Avoid the temptation to break your fast with junk food! Here's how to prep your pantry for the ideal #FastBreaker meal. Take our grocery list with you to the store so you can create a healthier "Default Food Environment"

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There's a reason you're not supposed to go grocery shopping when you're hungry. Well, there's also a reason you're not supposed to have the wrong kind of food on hand. 

When you break a fast, you want to make sure that your pantry is stocked up with the right things so that as soon as you break your fast, your go-to's are the healthy options. So you're at the end of your fast. So you think it's time to just totally indulge, right? Wrong, right now is the period of time where you need to be making the best possible decision. 

The effectiveness of your fast is only as good as what you have on hand to break your fast with. So I always recommend stocking your pantry ahead of time. And a quick little tip is to stock your pantry at eye level with exactly what you want to break your fast way. So simple things like rice cakes, something that's a very clean, somewhat insulinogenic food to consume. I can explain more about that than another series. 

Also things that are rich in protein. So usually some kind of jerky snack or some kind of jerky stick, possibly even some protein powder. 

Another thing that you could do is have your fridge ready to go with maybe some chicken breasts. It's already been cooked up. The idea behind breaking your fast as you want to keep it lean and controlled. 

You don't want to be mixing a lot of fats and carbohydrates and proteins all at once because simply put, that's just hard for your body to break down. You don't want to load down your digestive system with a bunch of nutrients at once. You want to give it what it needs, which at that point in time is generally protein and if you're not following a low carb diet, some kind of easy to digest carbohydrate.

Some of my favorite go-to's to have in my pantry are going to be rice cakes in an organic form. Then I'm going to have corn tortillas, another kind of grain that's easy to break down, that's not going to be full of gluten. Then I'm going to have some kind of beef sticks or beef jerky that doesn't have any gluten in it because gluten can be pretty hard on the gut, especially after fast. Then I'll usually have some kind of pea protein powder laying around. 

I try to avoid fats right when I break my fast. Even though they're an amazing pantry item, to usually have on hand, they're just a little hard to break down right when your digestive system is coming off a little vacation. 

Another thing that I recommend having an eye level in your pantry shelf is going to be some bone broth. Now, bone broth is a great way to break a fast, no matter who you are, but it doesn't have to be your sole staple for breaking a fast. It's usually the first kind of segue of food coming in your body. You have that bone broth and it helps support that gut mucosal layer, and then you can have your protein and you can have your carbohydrates, so I definitely recommend that. 

Additionally, one of the things that I like to do is have some red potatoes on hand. Super inexpensive, super easy to get, and you just take four or five ounces or a regular size, red potato, microwave, bake it, whatever you want to do with it. The caveat is that you cannot put any butter or any oil or anything like that on it. The idea is you're having a clean starch that's going to provide your body with what it needs to effectively break your fast and break it fast. That way your body says, wait a minute, I'm not in fasting mode anymore. It's time to eat. It's time to start absorbing nutrients, so be very, very careful not to add anything else to that potato. 

And an extra little hack for those of you that want to absorb a little bit more protein and utilize it better, keep some fish oil pills on hand. There have been some studies that have shown that fish oil and the Omega threes within fish oil can help increase what is called mTOR activation via a specific pathway called P70s6k. What that means in simple terms is that your body has the ability to synthesize more protein in the presence of Omega-3s. So if you're consuming protein, you give your body more of an opportunity to synthesize that protein and actually build new muscle from it. Now I'm pretty regimented when it comes down to breaking my fast, so I have loads of lean protein on hand so that I can make that proper decision. 

And just a quick thing to note, this meal isn't supposed to be glamorous. Okay? You're breaking your fast. This is just a small meal. I will tell you 60 or 90 minutes later, you get to have more flexibility and you get to reap the benefits of that flexibility that you can have during your eating window. So if you want to get a list, the fasting essentials that I would recommend for after you break your fast and beyond during your eating window, make sure you click down below. And that way you can get a downloadable version of my fasting grocery list.

How to Stock Your Pantry Before a Fast

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