It’s easy to think you’ll never gain weight if your diet is made up of healthy foods. To some degree, that belief is based in fact, since whole grains like oatmeal offer far fewer calories and grams of sugar and fat than processed alternatives, meaning they’re less likely to encourage weight gain. Less likely is no guarantee, however, so it’s still important to watch what and how much you eat.
Oatmeal isn’t free of calories, so if you eat too much of it, it’s just as likely to cause weight gain as any other food, especially if you load up your bowl with calorie-rich extras. According to the USDA, 1 cup of oatmeal cooked with water has approximately 165 calories. If you cook your oatmeal in milk rather than water, you’ll add 150 calories. Melting a tablespoon of butter into your bowl adds about 100 calories, and mixing in one packed tablespoon of brown sugar adds 50 calories. Add a medium banana, and your oatmeal will have another 105 calories. Your whole bowl could pack more than 550 calories.
Healthy Weight Gain
Eating oatmeal often or boosting its calorie content with nutritious add-ins isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're underweight, it’s healthiest to put on a few pounds with nutrient-rich foods such as oatmeal. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics suggests regularly preparing oatmeal with milk and serving it with honey, dried fruits, nuts or nut butter, powdered milk and other mix-ins to ramp up its total calorie count.
Losing Weight with Oatmeal
Regularly eating oatmeal without a lot of extra add-ins may help you lose weight. Whole-grain oats have high counts of both fiber and protein, which are associated with lasting feelings of satiety. According to a 2005 article published in the journal “Nutrition,” fiber intake is inversely correlated with high body fat and body weight. To spur weight loss and encourage healthy weight maintenance, the National Institutes of Health recommends oatmeal with nonfat milk and fruit as a smart breakfast choice.
The bottom line is that any single food is rarely responsible for weight gain or weight loss. Eating oatmeal won’t make you gain weight, but consistently eating too many calories will. When you do enjoy oatmeal, keep it healthy by sticking to a single serving size and minimizing the sugar you add to your bowl. “Oatmeal has a health halo,” says Dr. Brian Wansink, author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.” “People think it’s a lot healthier for them than it actually is, [but] eating it with too much sugar jacks up the calories. So does eating too much!”
- USDA: Cereal, Oats, Regular and Quick and Instant, Unenriched, Cooked with Water
- USDA: Milk, Whole, 3.25% Milkfat
- USDA: Butter, Salted
- USDA: Sugars, Brown
- USDA: Bananas, Raw
- Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Healthy Weight Gain
- Huffington Post: Can Adding THIS to Your Oatmeal Reduce Its Health Benefits?
- Nutrition: Dietary Fiber and Body Weight
- National Institutes of Health: Aim for Healthy Weight
- a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and blueberries image by David Smith from Fotolia.com