Healthy Happy Life Secrets

McDonald’s Breakfast Ideas You Can Make Healthy at Home

McDonald’s breakfast menu items is something many of us grew up with as it was fast and filling on-the-go. And decades later, it’s still a part of my Happy Meal youth memories.

With whatever opinion you have of McDonald’s, the golden arches is popular because it’s fast, inexpensive, and fills you up quick! The McDonald’s breakfast menu hasn’t changed much over the years and the 760-calorie Big Breakfast hasn’t changed much over the decades.

Everyone in America grew up seeing the golden arches. It’s also an American icon around the world and a convenient and consistent option if you’re on the road.

I haven’t had a need to drive-thru one in ages…

But, the fast-food franchise provides food value to millions each year. You wonder how they would cover the cost of ingredients with a McDonald’s breakfast dollar menu if they didn’t serve millions each year.

At home, you’re smart to make your healthy breakfast every morning, and they do have some great ones modeled after McDonald’s popular breakfast menu… yes, healthy options!

If you want to have a low-sugar breakfast, you pretty much have to come up with your own prepared menu meals where convenience is your fridge and pantry cupboards.

…And here’s how you can create your healthy-inspired McDonald’s breakfast without much effort. You can choose from the following high-fiber options…

Egg McMuffin – Sautee potatoes and scramble eggs and serve on sprouted Ezekiel bread (optional: add cheese). I think this version is so much more delish as it’s homemade and sprouted bread is wholeness… more nutrish than an English Muffin. And if you want to give a ‘Lil French gourmet taste, add a sprinkle of tarragon — that’s the secret ingredient that upscale restaurants use.

Hot Cake and Sausage – Make whole wheat or buckwheat-based pancakes and then add a drizzle of honey. Add bananas, blueberries, or dark chocolate chips with 70% or more cocoa. Skip the heavy sausage patty and make a high fiber black bean cake that can be so tasty and make you feel lighter (and keeping your morning routine bathroom life regular).

Sausage Burrito – Black beans and rice burrito is the same concept, and instead of a high-calorie corn tortilla filler, use a piece of whole wheat pita bread you can easily bake at home when you’re tired (or sprouted wheat) sprouted wheat toast to gain energy and fiber.

Strawberry Banana Smoothie – This is a newer item on the McDonald’s breakfast menu as smoothies didn’t become popular until after the 21st century began. It was all about the high calorie milk shake.

To a smoothie, add a frozen or fresh strawberries depending if they’re in season Add a banana that has fiber, and almond milk or oat milk. Or substitute the vanilla, strawberry, chocolate shakes with your favorite protein powder. In any of these options, the experience is like night and day to your body and the taste is not that different from a sugary smoothie.

Orange juice – OJ skip, O-K! The added concentrated sugar you and I grew up with doesn’t help your day. Combined sugar and acidity are hard on the stomach. Opt for a gentler to your gut option. Make your own fruit juices using a whole orange with water that only takes a few minutes. You can also make your own lemonade or limeade with whole fruit.

The best part is you probably won’t even like sugary fruit juices after you make the switch. You re-train your tastes and that helps your health and your daily moods as you don’t have additional sugar sitting in your system.

If you’re debating whether to eat something for breakfast, and planning to have a beverage other than water or milk, it’s a good idea to cushion your stomach lining with food first.

A typical American drink breakfast with coffee and OJ together with a meal is bad news for your stomach.

Regular coffee has high acidity and espresso is a no-no for sensitive stomachs. Cold brew coffee is better because of the process leaving less acidic grinds. Your stomach also hasn’t had a meal in 8 or so hours, so a snack is usually in order.

If you’re in the habit to feeding sugar cravings for your breakfast morning, make yourself a quick smoothie or prepare no-added refined sugar granola to munch on so you get your sugary fix without all the sugars loaded in pastries.

And if you’re a Vata 🙋🏻‍♀️, then you’re likely to want to switch up your foods from time to time and daily. If you’re not sure if that’s you, you can better know by this preference alone as Kapha and Pittas don’t need to constantly change up preferences. It’s not an ADD disorder in case that’s a worry.

The Vata breed simply prefers to have variety. So you can have a few options available to feed your Vata preferences and don’t get in a rut.

To Dairy or Not?

You can find shelf-stable almond, oat, and coconut milk is a good staple to have in your pantry. I found that having non-shelf stable milk around (besides being an evolving dairy no-no) was stressful with an expiration date where he milk can go to waste.

Making a parfait with a Greek yogurt with probiotics (good bacteria) is also a good start.

Toasting the morning with yogurt parfaits.

It’s all a balance. And that’s with sugar too…

Low Sugar Breakfast Foods:

Create a yogurt parfait with lower sugar and granola– Chobani Complete or Fage are around 7 grams of sugar per cup compared to double that amount or more. Then add dry oatmeal. Or if you take a few extra minutes, you can toast Quaker Oats Old Fashioned in your oven with honey as the binder.

To make granola cereal clusters, simply bake one layer on a baking sheet in your low-heated oven and mix with your favorite dried fruits like raisins a few spoonfuls of honey, and a drizzle of vegetable or canola oil (less is more). This becomes healthy-ish compared to high sugar cereals.

Believe me, for a sweet tooth like me (…is that you too?), I could eat a baked good and feel sweet happiness, but then as the effect wore off I’d be feeling bad because of all the leftover empty calories and indulgent skin-crawling sensation. This awareness seems to happen more as you age.

Many of us experience this as part of sugar’s dire consequences, and we don’t always immediately associate it with the sugar in our lives. Eating sugar unaware, if we’re not careful, can become an unhealthy habit. The more we indulge, the more we want.

A small sugary taste can be all you need to satiate your sweet tooth, but skipping sugar is the better option.

Or you could bake orange scones with no-added sugar.

You can also remember to do a weekly healthy drink, like a green tea smoothie so you can add more plant-based and yes, veggies to breakfast. That’s one you won’t find on a McDonald’s breakfast menu.

Green tea has caffeine and polyphenols that are good for heart health. You can add a dash of lime juice and a handful of wild blueberries for a spritzer. Or enjoy a simple green smoothie with banana or yogurt to thicken in a few minutes. And that can prep you for your veggie start like this Easy Veggie Breakfast Frittata.

…where both your mind and body start the day happy (with your new breakfast happy meal)! 😊

Easy Veggie Breakfast Frittata

Course Breakfast

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

eggs
toppings (favorite vegetables like mushrooms, olives, peppers)

Instructions

Cook eggs on a stovetop in a sautee pan until the edges have firmed.
Add toppings you like if they need to cook. If they simply need to be warmed up, add at the end before the next baking step.
Bake in oven at 325°F for at least 20 minutes, until firmly set, or edges start to brown.
Cut with a pizza roller or knife and enjoy!

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10 Breathing Exercises, Better Sleep, and Healthy Habit Tips

Without needing breathing exercises, we forget how automatic and important breathing is. Sometimes our breathing pattern or air changes wake us up to get back to our healthy breath awareness in this moment. Our breathing can easily remind us of our precious moments and the finite time we have on earth.

And in healthy reminders, I wanted to breathe some good tips your way!

…Breathing is everything life. It’s how the earth began:

“God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)

With climate change, wildfires, and spring green pollen allergy dust in the air at high levels (over 10), many of us are affected from the lungs and neck up.

I suspected allergies was affecting my sleep as I was clocking in about the same amount of hours from night to morning and not feeling as rested.

I had been documenting a healthy 8 hours of sleep time on my Apple Watch and tracker.

I noticed my body runs best when I have 5 hours of restful sleep that’s also tracked.) And choosing a life with less stress and more balance, 7 hours is a good enough rhythm.

And something for you to clock in because stress and sleep is related.

Observe Your Sleep

While tracking a few nights for awareness, I observed I was getting less restful sleep and more light sleep. Hmmm… I thought, I wonder why that is?

All things being equal, I wanted to test the hypothesis that I had shallow breathing at night.

It dawned on me that my deep rest (restful sleep) may have been lessened by the shallower breathing or less air going into my lungs, as I breathed through my slightly congested nose.

Btw, breathing in air through your nose is a much better way than through your mouth as it is known to help increase memory. You have a filter in your nose that you don’t in your mouth. You can Google that if you want scientific-backed evidence.

These are 10 breathing exercises and habit tips for healthy living: Continue reading “10 Breathing Exercises, Better Sleep, and Healthy Habit Tips”

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5 Yoga Tree Pose Life Metaphors

We can use a yoga Tree Pose today and these days as a reminder and metaphor for our lives, and the trees that have impacted our lives.

Firstly, what is so special about trees that have meaning in our lives?

The obvious being that trees are growing, living creatures just like us humans with unique features. We know trees are alive because they bloom, shed leaves, and pollen (not their greatest spring dominant feature).

Trees can grow from a mere seed that fits in your hand to a super strong tree you can climb (similar to a growing person from an egg to an adult).

The appearance and rings on a tree can show age, as our human bodies and features do the same thing.

When I was growing up, we purposefully remembered trees on National Arbor Day. Usually, the celebration included the installment of a new baby plant at school. The remembrance of the special day has been crowded out by other hashtag events but you can do your appreciation just by looking out the window at the trees near you, or by getting in a yoga Tree Pose.

These days, we celebrate yoga days more than we do trees it seems, but luckily there is a standing pose that represents trees in yoga. We can appreciate trees from a personal growth perspective.

Trees are a metaphor for our lives.

In Tree, remind yourself of these 5 areas:

1.Growth and direction. You can change your yoga Tree Pose at any point. You can lift your right bended-knee leg to rest on your left shin, or you can lift your right leg higher to form a number “4” formation with your right foot rested on your left thigh (looking like a flamingo).

You can take your wide arms and open them to the sky, have them go straight up parallel to your ears, or bring them to heart center with prayer hands.

Your tree can go in any direction of your choosing. As you balance one leg, you can build up strength and notice one leg is usually stronger than the other.

2.Grounded. You can feel grounded with your feet planted on the floor, like a tree with a stump firmly rooted in the earth. When you’re not sent from busy task to task, you can gain clarity about your life and deliberate actions you take. You’re not wishy-washy, tossed to and from. You’re steadfast and purposeful like a tree.

3.Learning. A tree is also a symbol of knowledge. From trees, we make paper that we can bind together to make books that expand our minds.

The more branches we develop, the more we can become useful to the world. Animals can use our tree and we can impact the community around us like moss growing on trees.

As you grow older, you can become wiser and stronger as you’ve experienced situations to increase your know-how.

4.Being alive! If you feel a sensation in any of your parts, you can take that as a positive sign you’re alive. Your automatic breath is no longer a gift you take for granted, if you become consciously aware of your inhale and exhale.

In yoga, we do a lot of breathwork. The inhale is often when we’re facing up or lifting up, and exhale when we’re grounding down. The breath is a little different than when lifting weights in a gym. So don’t get confused. And you can pause at anytime and do 4-7-8 breathing.

Trees and plants don’t get confused. They play a sustainable role for us by giving off carbon dioxide. Without them, we would not have a life in our ecosystem.

5.Uniqueness. The more you practice your various yoga Tree Pose styles, the better your tree can enliven yourself as you let your roots develop into hybrid trees. You can have properties like a flexible and resilient palm, a durable evergreen, or a hardy cactus. You could have overlapping properties in your versatility and personality. Continue reading “5 Yoga Tree Pose Life Metaphors”

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Back to School Healthy Lunch Ideas + Easy Baked Protein Nuggets

Back to school healthy lunch ideas is always a good idea year-round. Like protein nuggets made with chicken (easy recipe below)… and that you can sub with chick peas for falafel nuggets like these:

And if you’re making lunches for an active agenda where you need lots of protein, chicken (nuggets) could be your efficient energy source. And included below are the steps… plus more ideas for healthy lunch ideas! Because lunch is still one of the most important meals of the day (so it shouldn’t be an afterthought).

When I was in highschool, I ate with the same Lunch Bunch (we called ourselves) everyday.

Until the school year ended… and then we hoped for the same lunch schedule the next school year. That didn’t always work out and brought in some anxiety the first week. You had to make new friends.

But lunch was comfort. It’s something I never skipped because I liked food (still do!) and needed the energy to get through the afternoon. Even though I didn’t have a prepared lunch, I had my menu choices in the school cafeteria.

School-bought lunches were for the most part served edible for younger tastes even if it was a cardboard-like cheese and sauce pizza or mystery meat chicken nuggets. And forgettable wimpy fries (…did those come from real potatoes?). This still blows my mind what is allowed to be fed in public schools.

Taking a McDonald’s field trip for a Happy Meal would’ve been healthier (and a tastier treat!).

I know in high school, I often opted for a soft, warm pretzel with yellow mustard for lunch over a “real meal.” It was at least warm (where sometimes the cafeteria food were served still a bit frozen).

In my teenage mind, a pretzel was a step up in gourmet junk food. And adding mustard was my “vegetable” to tie me over until dinner.

Back then, cafeteria lunch was not to Jamie Oliver’s standards.

School lunches weren’t consistent.

And today they’re still not…

…Maybe that’s why I chose a career in hotel catering management and restaurant food planning after my schooling. 💭

And that’s when I experientially learned there were much better food options. Now I know better.

And you know better.

So preparing your own back to school healthy lunch options is the better plan.

For growing and active individuals, carbs such as pasta early in the day helps provide that needed energy.

That way for dinner you can tone down on the carbs, or serve lesser complex carbs like rice or light bread that’s easier to digest later in the day. They’re okay on a BRAT (bread, rice, apple, toast) or a low FODMAP diet.

And then not be hungry to enjoy a plant-based dinner. That may have been missed earlier in the day.

And when you make your own lunches, you know exactly what you’re getting. These are some ideas of what you could make:

Back to School Healthy Lunch Ideas and Sides (Snacks):

Chickpeas, rice (good with slivered almonds), and cumin

Chicken, curry, and cucumbers

Chickpea, red lentil, spinach, veggie or whole-grain pasta

Tofu or chickpeas, spinach, and quinoa

Baked potato with tomato salsa

Sprouted Bread Gourmet Sandwich:

Salmon, avocado, and cayenne pepper

Smoky tuna melt with a slice of cheese, and turmeric

Prosciutto and brie

Tomato, mozzarella, basil with a drizzle of balsamic

Instead of accompanying lunch with fries or chips, how about a healthy side?…

Hummus.

Olives – green and black.

Pickles (or cornichons if you want to get fancy!)

Edamame.

Almonds.

Apples. Choose a variety.

Bell peppers.

Carrots.

Cheese and crackers.

Cherry Tomatoes.

Cucumbers.

Currants or raisins.

Beverage Ideas:

Lemon juice water (lemonade without sugar)

Sun or homemade iced tea

Sparkling water (check sugar content as they range)

A fun way to zhugh up a drink is to add some orange, lemon, or lime zest. You can make a batch, store in a cup with a lid in your refrigerator, and that way you have some available when you need to add a final touch.

And those beverages go well with chicken nuggets for back to school healthy lunch ideas.

Easy Chicken Nuggets Recipe

If you’re at home, rinse off a few raw chicken breasts with cool water. Pat dry. Add a little EVOO, salt, and pepper ontop the chicken. Add Panko bread crumbs ontop if you want to make breaded chicken nuggets.

Then bake your chicken breasts on 350°F/180°C oven for no less than 50-55 minutes in a glass baking pan (I’d suggest). Make sure you cook the chicken all the way through (no pink inside) to a safe 165°F/75°C.

After cooled, cut up chicken into strips or cube chunks. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, and then when it’s time for a meal, heat up (medium heat) a portion on a stove-top with a skillet. Sautee or brown the chicken to your liking. Great with a salad, rice, or pasta.

Delish and simple… and then you have several meals for you and those you feed!

Easy Baked Protein Nuggets - Chicken or Chick peas Healthy Lunch

This is a versatile protein meal that you can make with chick peas or chicken. It's an easy to make meal that just needs baking time but very little preparation.

Course lunch

Cuisine American

Prep Time 5

Cook Time 5 55

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Instructions

Prepare the chicken: Rinse off a few raw chicken breasts with cool water. Pat dry. Add a little drizzle of EVOO, salt, and pepper ontop the chicken. Or for breaded protein nuggets, lightly coat with olive oil.
Add Panko bread crumbs ontop if you want to make breaded chicken nuggets. The Panko will stick to the olive oil.
Then bake your chicken breasts on 350°F/180°C oven for no less than 50-55 minutes in a glass baking pan or similar so the chicken doesn't dry out too much. Make sure you cook the chicken all the way through (no pink inside) to a safe consumption measurement that's 165°F/75°C.
If you're substituting chick peas (instead of chicken), you can cook chick peas or mash canned/already cooked chick peas and make round nugget shapes, and bake for about 15-20 minutes.
After cooled, cut up chicken into strips or cube chunks. Tip: Adults cook the chicken and the kids make the nuggets after cooked.

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Barre Class Gives You Nice Legs and Teaches You Personal-Growth

Barre class can be a metaphor for what we need to grow ourselves. When you think of a row of ballerinas with their arabesques, port de bras, and extended swan necks, you can be reminded of control and grace–what we all need in life for better performance and balance.

You can also grow strong. When you have control over your body in a certain position, your muscles are flexing to build strength.

Don’t be fooled with thin and dainty ballerinas as they have very strong legs (and toes)! They’re usually slender, have Vata-like bodies where they are aware of every body position from the waist down to the crown of their heads and through their fingertips.

To get in perfect positions, they have concentrated mind-body awareness. If they lose focus then they could soon fall or be out of alignment.

If you aspire to have ballerina moves, that usually requires hours of imperfect practice. A Nutcracker play ballerina has paid their dues.

To start, you can make your life easy and see how the barre concept feels especially if you’re new, by trying a mild, less-strenuous workout in a barre class.

You usually start off standing along a bar as your equipment. And if you’re doing this from home, you can use a chair. It’s that simple!

One of the first things you want to think of is extended height. That requires stamina and strong legs and specifically upper leg strength in your quadricep muscles (quads) that could give you the endurance you need.

That’s not something you develop overnight, but you may be naturally more built out in that area. That’s the opposite of someone who wants to try-out for America’s Ninja Warrior show. There you see athletic men and women alike on the show who have demonstrated strong upper body strength. We’re all given different strengths in comparison.

And ballerinas are athletes, with strong quads. Like everyone else, you can develop your legs in other ways every day. Like, climbing stairs or doing squats in place. And say you want to take an outdoor 20 plus mile bike ride, having strong upper leg muscles will help give you the extra strength and extra oomph to push you over the hills.

A great way to develop your quads is by following a barre class.

If you take a class, that can be just as effective through video, you can lose your inhibition. You’re focused on your screen and mimicking the instructor and not thinking how silly you look with self-consciousness and awkward body movements (that we all have).

Your body doesn’t care how ridiculous you can look to move its joints, muscles, and all the parts gluing your butterfly parts together. It’s just happy you’re moving and that’s what you can positively focus on.

Similar to learning foundational yoga poses for a yoga class, you can learn and focus your attention on ballet positions for a barre class.

You can even find that you’ve known or been doing some of the French named barre positions for years without knowing how that they would be practical in your barre class now.

What I love most about barre class:

I do think barre is a Vata-designed workout. ♥ ♥

A Vata person’s middle name is Variety.

Choosing to take a barre class is a variety from the norm while the type of exercise is growing in popularity. The crux of the class can be ballet moves, but most barre classes incorporate moving to the floor for pilates and yoga poses.

You just never know what kind of journey your barre instructor can take you on and how intense the workout is until you get a sense of the instructor’s style.

If that unknown element of what-happens-next appeals to you, then you may have a ‘lil more Vata in you than you think (we all have some trace).

If in your recreational time, you still like to know every move you’ll be taking and that’s expected, then you could be more Pitta/Kapha dominant or falling into those stronger imbalances.

In any case, life is full of surprises so taking a barre class can help you become flexible.

By the way, do you know what your main dosha is?

If you want to know the reverse, what is not happening the way you want, then you can take the balance restoration, Body Balance Quiz, to find out what you can do to get back to yourself.

If you pay attention and learn to get in awareness of your natural body tendencies, then you can lean into your ways and not be so hard on yourself. We can wonder why we’re different in some ways from our friends and people we admire.

Doshas may be one insightful clue and a more fun way (leaning into your natural strengths) to follow in life.

Be encouraged, many others share your mind-body type. You just have to find your peeps. They’re out there!

barre

But back to barre… whether you’re a natural Vata body-mind type or not, you get a mix of a heart-pumping workout with very few breaks to catch your breath, unlike these peeps just standing around. …sorry, Easter is in a couple weeks, so I couldn’t resist the reference!

One class I went to regularly for a season had exercises where you moved from one end of the room to the other, mimicking a Nutcracker Toy Solder.

Repeating the movement takes body coordination and also self-discipline, as you’re trying to look cookie-cutter mechanical. Concentration is good mind-body health (and can help a Vata-sporadic brain get back in line).

Making even-movements is a talent that I don’t have today (maybe you do and could consider trying-out for the Rockettes!), but whatever the case you still can have your best-attempt version.

In that one class, we learned how to march across a room with our stiff arm and leg movements, and afterward we each picked up a stability ball for an even more energizing workout.

We transformed from gliding Ballerinas to marching Toy Soldiers to Downward-Facing Dogs. …Phew! I was tired.

So next time you’re wondering if you should give barre a try, here are few surprise benefits that can help sway you:

-Increasing mind-body awareness

-Developing grace and better performance

-Building strength and resilience

-Finding self-discipline and self-control (that leads to bigger and better things!)

And if you can’t dance, barre is a good alternative to say Zumba, as you’ll still be on your toes and you may just become a ‘lil more aware which is the right, left foot 😊

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