The breakfast of wannabees

Goodbye Olympic athletes. I have so much to thank you for. No sleep from watching, a sore throat from screaming, jealousy from comparing.

During the day, I’m inspired to become stronger, fitter, sharper. But at night, without you, what will I do? I’ll sulk around the house trying to find anything that feels as exciting, as dramatic, as suicidal as watching you perform one more twist, turn, toe loop, twizzle.

You’re a hard act to follow.

But there’s a bright spot. One I believe will survive long after you’re gone and I forget to push harder, pull longer. No, it’s not the realization you’re a different species than I am. What you’ve left is as simple as a bowl of cereal. In fact, it’s exactly that. It’s the luscious acai bowl. Thank you for esteeming the purple fruit!

For the past couple of years, the acai berry has been touted as a favorite superfood of trendy Olympians. Found on Amazon palm trees, and laden with buzz-word antioxidants, it captured attention during the 2016 games in Rio and apparently, among athletes, is still going strong.

Whipped up in a blender and topped with fruit and nuts, it’s like dessert for breakfast. So cool, so creamy, so packed with Olympic power.

You don’t need to sell me, I love purple. But you do need to sell my husband — the bagel-and-cream cheese king. And lest I single him out, other folks would agree nuts and berries are for chimps not champs.

And yet, while watching the Olympics on vacation in Hawaii — where all trendy things would land, fly, swim or be carried if it wasn’t so far — he ate three bowls after we learned athletes were doing the same. Thank you team! Day One: With his eyes darting left and right, we pass a handful of bagels in a café window, lots of egg joints, and head up a flight of stairs to Basik Café in Kona on the Big Island. It’s been hard to find great bowls in the Philly burbs, but not in Hawaii.

I order all the trendy extras — bee pollen, chia seeds, goji berries. I’m going for gold-plated nutrition.

Ray dips his toe lightly, gets his bowl with cocoa powder and carob nibs. It’s a start. Day Two: Once you’re watched Olympians soar off the ice in Korea, and the whales soar out of the water in Kona, you do have to set the bar incredibly high to find any ordinary pleasure like breakfast even worth doing.

The bagel king isn’t convinced of the new routine. He humored me once, passed up those doughy excuses for protein and nutrition — but really, he wants to get back to basics, not Basik.

“But the breakfast of champions . . .” I croon. My technical skill and artistic expression score higher than his. We look for whales, we eat our second bowl,

we check the Olympic results. Day Three: We pretend we’re preparing for the summer

games and do a long morning swim. Then I pull off my goggles and confront the hardest part of the day: “What do you want for breakfast?”

“How about a bowl?” he says. No prompting, no pressure, no yelling about deductions in his overall training score. We climb the stairs again, feel healthy, disciplined. He’s more amazed than I am. The berry is boss. Back Home: The big Olympic jumps, the Big Island, the big humpback whales combine to make us believe we can

come home and do something big ourselves. With the games still in the background, I immediately pull out the blender, research recipes, and buy all the fixings for our own custommade, low-fat, low-sugar, new great-way-to-start-theday breakfast.

We may not be able to hold onto a triple toe loop, or even touch our toes some days, but we can be competitive. We can make a big medal-winning bowl with that little purple champion.

Even if it does come with a bagel and a schmear on the side.