Taking a Closer Look at Breakfast in P90X Nutrition

These days everybody knows the importance of nutrition in any serious workout regimen. If you just hit the gym and pump iron while wolfing down cheeseburgers and slurping on cokes you’ll get no-where, fast, except perhaps tired and sick. The emphasis is clear: eat right, or don’t bother working out. Add sleep to the mix, and you have the holy trinity of a smart, effective workout. Exercise, eat, sleep. Doesn’t get simpler, which is why programs like P90X and Shaun T’s INSANITY come with their own nutrition guide. But how serious are these guides? Are they simply a collection of suggested recipes, or is there something more? To understand the issue better, I’ve selected a couple of P90X breakfasts to examine in closer detail. Bear with me folks. We’re going in.

Opening the P90X Nutrition Guide, I quickly realize that there is a lot of text before we even get to the recipes. The Guide itself is, what, about 115 pages long, and the recipes only start around page 25. Like most people I skip the intro’s and the blah blah blah’s, and cut right to the food, but then stop once again. Looking at the Phase 1 – Fat Shredder section, I see that most of the recipes are listed several times, each designated Level 1, or 2, or 3. What? So, resigned, I go back to the beginning, and try to find an explanation for this break down.

Turns out the Nutrition Guide is not a static roadmap that is identical for each user, but rather something you’re supposed to tailor to your own needs depending on your goals (lose weight, conserve, or gain) and your caloric requirements. A couple of simple formulas, and you figure out whether you’re supposed to be eating 1,800 to 2,399 calories a day, or whatever. That then dictates which ‘Level’ recipe you cook, since the higher the level, the more calories.

Ok. So say I’m trying to pack on the muscle, and am a Level III kind of guy. Six small meals a day, the most important of which (so I’ve always been told by me mum) is breakfast. I hate eating in the mornings, so these recipes better be good. What’s on the menu? Let’s see: Chicken Scramble, Level III. 596 calories, 90g of protein, 40g of carbs, 8g fat. That is a freaking ton of protein. A boiled egg has like 9g, a typical protein shake might have about 25g/scoop. The recipe: 10 egg whites, 4oz cooked and dice chicken breast, 4oz fat free Parmesan cheese, 1 tbsp fresh basil. Simple enough. Directions: beat the egg whites, add to pan, stir and cook till halfway set, add chicken and cook through. Add salt, pepper, fresh basil, and then eat it. Well, easy enough for even me to cook when bleary eyed in the morning. And simple enough that I can eat it without much effort.

What else? A bunch of the breakfasts are combos of oatmeal & skim milk, or whole wheat bagel & cottage cheese, or whole wheat waffles and a banana. Simple, no cooking, and pretty darn healthy. Let’s look at one more recipe: Pear and Granola Muffin. Baking a muffin in the morning? This I have to see. Whoa. About fifteen ingredients: pear nectar, egg whites, lemon juice, veg oil, flour, sugar, granola, etc. So this is some serious cooking. 227 calories, 5g protein, 5g fat, 43g carbs. Directions: preheat oven to 350, whisk ingredients together, stir flours and sugar in a medium bowl, mix in other ingredients, add pear, stir in flour mix, bake until golden brown (about 20 min). To be honest? Sounds delicious, but the odds of my cooking this first thing in the morning are slim. However, given that everything else is incredibly simple (like bagels and cottage cheese, or a protein shake), perhaps a couple of complex recipes like this are welcome for the mornings when I’m feeling more adventurous.

So there you have it. Looks like the Nutrition Guide is a) long, b) customizable, c) pretty simple on the most part to prepare. The breakfasts at least seem pretty intuitive, and while it’s not ground breaking stuff, it’s nice to see it all laid out and ordered like it is so you don’t have to try to figure it out on your own first thing in the morning. One thing’s for sure: I now wish I’d done more than grab a cup of coffee while heading out the door!