How to Measure Oats Correctly

Ready to have your socks knocked off? Wow that was lame…I’m going with it.

These two photos here show “1/2 cup” of oatmeal. I say “1/2 cup” because the label literally says “per 1/2 cup serving”. The label ALSO says “(40 grams)”. 

Take note friends - 40 grams is NOT 1/2 cup. I mean, it’s almost half a cup. But in reality, many of us take a nice rounded scoop. And if your rounded scoop looks anything like mine here, then you are literally consuming 50% more than an actual serving, which turns that 150 calories into 225.

My virtual training clients have a whole video course series dedicated to nutritional strategies, and this in particular is something we talk about. 

So, if you are tracking your intake and working towards specific goals, you’re going to want to be as accurate as possible. What if you were budgeting for a trip, and you purchase coffee every day at the local coffee shop… and the barista told you that your coffee was “about $5”. So you give $5. Every day. Then you actually take the time to read the menu and realize your daily coffee actually costs $3.50. At the end of the week, that’s like $7 EXTRA that you could have been saving toward your trip! What a rip!

That’s what measuring a rounded scoop of oatmeal is. A legit rip off. Don’t do it.  ;)

Now to be clear, you don’t need to measure out your oatmeal like this every time. I don’t. Once you do it once, you get an idea of what a real serving size actually looks like. Every few weeks or so my visual of what “1/2 cup” looks like starts to waver though, and so I usually do a scale check-in (I do this with a lot of foods I eat regularly - I’ve gotten good at eyeballing those things, but check-ins are insanely useful). 

However once again, it’s important to be aware and in control, and I hope this post takes you one step closer to that!