Oatmeal, it's a nutritious food packed
with fiber, relatively high protein for a non animal source, and is packed with
vitamins and minerals such as iron, vitamin A, vitamin b6, magnesium, calcium,
and more. But is the oatmeal diet is so good it can even help you lose ten
pounds in a week? Let's dig in. Hey this is Colin DeWaay I help you master your
metabolism so you can create the results you want while eating more food so if
that's something you're interested make sure you subscribe and click on that
Bell notifications so you don't miss anything.
So I recently heard of this
diet called the oatmeal diet and I honestly didn't think much of it at
first I'm typically not a big fan of diets with a name because losing weight
is all about creating a calorie deficit and short term diets lead to short term
results. But then not too long after hearing about it I saw this ad pop up
that said use the oatmeal diet to lose 10 pounds in one week and I just
couldn't help but click it and see what it was all about. Plus quite frankly I
feel like it's my responsibility to make sure I'm informed about different diets
that are out there so if I am asked about them I can give an informed
opinion and not just make assumptions. Now let me just put this out there first
because while I am typically not a big fan of any diet with a name so to speak
I'm also not against any diet with a name and I'm definitely not against
anything that's gonna help someone lose weight and be able to keep it off in the
long run.
Plus there's something very powerful about just believing that a
diet's gonna work. When you believe it's gonna work it gets you more excited it
makes it more likely that you're gonna stick to the plan plus not only more
likely to stick to that plan but once you're excited you're probably gonna
start doing some other things that are gonna help like you might get more
active, start going for more walks, you might join a gym, start prioritizing
sleep, water intake, all that stuff. So just by starting a diet and getting
excited now you've made a lot of changes to your routine which all add up to
creating more of a calorie deficit. Anyway as mentioned I did dig into this
a little bit more so I can help you determine if it's the right fit for you
or not and what did I find out? Honestly much of it I did suspect but much to my
surprise unlike most other diets that use a food
in the name like the boiled egg diet or the grapefruit diet they don't
proclaim oatmeal to be some magical fat burning food it's more about meal
replacement.
Now they did cover some of the benefits of oatmeal such as it being
higher in fiber, higher in vitamins and minerals, and that it can help you feel
fuller which are all true. But they didn't make any absurd claims about the
food which made me happy because that's the exact thing that most diets do. And
that's just never true while some foods are certainly more filling and more
nutrient-dense no foods on their own create fat burning.
Which this diet did
mention so kudos to them but at the same time there were still red flags but
we'll get into that and I'll let you make the call for yourself. The diet
itself is broken down into three phases and the first phase is one week long and
this is the week where they claim that you can lose up to ten pounds in the
first week. In this phase it says to eat between 900 and 1200 calories per day
and the only thing you're allowed to eat is oatmeal except you can add a half a
cup of skim milk to it if you want and you're supposed to eat a half a cup of
oatmeal at each sitting.
And in this first phase you're only allowed to eat
whole oatmeal and not the instant kind. Now let's stop right there and consider the
first thing they said eating between 900 and 1200 calories. For one having
everyone eat the same amount of calories is crazy because not everyone has the
same energy demands so for one person a thousand calories might be kind of a
good calorie amount for them for another it could be extremely low. Plus another
thing to consider is it says to eat a half cup of oatmeal at each sitting but
if you take the standard three meals per day if you only have three meals of
oatmeal that's only going to be 450 calories for the day so if you're not
actually counting the calories you could easily end up eating way below the
already low 900 to 1200 calories.
In fact you would need six servings of that
oatmeal just to get to the bottom range of 900 calories. So regardless even if
you're doing 900 calories which is already really low for most people or
450 calories which is extremely low yes it would most certainly lead to weight
loss but this is where we need to make sure you understand the difference
between weight loss and fat loss. See carbs are stored in the body in the form
of glycogen and they are accompanied by water it's literally in the name carbo –
hydrate. In fact 1 gram of glycogen is typically
accompanied by about 3 grams of water. So when you drop your carbs much lower than
your body's used to you will lose much of this stored energy as well as the
water and weight comes off fast. So depending on your starting position you
could absolutely lose 10 pounds in that first week but it's not gonna be 10
pounds of fat.
Sure some of that weight will likely be fat but a big chunk of it
is just gonna be water and this is what most extreme diets do. It gets you to
lose weight really fast in the beginning which gets you excited it makes it feel
like things are working but what it doesn't talk about is the likely rebound
to come later but I'm getting ahead of myself. So anyway yeah the first week
just oatmeal that's all you get but hey it's only one week no big deal right? You
can do anything for a week. So let's move on to what phase 2 is and this phase
lasts for 30 days. In this phase you still eat oatmeal with each meal except
now you can use instant oatmeal if you prefer plus you add a half cup of fruit
to your morning and a half cup of veggies to your afternoon. Calories do
get increased in this phase to 1000 to 1300 calories but if you remember the
previous phase it was 900 to 1200 so it's only a 100 calorie increase for the
next month.
So yeah you're still eating pretty dang low calorie and you'll still
continue to lose weight but let's keep in mind too, it's merely the low calories
from this diet. Now phase 3 is where they make some bigger changes and I'm gonna
get to that so keep watching but right now I want to talk about something that
I think is really important you need to consider and always keep in mind when
starting a diet. We always want that one thing we can do to get the results we
want. Whether it's just eat oatmeal or just add lemon to your water or stop
eating carbs or whatever it might be. But creating results that last is never
about that one thing it's about many things added up together that make for a
lifestyle change. Because the big question is what do you do when the diet
is done? Do you go back to your old habits? How do you sustain your results? While the oatmeal diet does address this, sort of, you need to understand whenever
you diet especially on very low calories your metabolism adapts and slows down to
accommodate.
The less you eat and the longer you do
it for the more these adaptations happen and if you go back to your old
eating habits when your diet's done one thing I can promise you is you'll gain
weight very fast. In fact chances are you'll probably overshoot previous levels
of body fat which is very common. Now there's something you can do to avoid
this which I'm going to talk about soon but first let's talk about phase three
of the oatmeal diet. Phase three just like phase two is once again for 30
days but I got to be honest I feel like they kind of hang you out to dry with
this one.
It basically says to eat a normal low-calorie diet but stick to one
snack and one serving of oatmeal daily. It also says to limit fat intake and that
calories still matter so aim to keep them low. Which for the record it does
give you a recommendation here and it basically says between 1000 and 1400
calories so it's still really low and hasn't really changed much if at all
from the previous phase. Now hang tight because they do talk about what to do
after this phase and I'll get into that but the thing that I have a problem with
here is this diet has basically taught you nothing about food other than
oatmeal should probably be a part of your diet.
Which sure for the record
oatmeal is great it's a healthy option I have no problems with it but you
certainly don't have to eat it to lose weight or to be healthy. Plus regardless
now you're still eating low calorie and while you have a little bit more options and
a little bit more freedom in your diet you've basically built zero knowledge on
actual nutrition or any other foods so you're basically left unsure what to do. Now to its credit because almost no other diet does this it does say after
phase three that you should increase your calories to something that's more
sustainable for you but during the diet it has you severely restrict your
calories by eating oatmeal and then just kind of expects you to know what to do
from there.
And while they do give you a sample meal plan that you can do which I
will overlay here so you can see it. It's typically just adding some fruit and
veggies and some chicken and I actually added this up in My Fitness Pal and it
actually came out to about 1050 calories which is basically the same calories
from what you're supposed to start with and honestly if you were to do this diet
I would actually recommend this diet more than I would the actual oatmeal
diet that they have it in phase one. And the other thing is to consider it's
still 1050 calories so you've gone through three phases and now
they're telling you to go into this next phase and it's still super low
calorie. So since they're not gonna help you come out of this don't worry if
you're gonna do this diet or any other diet I am gonna help you come out of it
because there's something you need to do afterwards to make sure you sustain your
results. And that's make sure you slowly increase your calories over time and
don't go just gorging on all the foods you've restricted because like I said
your weight will come back on really fast if you do that.
Which is always the
danger of any restrictive diet because you're gonna be more likely to want to
overeat on the foods that you did restrict and this is why I'm a bigger
fan of a more flexible approach to dieting. Because not only does
sustainability matter because let's be honest if you can't sustain your diet
how are you gonna sustain your results? Plus after doing this diet or any other
low-calorie diet your metabolism will be suppressed. So unless you want to keep
eating these really low calories forever, assuming you want to keep your results,
you need to make sure you speed your metabolism back up again. And in order to
do that you're gonna use a process called reverse dieting where you add in
maybe 50 to 100 calories to your daily intake and you eat those calories for a
whole week and then the following week you make another increase and keep
repeating this process. Now that's a pretty big oversimplification and I have
a lot of videos about reverse dieting in fact I have a playlist on my channel
that you can check out if you want more information on it, but this is a decent
starting point.
This way you can allow yourself to eat more food allow your
metabolism to speed back up and maintain most your results so you don't have to
eat low calorie forever but you also aren't forced to gain all the weight
back. Which by the way if losing weight and then regaining it is a common
problem for you make sure you check out this video next to find out why this
happens and what you can do to make sure it doesn't happen again. If you have any
questions for me leave them in the comments and I promise I'll get back to
you, if you're new to the channel consider subscribing, and I'll see you
over at that other video..
