Porridge is good for you, don’t cut that. Good slow release carbs and as noted above, fibre which we are generally poor at getting enough of and is important for bowel health, etc.

Cut the stuff you put with it, the sugar/golden syrup, honey, even the fruit are all high calorie / high GI.

Only other query I’d make is whether a 7 mile commute means you really need to be consuming ‘high carb’ meals in prep or directly after. Like I say, eat porridge because it’s good full stop but unless you work at the top of Mont Ventoux and your 7 mile commute takes 2 hours at or above threshold I would query whether your commute really needs specific fuelling up for. Just eat normally, I’m sure you have the reserves to manage the trek 😉

(FTR – I use an espresso cup of oats, 2 cups of liquid – usually either skimmed milk or half-half milk and water, and the key ingredient is a pinch of salt….. brings the oats alive)

Because it is an odd saying and it sounds like exactly as slowoldman has read it regardless of how you intended it to be read.

so you think plain water contains sugar?

so you think plain water contains sugar?

No, no one does, but the way you typed it sounded like you added sugar and ‘fat free’ water.

So the pub’s out of bounds then?

More or less. Lunchtime drinking FTW 😉

3 boiled eggs eaten after your commute, bin all your porrige.

I lost loads of weight (and kept it off) by not eating breakfast after my 7 mile commute.
Try it, what have you got to lose*

*apart from weight

Yeah, just do this. Ignore all the pseudo-science nonsense (some of which is above), if you want to lose weight and keep it off then get in the habit of eating a bit less. Not eating breakfast is an easy way to do this assuming that your other meals are healthy* and of a reasonable* size.

*This doesn’t need defining, you know what it means.

Ignore all the pseudo-science nonsense

There’s nothing pseudo scientific about the importance of fibre in helping to prevent a number of serious health problems. Why skip a meal that gives you a good portion of fibre, when you could just reduce your portion sizes instead?

There’s nothing pseudo scientific about the importance of fibre in helping to prevent a number of serious health problems.

I agree, I didn’t say there was.

Why skip a meal that gives you a good portion of fibre, when you could just reduce your portion sizes instead?

We’re agreeing (I think) that reducing the amount you eat and making sure that the things you do eat are healthy is the key to sustainable weight loss. Not eating breakfast and eating a healthy lunch and dinner is a way of doing that.

Portion size is difficult because a) who knows, or can be bothered to find out, what a ‘good’ portion size is of everything? and b) even if you do know, who can be bothered measuring/weighing things? Dropping a (usually quite small) meal out of your day is a simple(r, for me) way of reducing the amount you eat.

There is also the pseudo-scientific 16/8 fasting thing that may or may not come into play too…

so you think plain water contains sugar?

OK OK, I read interpreted it incorrectly.

This:

Why not try half of your normal portion first?
Eat less, exercise more.

My work sells porridge in the canteen, I used to just fill up the bowl, add jam, eat and repeat since last summer. Due to the winter slow down I’ve gone from 80kg to 86kg so am looking at shifting it by eating less and doing more, I weighed the porridge portion I was having and it was just over 400grams including milk, a quick google tells me this is twice the recommended portion size, have dropped down to having 200grams and applied this to other meals whilst cutting out snacking every day and the weight is shifting of nicely, looking like it’ll be gone in a month or so.

If we’re having porridge, I make 100g of porridge, 300ml of water, 300ml of semi skimmed milk, and this is enough for 12 yo daughter, Mrs Nobeer and I. Berries on top too, and a wee drizzle of honey.

Just **** eat less a ride more!! FFS how hard can it be?

I adopted a veganish diet (not super strict) at the start of Jan and lost half a stone in a couple of weeks. I reckon ditching milk and meat has been a big part of my weight loss. Not only that I feel better and I’m snacking a lot less too – top tip oat milk is rank in porridge but hazelnut is really nice.

Just **** eat less a ride more!! FFS how hard can it be?

Pretty much. We seem obsessed with over complicating everything around weight loss & dieting. Unless there is some underlying medical reason, it really is as simple as eating less calories.

How you chose to do that, or how difficult you want to make it, is up to you really.

Me personally, I decided I want to lose ‘some’ weight before my race season starts in a few months. Due to never ending injury recovery & life, I have put a small amount of weight on, which I wanted to go. The number itself I really don’t care about, i’ll stop when I feel comfortable. I eat a balanced diet of pretty much everything, I still eat things that people would consider ‘bad’ for you, but in moderation. I track everything I eat and all my exercise & aim for 1750c a day which I don’t find too restrictive. If I exercise, they are ‘bonus’ calories going towards extra weight loss. In a shocking turn of events, I have started to lose weight.

FWIW, I have porridge every day (overnight oats) albeit with some fruit, soya milk, yoghurt & protein powder.

You’ll have to buy the mag to get the full article

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132130-400-why-doing-more-exercise-wont-help-you-burn-more-calories/

I’ve lost weight by not really eating bread. I replace bread with rivita. I have the odd sandwich now and again. Maybe one sandwich a week.

I reckon ditching milk and meat has been a big part of my weight loss. Not only that I feel better and I’m snacking a lot less too

Aye, I’d definitely say it’s the milk and the meat… :-0

2 pages and no one has suggested eating pop tarts for breakfast?

Or the breakfast of the unimaginative, cereal…..

trail_rat

im with you . nut job. the diet sodas thing seems to be the only sense on his whole site

The fact that a massive quack agrees with you about one thing shouldn’t reassure you about the truth, it should make you look further.
a skeptical blog on mr cokequack.
The Scibabe on diet coke quackery.

The solution seems to be porridge made with Diet Coke then…

more online diatribe does not confirm it.

my link doesnt agree with me it agrees with pages 68 and 69 of racing weight

Easiest way to get additional caffeine into your breakfast!

trail _rat
Online diatribe from people who read the original published sources > online diatribe from people who read the headlines and make stuff up based on anecdotes.

I have an elderly relative with diabetes who has fallen for sweetener quackery to the point where she thinks that regular coke helps her “control her sugar”, and sweeteners are poison.

Its dangerous unscientific nonsense.

I thought early morning caffeine was possible by caffiene shampoo.

There is nothing wrong with porridge if you like it and it fills you up.

The whole thing is pretty simple. We need food to fuel our bodies, if we give ourselves too much fuel, we store it as fat. If we want to get rid of some of this fat, we need to reduce the fuel/food we consume so our bodies use this fat for energy.

It doesn’t matter if the fuel comes from porridge, kale, big macs or spoonfulls of lard*

*You will obviously be very unhealthy, but you wont be fat.

Easiest way to get additional caffeine into your breakfast!

My porridge in the morning has coffee in in it for the caffeine. It also has:
Spinach
Kale
Ginger
Raisins
Cacoa Powder
Sunflower Seeds
Pumpkin Seeds
Hemp Seeds
Linseed
Sesame Seeds
Chia Seeds
Wheat Bran
And of course 100g of oats

Approx calories 660 BMI around 20 so porridge hasn’t made me fat.

Always looking to improve it so maybe I should try Diet Coke instead of water `:-)

Or the breakfast of the unimaginative, cereal…..

e.g. oats

I think i’ll have to buy that New Scientist…. i did 14 months of commuting to and from work, riding between 38-58 miles a day, now strictly that should mean i was burning at least 1200-2000 calories a day. I found that for the first few months, i did lose about half a stone, but after that it did plateau as i my body got used to it? Even when i did 1100 miles in a month, by the end of it i had shifted less than a pound.

The issue is that i was not eating a great deal, i tried to up my protein, but if i restricted calories too much, i did not have the energy to ride. So i was eating around 2500 calories a day, yet often burning you would expect about 1500 calories, so for a man of around 100kgs, you would think that the exercise would mean i lost a lot of weight, but i never did.

e.g. oats

Technically, you’re probably correct, but by cereal I mean something that’s processed to a shape, basically anything made by Kellogs et al!.

Hateful shite.

to be fair you do realise he/she doesnt claim to be inventing any of what hes saying regarding the diet coke – they just put info from other studys [which have been selected to agree with the point being espoused] into a nice infogram for people who dont want to read books

Sorry, add me to the Quackery end of the seesaw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Don’t forget that oats are a good source of dietary fibre – good for keeping you alive.
NHS linky

So OP have you stopped eating porridge?

Don’t forget that oats are a good source of dietary fibre – good for keeping you alive.

Around 28g of it in mt breakfast recipe above `:-)

I was hoping for some more insight into the OPs overall diet so I could contribute. Sadly they posted then didn’t bother to reply to anyone’s questions. Head stuffed in the fridge?

I love the way most of the replies assume the OP is a middle aged IT manager who , once seated at his swivel chair does nothing more than click a mouse for 6 hours.
A bowl of porridge after a 30min ride for anyone who works on their feet for a living is not much at all. Easy to burn those Kcals with a low commute and a few hours work. I know I do, so others must as well.

I drop weight by riding longer distances over lunchtime and missing ‘lunch’ . , I nibble whilst out riding but not thousand + calories. Porridge brekie , meat and veg from above ground for dinner. The trick is not to hoover up junk in the gap between home and dinner, thats the hardest part

Poridge does not come out a paper packet or a plastic tub that you just add to

now don’t get me wrong, you’re not the only (or first) to say this but, judging from the ingredients list…
https://www.quaker.co.uk/products/porridge/so-simple-sachets/original
Contains only oats, no other crap.
*flavoured* ones contain other stuff eg syrup flavour ones contain (surprise) sugar and flavourings but likelihood you’d be putting the same rubbish in if you put anything other than milk or water in your porridge. This is true of anything “flavoured”.

Ditto the pots

https://www.quaker.co.uk/products/breakfast-on-the-go/quaker-oat-so-simple-pots/original

Oats, skimmed milk powder and sugar, total kcal 190 per 50g vs 363 per 50g of Quaker oats prepped with semi skimmed milk (scaled)

There is nothing wrong with sachet or pot stuff from a nutritional point of view assuming you’re not going for the heavily processed flavoured stuff. If you are you’re also likely to be the sort of person to mix syrup, brown sugar or jam into your “real” porridge anyway, and at that point the portion control of the processed stuff is likely better for you any way.

Of course eating the pots and packets would remove your ability to sneer significantly

If I’m one of the ones that’s aimed at, I didn’t say don’t eat porridge (in fact I said do!)… I said you don’t need to carbo load for a 7 mile commute. If you have a highly active job and a 7 mile commute – then you still don’t need to carbo load for the 7 mile commute, but of course your energy requirements will be substantially different to someone who does a 7 mile ride to sit at a desk or someone who drives to work and then sits at a desk.

Eat porridge. Don’t eat crap (actually do, every so often, we have to live a bit too)

If I’m one of the ones that’s aimed at,

not specifically certainly, it’s aimed at the only eat artisan oats rolled on the inner thighs of scouse virgins then packed in free range recycled paper bunch who repeatedly say “packet porridge is bad and full of crap”, though in most cases, like for like, it’s not and is probably better since it forces portion control.

But yeah, eat what you like, in moderation. Nutritional and other issues aside, a diet soley of bacon won’t make you fat if your calorie intake is less than your output. Most people with a “healthy” varried diet struggle with weight becuase portion control is crap, not because they had strawberry flavoured milk instead of skimmed.

However after 7 miles of commuting you will need a certain amount of replenishment of simple carbs (like the lactose in milk and the sugar you add) so porridge could be a good call.

7 miles? That’s about 40 minutes on a bike in London at a fairly gentle pace. If you want to lose weight you can’t be worrying about eating after that sort of exertion. It’s why you see so many fat gym bunnies – they lift a few weights for an hour and then fill up with high calorie protein shakes.

That used to be about the length of my commute and I’d have a bowl of cereal or a couple of slices of toast at home and then nothing until lunch (don’t do tea or coffee in the day).

It’s not a bowl of porridge that’s making you fat. Smaller portions is probably the most significant thing you can do – buy smaller plates and smaller wine glasses and don’t fill them up. Drink beer by the half pint. If you have less you’ll instinctively make it last longer.