Jul
31
10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #9, smaller and more frequent meals.
Filed Under Eating Healthy
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #1, walking.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #2, cut out those junk snacks
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #3, cutting out the sodas.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #4, weight training.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #5, cardio.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #6, an active life.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #7, healthy breakfast.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #8, sleep.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #9, smaller and more frequent meals.
- 10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #10, eating less meat.
One of my readers asked for a list of 10 steps to good health. I provided it, but now I want to break each of these items down and give you more useful details. So here’s step 9, eating smaller and more frequent meals.
I’ve talked about this sort of meal plan before, but I’d like to get into a bit more details this time. Seems like every time I mention this people say it doesn’t make sense to them. Why would spacing out the same amount of food over time make a difference? After all, you’re still eating the same amount of calories. Well, the best way I’ve found to explain this is to compare it to money.
The budget analogy
Today is July 31st, which is a perfect date to start this. I’m going to give you $20 today and $20 every day from now until the end of August. This money is meant for food, your other expenses are taken care of. How difficult would this be to budget? Well, if you’re like me, not too difficult. Sure, there would be days where you paid a bit more than $20 and days where you paid a bit less, but on the average they would balance out. Plus it would be easy to budget for this since you know exactly how much you’ll be getting each day. You know that you’ll have another $20 tomorrow, so spending your money today is fine.
Now let’s think of another example. I’m going to give you $20 and $620 dollars sometime between August 1st and August 10th. Now how easy would it be to budget? Seems a bit harder, doesn’t it? You might need to stretch that initial $20 out by not spending much of it for the first ten days. After all, you don’t know if you’ll get more money until the 10th. Even worse, what happens if you get the money on the 10th? Now you have an average of $30 to spend every day until the end of the month. However, now you remember the tough time you had in the first ten days. You tell yourself that you need to save this money for the beginning of next month. That way you’ll have a bigger reserve come September and won’t have to live on $20 for ten days. The end result is a little savings account with some money in it just in case you don’t get cash early next month.
Switching in calories
Now think of that same example but using calories. Your body has a little biological budget it keeps. It needs to keep you running. All those heart beats, the blood movement and the thinking uses up a lot of calories. If you keep your body fed at regular intervals then it has an easier time making a budget. It doesn’t mind spending 100 calories now when it know 100 more are coming soon. However, if you feed your body once a day, then it tries to stretch that budget a bit more. It saves on calories because it doesn’t know when the next bit of energy will come in. Once it gets some food, it stays a spend thrift. Just like in the budget example, your body doesn’t want to go through another lean period. So it saves some of this new calorie windfall in a savings account.
What, you didn’t know your body had an energy savings account? It absolutely does and it’s called fat. Fat is your body’s way of storing energy for that day when food might be scarce. Back before food was plentiful, fat was absolutely necessary. It was your protection against drought, a bad harvest or a failed hunt. It was your emergency savings account for when you ran out of other food. In fact, some fat is still healthy. Your body wants to know that it can survive in an emergency. Without a certain percentage of fat, your body will begin shutting down various system in much the same way that people with no money begin trimming out portions of their life. So a certain percentage of fat on your body is good, but too much leads to obesity and we know that’s bad.
Getting to the point
So what does all this have to do with eating smaller and more frequent meals? Well, think of the difference between many small meals and one big meal as the difference between that $20 a day or $600 dollars a month. Both are about the same amount of money, but one is much easier to budget for. That makes it less necessary to keep a savings account. In other words, feed your body at regular intervals, and it won’t get scared of famines and keep around a lot of fat as an emergency reserve.
Start your day with a small but healthy breakfast to let your body know that today is going to be fine. No need to conserve energy, no need to put away fat, there’s plenty of food around. And keep your body thinking that way by feeding it small meals throughout the day. I usually split up my daily food into a breakfast, a lunch, a small afternoon meal at around 4 and an evening meal at around 7 or 8. That way I’m eating once every 4 hours on average. Toss in the occasional piece of fruit as a snack and my body is perfectly happy to spend those calories. Remember, a large savings account is good for your financial situation but not so good for your health.
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[...] and losing weight. #7, healthy breakfast.10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #8, sleep.10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #9, smaller and more frequent meals. This entry is part 1 of 10 in the series, 10 steps to getting fit and losing weight. I got an [...]