Until you eat a well-balanced breakfast regularly, you don’t know how that meal kick-starts your day.

Eating the same breakfast day after day, to me, is like watching the same movie over and over; eventually, it doesn’t do a thing for you no matter how much you liked it the first three or four times. When I worked early mornings, I would make the same yogurt smoothie to drink at my desk. Problem is, my schedule was so screwed up, my metabolism never balanced out. Long story short, a varied breakfast menu and working out at least three times a week has helped me look at balanced meals in a whole new way.

My husband and I are doing something new. When we eat out, we often find one entree we like and split it. The other evening, we ordered a cup of soup, steamed little neck clams and the broiled seafood platter. So many times that’s what one person orders. We ordered that for two and it was perfect.

Today at a local restaurant known for its huge breakfast portions and a choice of 200 omelet, I resisted temptation and stuck with a salad topped with a huge scoop of chicken salad. While that chicken salad was probably not so calorie-friendly, it was a lot better than the two to three-person-sized omelets that most people were downing as a single serving. Yikes!

So, think about those restaurant portions and what you really want to eat.