oatmeal – GUTSy Performance Nutrition

Tart Cherry + Apricot Oatmeal

June 14, 2022June 7, 2022by RebeccaLeave a Comment

Just in time for summer, here’s a delicious new way to start your day.

So many athletes and active individuals tend to eat oatmeal as a morning go-to, and inevitably get stuck in a rut with the same ingredient and flavor combinations day in and day out.

Oatmeal is super nourishing, filling, fiber-rich, and generally an all-around superb breakfast option. But changing it up every now and again is also optimal to encourage digesting and absorbing a wide range of micronutrients as well as feeding diversity in the gut microbial community.

Another challenge that you might find yourself in, is that active individuals often don’t start the day with “enough” food.

Classified as a “within-day energy deficiency,” an example is starting your day with a small breakfast, slightly larger lunch, and then having a moderate to large dinner. OR expending more energy than you’ve consumed (through both activity and daily living), in the early hours of the day and not topping up the tank until hours later, creating metabolic and physiological stress.

I also used to eat this way. It was part of my restrictive eating and diet mentality paradigms.

Not only is this style of consuming most of the day’s caloric energy late in the day problematic for digestion, since eating larger meals late at night is challenging for the body to digest and negatively impacts sleep quality, but it also creates a feast and famine cycle in the mind and body.

When I was caught in this pattern, I was routinely hungry all the time because I was training fairly heavily, and not proportioning all my meals to be adequate for what I needed.

For more information on the topic of Within-Day Energy Deficiency, here and here are two great articles.
And two of the scientific studies frequently referenced on this topic:
Within-Day Energy Deficiency and Reproductive Function in Female Endurance Athletes
Within-Day Energy Deficiency and Metabolic Perturbation in Male Endurance Athletes

The portion size below is “larger” than usual, but just about right for moderately active individuals. If you’re more or less active, or in a larger or smaller body (than average), feel free to adjust portion size accordingly.

Tart Cherry + Apricot Oatmeal

Prep: none | Cook: 10-15 minutes | Serves: 1

1 1/2 cups water
1/8 tsp. mineral salt
⅛ tsp. ground ginger
⅛ tsp. ground cardamom
¼ tsp. fennel seeds
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats, certified gluten-free as needed
2 Tbs. dried tart cherries
2 apricots, diced (approx. 150 grams)
2-3 tsp. sunflower butter
1-2 tsp. chia seeds

On the stovetop, bring the water, salt, and spices to a boil in a small saucepan.
When boiling, turn down to medium-low, and stir in the oats and dried cherries. Let cook until it is soft and nearly all the water has been absorbed, about five minutes.
Then add in the diced apricot and stir. Turn off the heat and stir in the sunflower butter, and chia seeds, making sure they are spread evenly throughout.
Spoon into a bowl and enjoy!

Notes / Substitution Suggestions:
– adjust the spices as needed for your energetics
– omit the tart cherries and increase to three apricots
– for a smaller portion, use ½ cup rolled oats
– omit either the sunflower butter or chia seeds and double the amount of the one you keep in.

Within my nutrition practice, I specialize in endurance athletes and digestive imbalances. If you’re curious about how to improve your performance, health, and digestion, I encourage you to reach out to me for more personalized support.

Nutrition + Health, Running, Summertime

summer peach oatmeal

August 14, 2019by RebeccaLeave a Comment

At times over the years, I’ve considered making this a blog of oatmeal recipes. It’s pretty much my favorite food, I’ll eat it just about any time of day and it’s been my breakfast of choice for the strong majority of my life.

What I’ve added to the oats has definitely changed over the years however. From the brown sugar, milk, and stink bugs (aka raisins) of my youth, to the 10 carefully counted blueberries and half a banana of the days when I ate religiously too rigid during my eating disorder, to now when the toppings are varied and more numerous, oatmeal has been my tried and true.

For many years the one ‘error’ I made in my morning bowl was that I was afraid of adding any healthy fats to it. I notice this with others too. Either seasonal fruits or berries or dried fruit are a popular topping but the thing about eating nutrient rich foods like fresh berries or anti-oxidant filled fruits (and vegetables), is that without a carrier fat in the meal they’re eaten with, those fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K can’t actually be absorbed. We need healthy fats to make them effective. After years of being afraid of fat, I’m now a big fan of eating it in moderate amounts since fats are important for both cellular and hormonal health. Fats surround all cells and organelles in what is called the phospholipid bilayer and they are essential for proper cellular development, as well as carrying messages throughout the body in the hormones.

It’s important for us to eat a variety of fat types from foods rich in saturated fat to the unsaturated mono and polyunsaturated omega 6 and 3 fatty acids. Our modern diets tend to be less diverse and mainly have an abundance of saturated and omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. The omega 6 fats are found in soy, corn, safflower, sunflower and peanut oils, as well as sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds, and most nuts. In whole food form, they are incredibly healthy and essential, but need to be balanced with omega-3 fats such as freshly ground flax, chia, walnuts and wild caught cold-water fish such as salmon, halibut, anchovies, cod, and sardines. The ratio of omega 6 to omega 3’s should be under 5:1 to be considered anti-inflammatory and for most individuals, this ratio is at least 20:1 or more. For anyone with health concerns that are inflammation-related such as any of the common ‘lifestyle diseases’ like diabetes, high cholesterol or blood pressure, autoimmune conditions, arthritis of any type, and/or you are an otherwise healthy athlete looking to improve recovery between workouts, consuming those delicious nutrient-filled fruits and vegetables along with a healthy fat source and eating an optimal balance of omega 3s and 6s can be incredibly helpful. (My personal example is as an athlete trying to improve recovery and with an underlying chronic autoimmune/arthritic-like condition.)

One other thing to note is that all fat digestion first takes place in the mouth from chewing and saliva beginning to break down food–so chewing is important–and intestinal digestion requires bile salts and pancreatic lipase, an enzyme that specifically helps to break down and absorb fat molecules. If you find you don’t digest fats well, consider sending me a note. There are lots of natural ways to assist the digestive process!

Now for my favorite oatmeal bowl lately. It’s got a super-seasonal local peach chopped and added in the last few minutes to old-fashioned oats, a pinch of salt, a teaspoon or so of tahini, and a good tablespoon of ground flax seed. In the summer, I tend to always add a sprinkle of fennel seeds, which also support digestion, and then top it all off with a bit of cinnamon.

Creamy Summer Peach Oatmeal, makes 1 large or 2 small bowls

1 1/2 cups water
1/2-3/4 cups old-fashioned oats, gf certified as necessary
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. fennel seeds
1 large peach, chopped
1 tsp. tahini
1 Tbs. ground flax
cinnamon, to sprinkle

Bring the water to a boil, add the oats, and turn down to medium-low. Cook until nearly all the water is absorbed and then stir in the remaining ingredients except the cinnamon. Cook until it is creamy and all the water is absorbed.
Turn out into a bowl and then top with cinnamon.

Autumn, Herbal Medicine, Nutrition + Health, Running, Winter

Golden Spice, Pear + Tahini Oatmeal

January 3, 2019by Rebecca4 Comments

I read a research paper over the holidays about the healing and health cycles, and their metabolic stages in chronic disease conditions. It was incredibly heavy on the biochemistry, asking me to focus and dig back into my memory bank to follow along, as if the authors were on their own language planet that most of us can’t understand (they are) and that they were trying to prove something with their language use (also likely). But at other times, the message was incredibly clear: Sleep is medicine. Exercise is medicine. A varied, seasonally-appropriate diet sourced largely from the local ecosystem, and lots of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale and brussels sprouts, which are rich in compounds that produce a long-term increase in antioxidant activity, are medicine (1).

In the end, the article gave me lots to think about in terms of future breakthroughs in healing chronic health conditions, but it also reminded me that sometimes the simplest measures work the best. Like adequate rest and restorative sleep, movement that’s enjoyable, and comforting food that’s also nutritious and seasonal.

This recipe is my answer to that. It’s the morning meal I’ve been enjoying often the last few weeks. Creamy, slightly sweet, with a little spice. I make my own golden spice blend, based off of Sara Britton’s, but it seems that a good pumpkin or apple pie blend with turmeric will also do the trick.

Golden Spice, Pear + Tahini Oatmeal, serves 1 or 2
1 1/2 cups water
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
3/8 tsp. golden spice blend, below
1 large pear, chopped
1/2-1 Tbs. tahini
1/8 tsp. sea salt

Bring the water to a boil in a small pot. Then turn down, add the oats and spices, as well as the chopped pear. Cook until creamy and nearly done, about 5 minutes.
Then stir in the tahini and salt.
Dish into one or two bowls and add sweetener of choice, if needed. This will largely depend on personal preference and the ripeness of the pear.

Golden Spice Blend
For this, you’ll need a spice or coffee grinder or starting with a complete list of ground spices. To make a big batch measure parts using either weight in grams or in teaspoons.
10 parts turmeric
4 parts ginger
2 parts cinnamon
1 part black pepper
1 part cardamom
1 part cloves
1 part nutmeg
1 part star anise
1 part coriander seeds

First add the spices that are whole (such as coriander seeds or star anise) to a spice grinder. Blend until as fine as they will get.
Then mix all remaining spices together. Store in a glass jar in your spice cupboard and add frequently to anything that could normally use cinnamon. :)

References:
1) Naviaus, R.K. (2018). Metabolic features and regulation of the healing cycle–A new model for chronic disease pathogenesis and treatment.