How Often Should I eat

Most peoples knee jerk reaction to wanting to loose weight is to cut back how much and how often they eat. How much is very important but equally as important is how often.

I tried to loose weight once by cutting back to only one meal a day. I was able to cut back, but I stayed hungry all the time. It took an extremely long time to loose a small amount of weight and I was loosing a lot of energy. I thought that psychologically this would be easier on me. I thought if I ate one meal, and ate what I wanted and how much I wanted I could convince myself that starving myself all day long was worth the pain and agony. My problem is that I love to eat, I love tasting good food, and if its considered unhealthy I probably love it even more. It just seems to work out that way. Hind sight is 20/20 and looking back this was definitely the worst route I could have taken.

I would suggest to you that eating frequently is much more beneficial in weight loss and psychologically. I’ve personally experienced the best results in weight loss by increasing the number of times I eat daily. Eat three meals and eat two snacks daily. For example eat breakfast, then a snack, then lunch, then a snack and finally dinner. If the typical person sleeps 8 hours a day, then yes that means you will be eating every 3-4 hours while your awake. You still need to keep your portions reasonable, in fact smaller than what you would normally eat, and drinks lots of water.

Eating five times a day will:

1. Increase your metabolism, When your eating and your body knows its eating and receiving the nutrients it needs then it doesn’t feel as though it needs to store food when it gets it. The key here is to eat very nutritious and healthy foods. Eating five meals a day of junk food will not do you any good.

2. Decrease your overall hunger. Since your eating every 3-4 hours about the time you really begin to get hunger cravings it will be time to eat. If you know you have a meal or snack coming up it decreases the temptation to grab what’s available, or drive thru the nearest fast food chain.

The key to successfully eat five times a day for me was to plan my meals as much in advance as I could. If you start the day thinking you will eat five times, and then when its time to eat you don’t have anything available you will be tempted to grab whatever is most convenient. I try to keep a lot of healthy snacks available, mainly fruit, I have eaten more apples in the past few months than I’ve eaten my entire life.

Portion control is very important. Americans have a reputation of overeating and our portions at home or in public have become 2-3 times the normal size. Just to put things in perspective a single portion of meat should be about the size of a deck of cards.

In summary. Eat three meals a day with two snacks about 3-4 hours apart. Pick nutritious foods and watch your portions. A great way to ensure your body is getting the nutrition it needs on a daily basis is to substitute a meal replacement shake for one of your meals. There is no higher quality meal replacement shake than Shakeology. Watch what several Doctors have to say about Shakeology. Or click on my Shakeology link for more information.