A lot of my friends tell me to eat lots of oatmeal, and that its healthy and helps you weight lift. Is oatmeal good for health? How should I cook it?
Is oatmeal good for a fitness training plan? Absolutely positively yes. But it isn’t some sort of magic potion, and its effects are over-exaggerated in the fitness world nowadays.
Oatmeal is not some sort of magical get-bigger-quicker sort of substance- it’s just oatmeal. The reason most people who do weight lifting and other fitness programs like it is because it’s a phenomenal filler food that’s remarkably healthy. Oatmeal contains only scant amounts of protein and iron, so it’s not entirely a “health food” per se, but it’s the type of thing you can eat and get full on without breaking the bank nutritionally. On top of that, many (including myself) find it makes a great pre-workout snack- it’s stable and thick enough to not interfere with exercising, yet it will still giveyou a nice energy boost. Ultimately, if you weight lift a lot and get hungry a lot, there’s nothing quite as good as oatmeal to fill you up quickly, pending you aren’t specifically looking for the protein.
As for how to cook/eat it, fix it however you like. Don’t listen to the obsessive types who demand you eat raw steel-cut oats without anything in them- that’s both unrealistic and not very tasty. So long as you don’t load it full of sugar or syrup or something, oatmeal is pretty much universally good and filling, and there is no problem with putting a little bit of white or brown sugar in it for flavor. I personally like to put in Splenda artificial sweetener. Though fake sweetener still spikes your insulin and has some of the same effects as sugar, it’s certainly better than the real thing.
In any case, if you’re hungry, feel free to eat oatmeal. You could do MUCH worse.
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