You guys know I love oatmeal. I love it especially for breakfast, but I’ve also eaten it for lunch, dinner, and dessert.
And, today, I enjoyed some oatmeal as a….
S-N-A-C-K!!!
A pre-work-out snack that is.
After a pretty awesome day of eats, I wanted a really good afternoon snack.
What to look for in a pre-workout snack: I always try to fuel up for a workout by eating a little extra food to give me energy and make up for some of my soon-to-be-burned calories. I look for carbs with a little protein. I shoot for between 100-250 calories for my exercise fuel, depending on what else I ate that day. If I already had a snack earlier in the day or a large breakfast/lunch, I stay to the lower end and visa versa.
When to eat a pre-workout snack: I try to eat my snack about an hour to an hour and a half before my work out.
I usually go for a meal bar, but mostly because they’re convenient and I can keep them at my desk at work.
Today, since I was WFH, I decided to make…OATMEAL! 🙂 Oatmeal is great for breakfast but also makes for a great pre-workut snack.
I went for AB+J (almond butter and jelly) Oatmeal. I think I would have been better off using dried fruit as my sweetener instead of jelly. I don’t think (though I’m not exactly sure) that jelly gives you energy (maybe a sugar high if anything?) but dried fruit gives you a good energy boost from what I understand. Today, I was more worried about getting some good carbs for energy.
AB+J Oatmeal
To the pot:
- 1/4 cup organic skim milk
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/4 cup rolled oats
- 1/2 tsp chia seeds
- 1/2 tsp flaxseeds
- (no sweetener)
Cooked stove top till thickened.
Toppings:
- Barney Butter (about or just under 1 tbsp)
- Earthfare Organic pomegranate jelly (about 1 tbsp – this was my sweetener)
- Chopped raw almonds (about 2 – I mean, I already had plenty in the Barney Butter!)
Not sure if it was the oatmeal or my good job with Project Hydrate today, but I had an awesome workout and plenty of energy! Yay!
1 amazing hour of dance fitness…I love starting my weekend out with a good exercise!
We worked on more of my choreography tonight: Meet Me Halfway (as a warm up song). We just need to polish that one off and finish Bad Romance. Oh yea! I love choreographing songs. Perhaps I should have been a figure skating instructor or something?
Check out my friend Megan rocking out a song at class tonight. Get it Megan! 🙂
Reader question: Have you eaten oatmeal any time other than breakfast?
Oh most definitely. Sometimes I’ll do the green monster thing for breakfast and save my oats in a jar for lunch. I think oatmeal is delicious anytime you want something warm to fill you up. Although… I will admit, I haven’t made the switch to savory oats. So when I have oatmeal it’s always with fruit.
Rock it zumba style!!
I have had oatmeal for most meals of the day and snacks. I haven even woken up in the middle of the night starving and made oatmeal. Can’t go wrong with oats.
That looks delicious! I’ve definitely had oatmeal for dinner before, no shame in that 🙂
I’ve had oatmeal for dinner and I’ve recently starting having instant oatmeal as a snack before lunch. I love oatmeal!
I wish I could rate this post girl! I LOVE oats any time of day (even if I already had them at breakfast). For a while I was eating them as a nighttime snack LOL. Now that I’m limiting my nighttime snacking, I eat oatmeal for dinner about once a week. If I have food I can feed the family, and I can work it in, I’ll do a batch with 3/4 cup oatmeal! And this week I indulged and put a reeses egg on top. It was the perfect dinner/dessert and I couldn’t eat the whole bowl!
I hadn’t considered making a smaller batch that I could have for an afternoon snack. Keeping that in mind 🙂