Don't Force It

I have overnight oats for breakfast almost every single day (1 cup rolled oats, chia seeds, flax seeds, oat milk, vanilla extract). It’s great; nutritious, tasty, quick, and filling.

But sometimes it is too filling. I speed through about 80% of the way through the oats, and then grind to a halt. my stomach doesn’t want to accept anymore; I have to force it. It takes me a while to finish the last 20%, which is a bummer because my mind is ready to start the day. Then, once I finally finish the oats, i’m left feeling a bit bloated. This scenario is not ideal. How do I get around this problem?

One solution would be to only prepare 80% of the oats. This way I would eat until my stomach is full, and then be good to go. This is almost the perfect solution. The problem with this is that by only preparing 80% of the oats, I get very hungry before it is time for lunch which causes me to lose some of my focus.

After struggling with this problem for weeks, I found a solution that gets the best of both worlds just the other day. The idea is this:

• Eat until I am full
• Put the remaining oats away and continue on with the day
• When I get hungry, finish the remaining oats

It’s as simple as that! It’s silly that it took me so long to recognize this option; I wasn’t BFSing hard enough. Note that this idea can be generalized. Identify a scneario where something is being forced, and inspect whether or not spreading out the events of the scenario will reduce the required force. If so, then spread out the events of the scneario, and bam! problem solved :)