Beer!

Tom
.

Amino acid protein powder as opposed to protein powder with no amino acids? ;p

I am not a morning person either, especially in spring, after waking up a hot cup of ginger tee fololwed by breakfast of your choice and a banana shake. I make the shake for my kids too (a bit fussy about milk) and they seems to be happy too. And try the shake with a bit ripe banana and I also add a few almonds which I had soaked in water the night before.
good luck and yes sit in the sun, that really helps.

Duh! Serves me right for posting when it's late and I'm half asleep

Just for reference, my favorite protein powders are Nutribiotic Spectrum Shake and Solgar Whey to Go. I found both of these to be the most palatable out of all the protein powders I've tried (and I've tried many), and they are both energizing. Actually, my nutritionist recommended the Spectrum shake, saying it has ALL the amino acids (she said some protein powders don't have the entire chain) as well as minerals. iHerb has both of these as well.*

*no affiliation with any of the above-mentioned products or entities

I'm not a morning person, but I always arrive at work feeling full of energy and ready to go. Admittedly this can be as late as 10am if I don't have any early meetings, but even so.

My trick? Grumble, swear and roll out of bed. Straight into the shower. Get dressed. Cycle at a decent pace to the office.

None of that "relax over breakfast" or "brew a nice cup of coffee" stuff. I can eat and make coffee once I'm in the office.

Although the old saying is "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" I've also read that kicking the body into life with exercise, before even eating anything, is actually good for you. As is skipping meals. I've been doing it this way for years and although not thin, I'm not as fat as I "should" be comsidering the amount of food I chomp through.

Well I have a bad habit of pulling all-nighters on a regular basis due to my work, so I am not new to the problem...

I usually have a couple of things I do to keep my energy:

- Drink coffee
- Wash my face every 2-3 hours
- Drink water regularly
- If stressed or tired, drink a hot Camomile Tea
- Take regular breaks
- Don't forget to go to the bathroom on a regular basis
- Eat healthy

I have a coffee and some toast but the best thing I find that gets me energized regardless of how tired or down I am is my kids they just have so much energy and it transfers to me every moment I see them, thye just make things better and show me that getting up each day is a real joy to have such a great family around...Dont get me wrong they are a bit naughty some times but thats what its all about they're only learning to grow up.. Anyway I know its not a food or energy drink but I feel much its way better than giving your body something that will only last a couple of hours where this lasts all day long...

Coffee is the key to success!

Wash your face every 2-3 hour?!

cold shower, works every time

Orange juice merely gives you a sugar/fructose high...the main cause of mankind's modern diseases incl. insulin resistance, obesity, heart disease etc. etc. Suggest you leave that off.

Best for me is Mountain Dew........(cheap, but not in switzerland , 2.50-3 sfr for 0.33 L Tin), in the UK , there are 0.5 L or 1L Bottles, in the US there are up to 2 L Bottles
Contains 18mg Caffeine every 100ml Mountain Dew, taste is awesome

Shower- not alive until I get out of there. Then Thyroxine, sea kelp and Selenium for my busted thyroid + porridge and coffee, followed by orange juice.

Thank goodness I rarely have to get up early these days - although one Association I belong to insists on meeting at 7.45, and I live 30 mins away, duh

Thanks for the chia tip. Just ordered some chia seeds from Samara.
Have ordered them from the US till now.

Why? Just because one consumes healthy sugars (=sugars like fructose in non-sweetened orange or fruit juice), it doesn't mean that one will develop these illnesses. Oranges also supply very important vitamins that one might not come across as readily during the day.

A glass of OJ (perhaps followed by two glasses of water to reduce the possibility of acid damage to tooth enamel) seems a perfectly reasonable energy booster to me...

One tip is to avoid alcohol, drink a milky drink, and go to bed 8 hours before you need to get up.

Second tip is to eat a proper breakfast, maybe a cheese sandwich and a glass of fruit juice? Proper food, not stimulants!

What is proper food?

a) Protein + dairy + carbohydrates (meat, yogurt + bread)
b) carbohydrates + protein (eggs + bread)
c) protein, dairy + carbohydrates (eggs, yogurt + bread)
d) protein, dairy, carbohydrates + fiber/fruits (pancakes, milk, OJ + a whole fruit)

My favorite would be d) at the moment, but is that considered a healthy breakfast? And do you consider it an energy booster?

Hi glowjupiter,
I went into this issue myself some time ago and here is my opinion...

To quote Dr. Robert Lustig in his video presentation on the University of California TV site he says, “My charge is to demonstrate that fructose is a poison”. And from a table in that presentation, “Chronic fructose exposure promotes the Metabolic Syndrome”. He goes on to define metabolic syndrome as, I quote, “obesity, type 2 diabetes, lipid problems, hypertension, and cardiac vascular disease” -- and he specifically mentions he doesn’t mean from glucose but from fructose exposure.

In Dr. Lustig’s professional opinion fructose has many similarities with alcohol in that both are almost only broken down in the liver, cause similar health problems, but with the big difference that fructose cannot enter the brain.

There are a whole bunch of other nutritional experts with similar opinions and although as Americans they mainly are taking high-fructose corn syrup to task several also warn of the need to avoid fruit juice and only to eat a limited amount of fruit not exceeding about 15 grams of fructose per day.
One such expert is Gary Taubes, a scientific journalist who had an article published in the NY Times on April 13, 2011 entitled, “Is Sugar Toxic?”.

Therefore calling fructose "a healthy sugar" does fly in the face of modern nutritional knowledge. Then of course it depends who you are listening to – there are many “experts” from the high-fructose corn syrup lobby who will prove that fructose is absolutely harmless. I suggest you review the information for yourself.

PS While on the subject my morning pick me up is a cup of black tea with a good squeeze from half a lemon which is full of vitamin C but, as you may guess, is all but fructose free.

The thing that helped me wake up at 07:00 three days a week (the horror!) was the Philips Wake-up Light.

I've been using it for a year and recommend it to anyone as grumpy as me in the mornings (and anyone who hates cold showers - brr!). Basically it wakes you up in a nice way and you have a decent start to the day.

Without exaggeration, I can say that in a small but meaningful way it changed my life.