofu, and chicken aren’t necessarily the favorite first thing meal when your gut isn’t even awake yet…
And if that’s you…don’t give up on yourself! The a-ha change I made also made me realize that I could ignore my cravings (like unproductive thoughts) if I wanted to and focus on building healthy habits.
Protein substantial foods are also a better stomach cushion for coffee (that’s acidic).
…And you too can start the habit if you want!
Trust your feelings will follow. 💖
That’s how you can change tastes effectively for your health and build in more protein ma-crows in your life, so you can support your Crow Pose and other bird pose yoga areas calling you!
Yoga moves calling for strength can be the canary in the coal mine indicator to add more daily muscle and protein to your body and diet. 🌱
And doing a daily Crow Pose could just be the starting reminder.
