What to eat for breakfast with kidney stones

So, I have a kidney stone. What can I eat for breakfast? Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast, the show about reducing your kidney stone risk and living your best life.

I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

And I'm Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse.

Yeah, so today, we are talking food. We're talking maybe the most important meal of the day, I think it's debatable, but breakfast. I mean, we love our breakfast foods.

It's It's just sort of a magic to that. You have your extra like maybe some sweet, and things you don't normally get for lunch or dinner. But with kidney stones, how does that change how we should look at breakfast?

What can we actually eat when we have kidney stones?

Well, here's what I've learned in up 30 years, almost, talking to patients. Y'all are just eating oatmeal, or spinach smoothie with almond milk. That's what y'all are doing every day.

"Well, Jill, I've eaten this oatmeal for 32 years. The same thing every single day. Not even a freaking berry is in the oatmeal.

It's just oatmeal." So, and then a lot of my patients say, "I don't eat breakfast." And they'll be like, "I don't eat breakfast, so you going to tell me I have to eat breakfast?" No. If you notice, the Kidney Stone Diet goals are just that. It's a set of goals.

We tell you, we don't want you to go above this for salt and added sugar, get your calcium, certainly hydrate, don't eat too much meat, but certainly have it if you like, and pay attention to oxalate, but don't freak out about it cuz it's not that big of a deal once you take away spinach and almonds. And so, the reason I like the goals is because you all have your own lifestyle.

You don't want to eat breakfast? Don't eat breakfast. But here's what I Here's what I'll have to say.

It doesn't take away what I'm saying. If you don't want to eat breakfast, don't eat breakfast. But here's something that's very common.

"Well, Jill, I don't eat breakfast. I have lettuce for lunch. I have a dinner and, you know." And then I say, "And" And maybe the person's like two 250, 300 lb.

And I say, "Well, what do you do for the rest of the night?" "Well, Jill." So, what I have found is a lot of people that don't eat breakfast, because they think they're going to save calories there, they're overeating them at nighttime, when they're watching their shows, okay? So, I have spent many of my years not eating breakfast, and within the last 5 years, I do eat breakfast.

I do what works for me. Jeff does what works for him, and you, dear viewer, please do what works for you. So, this is not a video about you must eat breakfast.

I'm glad Jeff prefaced that. But there's so much you can eat for breakfast. So, now, listen to what I do eat for breakfast.

So, I make my own breakfast. Usually, usually, you'll be surprised, there's one of two things I do. If I'm having breakfast with my coffee, I will have one of my baked goods.

Lately, I have had, and when I tell you this is good, folks, I'm not lying, cuz if it wasn't that good, I wouldn't bring it up. I have It was just put into the meal plan. It's called a Pumped Up Protein Scone, Pumpkin Protein Scone, something.

You know, I make up all kinds of names. 20 grams of protein, nice and dense. That's why I called it a scone.

And no added sugar. And when I tell you it's pumpkiny, pumpkin-spicy, it is. I make it with oat flour, so it's kind of like oatmeal, I just bake it.

Delicious, 20 grams of protein. There's fiber in there. I make it with pumpkin protein, powder, pumpkin seed protein powder.

Delicious. That's new in the meal plan. In the meal plan, we have almost 70 different breakfasts, some for vegans, some for vegetarians, some for meat-eaters, whatever you want.

So, I'm just going to give you a list of all kinds of things you can have for breakfast: oat cake berry bake, and you're going to see, cuz remember, I'm eating everything in my meal plan, there's going to be a lot of baked goods, cuz that's what I like for breakfast. If I eat breakfast later, then I'm usually having like a dinner-type thing.

Like today, I woke up at 5:00. I had breakfast at 10:00, and it was like a full-on turkey dinner. So, you know, cuz I was already up for 5 hours or whatever.

So, to me, that was lunch. Anyway, but I didn't want I didn't want that for breakfast. I had no more baked goods that I've made left, so I waited till later to eat so I can have like a major lunch.

So, the oat cake berry bake, high-protein banana bread mug cake, delicious, high-protein bagels, homemade bagels, easy peasy, made with Greek yogurt and oat flour. Could have it for lunch, breakfast. But on this breakfast sandwich, I had like, eggs and, you know, low-sodium sa- sausage, things like that.

Right, so I just had my own Egg McMuffin, but I made my own bagels. Delicious, high protein. Go ahead.

What would you actually say then for subbing, maybe? When someone's looking at the baked goods, would you say the oat flour is the go-to? I know the pumpkin seed flour, like how would you say someone maybe they have a go-to recipe that they already love.

What might they think about when they look at making it?

Yeah, so say they're making something that they Yeah, so what I do if somebody Maybe you, Jeff, are going to make the same thing as me, but you're going to use white flour and I'm going to sub out that white flour. Say you're using 1 cup of white flour, I'm going to use 3/4 cup of oat flour and the other 1/4 pumpkin seed protein powder, okay?

So, that's how I'm going to sub it out. I don't use white flour in my cooking. I want to get some fiber.

Why do you use oat flour, girl? I actually use, and in my meal plan, I always say what I use, and I always give substitutions. You don't want to use that, use this.

You don't want to use that, use this. But what I use as a flour substitute is my Bob's Red Mill Oat Bran High Fiber Cereal, so it gives me, instead of white flour having no protein and no fiber, my flour substitute gives me protein and fiber, and that's what I'm looking for. I'm not baking so I could be hungry in 10 minutes, I'm baking so I'm full, but I also want it to taste like a cake, for Pete's sake.

What, am I a nun? So, you know, I like eating foods like that, and I especially like eating foods like that with my coffee, so I just make my own. So, I would sub it, and instead of butter, I will use Greek yogurt, cuz that ups the protein, too.

Now, I don't use Greek yogurt, old lady, so I would use maybe applesauce more as a binder, right? Because maybe somebody doesn't want to do dairy, so you'd or you do egg whites, if you don't want to do dairy. So, there's other ways to get around it to substitute.

Now, I use, which people don't have to, people have love-hate relationships with sweeteners, I will use stevia. Many kidney stone formers think that stevia is high oxalate. The plant is, once it's processed, there's zero oxalate in it.

So, I use a brown sugar substitute made with stevia, that works well for me, but I'll say in the notes of the meal plan, "You may not It may not work well for you. Use what sugar sweetener works for you." Or if you want to use half-and-half, some regular sugar, just count the added sugar in it, right? So, you can do I have things like high-protein chai-spiced donuts for breakfast.

There's no added sugar, so I'm I'm I'm substituting white flour for the oat bran flour, zero oxalate, by the way, for the for the oat bran, and, and, always take out some and put a protein powder in there. I like the protein powder made from just pumpkin seeds because there's no salt at all, so that's a big deal. I will use, sometimes, like isolate whey isolate, because I'm lactose intolerant in my recipes, but it does have salt.

So, I kind of go back and forth. Sometimes, I really like a vanilla flavor, and the pumpkin seed protein powder is unflavored, so I'll use the whey isolate, but, you know, some people can use whatever they have in their kitchen that works for them. So, I'm never like, "You have to use my products," and I will always offer you substitutions often in my notes.

I will say, "Your kitchen, your rules." You don't like what I had as a side dish, here's use other things. You're a vegan, try this. There's a lot of things like avocado toast, right?

That's avocado toast with tomato, or, you know, high-protein apple cake bar, you'll see where I'm going, there's a lot of baked goods, a Blissful Belly Smoothie. You want a green drink, but there ain't no spinach in it, you'll have celery, kale, lime, mint, pineapple, and kefir. Kefir has protein and gut-healthy bacteria, because it's fermented.

And why no almonds or spinach for anyone who might not actually know?

Almonds and spinach are two of the highest things on a high-oxalate diet, and these are two of the most popular foods that people overeat. When people, typically, kidney stone formers, are overeating spinach and almonds, along with not getting any calcium in their diet, that's why they had high oxalate, and a lot of times, so many of the times, a high percentage of my patients will tell me, 75, 80% of my patients, "Well, Jill, I was diabetic, so I changed my diet.

The dietitian said, 'Eat some almonds,' and so between what the dietitian said and what the patient actually did, they went to Costco, got the almond bag as big as my body and were eating them all day long." And so, you know, a very small amount 1 oz of almonds is 122 mg of oxalate. 1 cup of spinach is 700 mg of oxalate.

So, you can clearly see that you get 100 mg of oxalate a day, unless you have malabsorption issues, then you only get 50. So, you're going to break that bank with just 1 cup of spinach, and usually when people are not eating 1 cup of spinach, cuz it steams down to, you know, a tablespoon. It's ridiculous.

So, they're overeating those things, and those ingredients, spinach and almonds, were really put in smoothies, the almond flour for paleo people used all the time for baked goods. So, you know, those products have really done a lot of people in. Then, I'll have people say, "Well, Jill, my cousin Bobby eats those two things all the time." He's not a stone former.

He's not predisposed to forming stones. Just like people can smoke their whole life, never get cancer. There are those people that don't, right?

So, some people are prone to stones and some people aren't. So, breakfast, you know, it doesn't have

Well, with that, too, I just wanted to jump in real quick. With that, too, the oxalate is only one portion, you know? Like the kidney stone diet has so many goals because oxalate alone isn't just it.

Like, like cousin whoever who can eat all of that, maybe they have everything else dialed in, and so that works for them.

Jeff, and that's very true, too. I can't tell you, just the, a post on my Facebook, Advice from Nurse Jill, "I wish you guys would not freak out so much about oxalate." Here's why though people do. So, those are just a bunch of examples of low-oxalate meals, very filling, low-salt, most of my recipes have no added sugar.

And there's 70 of them just right just breakfast. So, there's lots of options. Now, you can pick, and I'm Don't let me forget about the oxalate part.

You definitely can pick, you want five breakfasts, fine, but not the same two for the rest of your life. Your gut likes a lot of different vegetables and fruits and variety, okay? So, I know that breakfast is a pain in the tush for a lot of people, cuz they want to have it and go right out the door.

A lot of my meal plan breakfasts are also prepared beforehand and you got them all week long. But then the next week, you try something different, right? So, always trying to The meal plan is about, you know, trying different things, too, and I can't tell you how many people were like, "I would have never thought to do that, and now it's one of my favorite things." Oxalate, before we shut this video down.

I wish people would be just as crazy about salt and sugar and the fluids as they are about the oxalate. And the reason you guys are so anxious about the oxalate, because if you do Google kidney stones, that's one thing that's going to come up, and every site you look at will have different information. And you just got off of having a kidney stone that sent you in the hospital with the worst pain of your life, so now you're just lost.

And if you just stick to Kidney Stone Diet, you'll never need another, and I'm I'm just telling you, because I've had such success in my career, and I have a lot of data over 30 years of successful patients, and it's not They just took away the spinach and almond products. It's not that, it's all the other teaching. There's so much free resources at Kidney Stone Diet.

But, you know, you'll get your urine collection back and the doctor says the oxalate's fine, and then you call me a few months later with a new stone, you're like, "Why am I making stones, Jill? My doctor said my oxalate's fine." Because your salt and sugar and fluids and pro- It's all off the charts. But the doctor, too, is only focused on oxalate, cuz maybe they don't know how to read those urine collections very well, you know?

So, it's really important. I want you guys, if you take one thing, there's lots of stuff to eat for breakfast, there's that, but the other thing is oxalate is the least important part of this diet once you take away like a just three or four foods tops and get your calcium needs met. I really want you to freak out about salt and sugar, because lowering those two things in your diet means you're eating healthier overall and you can stop diabetes or at least help it, your A1C can go down, blood pressure, cardiovascular risk goes down.

These are things that can really go down. So, if you want to freak out about anything, freak out about those Kidney Stone Diet goals. All right, Jeff, I've talked to you long this time.

No, I think that's perfect.

I got excited about all the meals, Jeff.

Well, yeah, so Kidney Stone Diet meal plans are at kidneystonediet.com, where every day of the week, you get four recipes: breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. So, you know exactly what you can eat. You don't have to eat all of it, but it's inspiration, like Jill said, inspiration to know just how much there is still available on your plate every single day,

Oh, my god, so much.

While still preventing kidney stones. So, I think with that, we'll wrap. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.

Bye, guys.