A bowl in a rustic bowl containing porridge and a steel pan with porridge on a white background with a blue striped tea towel

No, oats and porridge don’t help you lose weight

If you have weight to lose, don’t eat oats.

Despite the health halo oats have been given, your body will digest them and turn them into sugar.

Nutrition is a tricky business because there is much anecdotal speculation and vested interests to promote the consumption of cheaply produced wholegrains, oats being just one.

11 years ago, I totally believed that porridge was a go to breakfast food. Back then I had no clue as to how my body worked which is why I was constantly on a diet. I bought into the low calorie, low fat, heart healthy, wholegrains are great ideal that is still with us today. But 11 years on, diet free and at a balanced weight I have seen the science and proof that this is not serving the human body at all.

The biology of weight gain comes down to one thing, and the consumption of foods converted to sugar in the blood stream exceeds what the body can use immediately, it stores it as fat.

So, while the person who has no excess subcutaneous (love handles) or visceral (around your organs) fat might benefit from the fibre content in oats (note they can get better fibre elsewhere in vegetables), for someone who has accumulated either or both types of fat, oats will be turned into excess blood sugar and stored as fat.

Looking around at various nutrition “experts” they all seem to use oats in their meal plans.

Having specialised in the management of type 2 diabetes as well as human nutrition has given me a different perspective.

Although you might not have the gene that makes you prone to developing type 2 diabetes, the same insulin resistance or dysregulation of blood sugar will give you similar complications and impact your health.

Remember, accumulating weight is a symptom that your body isn’t running efficiently. It’s just doing its job and coping with being bombarded by foods it was not designed to digest and use as fuel.

The bottom line is that can stop the flow of foods that cause sugar to be stored as fat and allow your body to use that fat as energy, which makes you lose weight.

Hooray!

I can help you understand exactly how your body loses weight, you implement it as I support you every step of the way.

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