The Joy of Eating Ice Cream for Breakfast

Jun 16, 2012 · 4 minute read · Comments
ice creamfoodpaleorunningexerciseFiveFingersBrentwood Firecracker 5KFrick Park

Recently I started eating ice cream for breakfast. I was amused because this was something I haven’t done since I was a child, when my sister and I managed for a while to convince our parents to let us eat ice cream for breakfast.

Is there a contradiction between my eating ice cream for breakfast and my supposedly paying attention to my health?

How my sister and I got to eat ice cream as kids

As kids, my sister and I loved ice cream, of course. We managed to find a way to sometimes eat it for breakfast. Basically, we volunteered to make breakfast on some weekends. We had found some kid-oriented “cookbooks” at a garage sale or something at some point, and we learned about cinnamon toast and other such “American” breakfasts that were foreign to our parents. It was fun for us to take charge of breakfast once in a while, and have an excuse to make super-sugary concoctions to eat.

Frankly, it was easy enough for us in general to just say, “We’re eating American style”, in order to avoid eating rice porridge with dried shrimp bits and pork bone broth and greens (to tell the truth, I actually liked that, but at some point wanted to eat “American” like my classmates). But it was even more fun to be able to say, “We found this recipe in a book.”

A couple of times, we managed to get ice cream into the picture. We must have found a recipe that called for it. We got frozen waffles, and prepared them with syrup and topped with ice cream. I remember that being pretty good.

But ice cream is not a good food

I have to explain that Abby and I don’t eat ice cream much any more. We’ve found that it is too sugary and makes us feel tired or bloated in large quantities. You don’t have to be paleo to understand and experience the drawbacks of ice cream (not that we’re strictly paleo anyway).

However, I’m a big believer in intermittent cheating, so I’m happy to eat ice cream now and then as a special treat, but otherwise, I don’t really need it.

Why I had to eat ice cream for breakfast

I didn’t buy this bucket of Trader Joe’s Coffee Bean Blast ice cream; Abby did. She thought it would be a nice post-hike treat. Unfortunately, it has turned out in the past months that whenever we go out on a weekend for a hike or some other outdoors adventure, we come back in the evening, and it’s too late to eat this ice cream.

The problem is caffeine. Eating this ice cream would mess up our night of sleep. In fact, I verified this once, eating some of the ice cream in the evening: oops.

Frustrated, I didn’t know when I could eat this coffee ice cream. Clearly, the only time I could possibly eat it would be before late afternoon. Furthermore, the only safe context for me to eat something like this would be after I exercised. Since I have a preference for exercising in the morning before breakfast anyway, the perfect time for eating this ice cream was breakfast. Generally, after exercising, I can eat sugary foods to an extent without compromising my energy levels.

What I did to earn my breakfast

I went for a five-mile run in Frick Park. I wore my Vibram FiveFingers Bikila LS shoes.

My real breakfast

At breakfast, I eat only two spoons of ice cream, actually. That is enough to satisfy me. At this rate, I’ll take forever to finish that tub. More reason for me to exercise every morning this summer!

I followed up with the rest of my breakfast, which is typical of what I’ve been eating since completely abandoning my former oatmeal breakfast.

• Two eggs fried with spice mix and olive oil
• Spinach from our Kretschmann Farm box
• Sweet potatoes and bacon bits
• Walnuts
• Strawberries

Oh, and Abby I have signed up for the Brentwood Firecracker 5K race. I last did that race eleven years ago, in 2001. I have a serious goal of beating my time from that year!

I have only two more weeks of training with ice cream, before running the race. Wish me luck!