Berry Chia Overnight Oats: Easy Weekday Meal Prep - Elle Jay at Home Recipes (2024)

Happy Monday, friends! I’ve now posted on Instagram thrice about my new favorite make-ahead breakfast: Berry Chia Overnight Oats. A few of you were asking about it, so I figured it was time to share the recipe.

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Enter Berry Chia Overnight Oats.

Berry Chia Overnight Oats started as an experiment in breakfast meal prep. They’re ridiculously quick and easy to throw together, for starters, and they are also very nutritious and filling.

The other thing that really sells it for me is the lack of clean up. There’s just a jar and a spoon to rinse. That’s it! But the biggest thing of all is that this meal is so filling I can make it to lunch without snacking in between or feeling hungry.

Honestly, I did just throw all these ingredients together on my own, but there’s always someone out there doing the same thing, and they probably are more famous than you.

So, naturally, I stumbled across Pinch of Yum and their similar recipe from July 19, 2016. Feel free to compare and contrast and mix it up as you wish.

What’s in Berry Chia Overnight Oats, again?

The ingredients in berry chia overnight oats are simple, clean, and easy to buy in bulk. That’s part of the appeal when you want to eat healthy but can’t run to the grocery store as often as you wish.

Oats

Let’s start with oats. I use Old Fashioned for this recipe. They maintain a chewy texture without getting mushy between Sunday when I make them, and Friday when the last jar is eaten. So, that’s first. This is going to provide you with a filling base of 5 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein.

There are lots of claims of how great oats are for maintaining heart health, gut health, and for balancing your blood sugar if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

For me, I’m more interested in the fact that oats just make me feel good. I have energy and can focus on what I need to do without hunger pangs interrupting.

Chia Seeds

The next thing going in your jar will be a tablespoon of chia seeds. Of course, you are welcome to use as much as you want, but for my purposes, 1 Tablespoon was plenty.

In WW lingo, it’s 2 Smart Points for 1 Tablespoon. What you get for those points is 2 grams of protein, 4 grams of fat, and 5.5 grams of fiber.

There are a million articles about how chia seeds help you burn fat and make you lose weight.

I’m not going to mess with all that nonsense. I will point out, though, that the fat content, while seemingly high, is attributed to its concentration of omega-3 fatty acid.

You can do your own research on that (here’s one article I found with more source links), but mostly I want to point that out to assuage the fear of fats that a lot of WW followers seem to have.

Berries

You can mentally call this section “fruit” if you’re not a berry kind of person. The reason I, personally, like them is that, generally, berries are lower in sugar and higher in fiber and antioxidants. Plus, I can find GIANT bags of frozen blueberries or mixed berries for ridiculously cheap at most stores.

Clearing out my freezer, I found frozen raspberries and mixed berries, so I’m using those for now. Frozen berries keep longer, are cheaper, and release juice and flavor as they thaw into the oats and chia seeds.

Again, the importance of adding a cup of berries to your jars is even more fiber, vitamins/antioxidants, and flavor.

What Else Goes in Berry Chia Overnight Oats?

You’ll also be adding in a pinch of salt (as always, I’m using pink Himalayan sea salt), half a cup of water (or unsweetened almond milk), and a teaspoon of maple syrup. These things really just provide much-needed hydration and flavor boost.

However, as with everything, this recipe is customizable to your own needs. Not feeling maple syrup? Go ahead and use stevia or honey to sweeten. Want more fat? Feel free to use real milk instead of water.

WW Points for Berry Chia Overnight Oats

Remember, I am not affiliated with WW (the artist formerly known as Weight Watchers). But here are the points, as of 2019:

• 1/2 cup of old fashioned oats = 4 Smart Points
• 1 Tablespoon of chia seeds = 2 Smart Points
• 1 cup of berries / fruit = 0 Smart Points
• 1 teaspoon of maple syrup / honey = 1 Smart Point

Berry Chia Overnight Oats are My Meal Prep Go-To

You literally just dump all the ingredients into a pint-sized jar. Screw on the lid, and pop it in the fridge. Then, grab a jar as you’re heading out the door.

It takes less than five minutes to put breakfast together for a whole work week, and even less time to pull it from the fridge each morning.

When you’re ready to eat it, you can totally eat them cold. They’re fine that way. But I like to pop mine into the microwave for about a minute and a half (REMOVE THE METAL LID FIRST!).

Leave me a comment if you’ve tried overnight oats before. What do you do differently? What’s your favorite flavor? And don’t forget to subscribe for weekly updates and a cute new meal planning worksheet.

Originally posted 10/28/2019. Updated with new photos and links 09/27/2020.