The Oatmeal Diet

Oatmeal is a grain which is full of essential nutrients your body needs. This article will consider a diet plan which revolves around this wonderful grain. Since it is very low in fat and high in soluble dietary fiber, oatmeal is a perfect food to model a diet around. Oatmeal is also very high in protein, and is a great source of complex carbs. This means that oatmeal will fill you up without having to eat too much of it and your body will digest it slowly so you won’t need to eat again for awhile. 

Because your body will slowly digest oatmeal you’ll receive a steady stream of energy throughout the day, not to mention the steadying effect it has on your blood sugar and blood pressure. The energy producing qualities of oatmeal don’t end there though, since oatmeal is also a good source of iron, an essential mineral which maintains healthy blood and keeps the body going. Oatmeal is also great for the heart, but perhaps the greatest thing about oatmeal from many people’s perspective is that it is actually very inexpensive. The following oatmeal diet won’t just save your money it will also help you lose between two to five pounds a week.

Some people recommend eating nothing but oatmeal during the first week of an oatmeal diet, but you needn’t be this extreme. Certainly restricting yourself to only oatmeal will help you lose weight, but it clearly comes at other costs as well. You many prefer to consume a more balanced diet and lose the weight over a longer period of time.

Now every meal on the oatmeal diet should contain oatmeal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy many other delicious foods with your oatmeal. For breakfast, have half a cup of oatmeal with half a cup of skim milk. You can add a tablespoon of raisins to your oatmeal, and you can have an apple. Now pack some fruit for work because when you start craving a mid-morning snack you can have half a cup of the fruit of your choice, preferably blueberries, bananas, oranges, grapes, or strawberries. For lunch, you should half a cup of oatmeal, half a cup of low fat yogurt, and you can have a small serving of green beans. Once again you can have a snack between lunch and dinner, though this time it should be some raw vegetables. Finally there’s dinner, you should once again have half a cup of oatmeal, but this time you can have something more substantial. You can have a large green salad and four ounces of grilled chicken.

Now nobody expects you to follow this exact same plan every single day, but if you change things around make sure the central idea is the same. For example, you can change chicken for fish, but not for hamburgers. If you use good judgment you’ll lose weight with the oatmeal diet and feel good while you’re doing it.