When we want to lose weight, we should be careful not to rely on out-dated theories about dieting. For example – It’s commonly believed that snacking between meals will lead to putting on weight. Some would beg to differ though.
The purists would have us believe that sticking to three nutritious meals a day is the way to drop the pounds. Today however we’re being told to increase that number if we want long-term weight reduction. Can this be right?
Won’t more meals mean we’ll eat more food overall? Mentally we associate hunger with weight loss. The truth though is interestingly more complex.
Our desire for food increases the longer we don’t eat. This means that when it does come round to meal time, our appetite is much bigger than normal. This can result in greater consumption than is good for us. This predominantly occurs with our last meal of the day. Then we end up with more food in our stomach at completely the wrong time – shortly before we go to bed!
If instead we altered our day and prepared six small ‘meals’, that hungry feeling never develops. Such frequent ingestion is recognised by the body. It starts to trust that it’s getting what it needs when it needs it, and so can allocate the right resources to the right areas.
If it’s not fed on a frequent basis, it has to retain fat in case it needs an energy reserve later on. Hence we can struggle to lose weight despite the fact that we’re starving ourselves.
It’s much easier to get more calories sooner (without over-eating) if we have small frequent meals. Then there’s much more chance the food will be processed efficiently, and not left to add to our weight. It is also much harder to keep a check on what we eat when we start a meal feeling famished.
It makes it more challenging to eat salads and vegetables. What we really desire are pies, pizzas and pasta. They provide an instant gratification, but are counter-productive as far as losing weight is concerned! To sum up, we are much more likely to feel satisfied AND lose weight if we eat small regular meals and avoid starvation tactics.
(C) Scott Edwards. Pop over to WeightLossDietWar.com for intelligent information on weight loss plan and lost weight.
