I see a lot of really idiotic "flatten your belly" diet plans out there but one that I recently became aware of it particularly stupid not just because it is really high in carbohydrates, which I and many other fitness oriented people think is enemy number one in weight-loss and fitness (particularly when it comes to building muscle) but because it is really bland and therefore, something that people are not going to follow.
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The first phase of this diet instructs you to eat ONLY oatmeal with no additives. To make matters more complicated it has to be non instant oats, so now it is not only bland but it is also going to be very boring. To make matters worse you are supposed to eat this and ONLY this for all 3 meals for an entire week. You are also meant to consume nothing other than black coffee or tea and water during the entire time.
This is incredibly stupid for a number of reasons. The main one being that plain whole oats are extremely bland and there is a reason why everyone adds fruit or brown sugar to it - because it sucks on its own. If I was starving and it was the only way in which i could put any food in my belly I would probably eat it... otherwise it's a hard "no" from me.
The second week guess what you get to eat?
More oatmeal! Hooray!
The kicker is, you can now add a half cup of fruit or vegetables (honestly, they say you can add vegetables.... to oatmeal) to each serving. Oh the delicious possibilities are endless here! I'm kidding of course, while oatmeal is tolerable with fruit in it, it certainly isn't something that most people are going to be excited about and it is almost completely devoid of vitamins that you need for health. I think they suggest adding fruits so that you don't die at this point in the diet.
In week three you are now allowed to return to a regular healthy diet but still need to eat oatmeal at least once a day which I am quite certain will be any participants in this ludicrous diet's least favorite meal of the day.
After all of that let's break down the nutritional value of oatmeal:
in 100 grams or 3.5 ounces of whole oat oatmeal
Calories: 389
Protein: 16.9 grams
Carbs: 66.3 grams
Fiber: 10.6 grams
Fat: 6.9 grams
Can you see how insane this is? Not only are you not really cutting calories but you are getting nearly 70% of your calories from carbs. Most things that are high in carbs taste fantastic, but this really silly diet plan has the nerve to be really high in calories AND tastes terrible.
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It contains a really high number of calories and while it is devoid of sugar, which is good, depending on what kind of fruit you add to it that will all change. This diet is absurd and even the inventor of it admits that this sort of very restrictive diet makes it very unlikely that anyone will stick to it.
They also make very vague claims about anonymous people that claim to have lost 5 pounds using this tactic with no exercise... and that is the part that lets me know that it is completely full of doo doo. Any diet that is attempting to get you to remain lazy is a bad diet and honestly, I can imagine anyone actually sticking to this sort of thing.
Super restrictive diets, and especially the kind that have very little flavor in them are very unlikely to be stuck to. I'm not saying to never eat oatmeal especially if you are one of the weirdos that actually thinks it tastes good (not talking about the ones that have loads of sugar and stuff in it, of course that tastes good.)
This is just another fad diet that if it was actually studied it would be discovered that even if you did have the willpower to eat nothing other than something that tastes terrible for every meal, probably wouldn't even produce the results that it claims to give.
I do not claim to have all the answers but I know from making the wrong decisions in my own life what does have a very real chance of working... i dropped 50 pounds by making very specific and non restrictive diet and exercise changes in my life
Doesn't make sense. Lately I have been having bran if I want a snack as I have no treats left lying around. I think it is all in the head because if you do the exercise you can eat almost anything anyway.
well the eating almost anything is actually not true either, but you certainly can get away with a lot more if you do exercise regularly.
I ate a bunch of oatmeal when i was in college because they made these claims on the boxes about the health benefits but we all thought that fat content was the real factor back then so we avoided eggs bacon etc and went for oatmeal that probably had as much sugar in it as ice cream. Funny how these notions change over a short period of time. I share your sentiment on plain oatmeal being horrible. I don't think I have ever endured that and at the minimum I need cinnamon on it.
I remember the "fat is bad!" days. Now the Keto folks eat a diet consisting very heavily in fats. Things change but i believe that the excessive carbs being a bad thing is here to stay.
lol on that meme. I have never understood when people like oatmeal. I can understand the instant packs that are loaded with dehydrated fruit and loads of sugar but yeah, regular oatmeal that the dye-uh-beet-us guy advertises, is crap.
when traveling i see that porridge is on every menu although not many people order it. I wanted to test it so I ordered it an it was plain oatmeal. I had to ask for a bunch of sugar to make it edible. Even though it is kind of a liquid it somehow manages to be dry. It's like eating a paste or something. To get back to the point of your article I can say with absolute certainty that there is no situation other that starving to death that would convince me to stick to this diet.
eating a paste... ha! I feel the same way so when i was younger i would always add a bunch of water to make it more like a soup... but that is disgusting as well.