We’re all brought up to eat our “three squares a day,” right? You may even think that eating more often will pack on the pounds. Let’s set a few things straight.
When it comes to losing weight and improving your health, eating twice as many meals a day can have big advantages for a smaller and healthier you.
That’s right: We’re talking SIX meals a day. Sound good? Trust me, it is.
Babies know best
Let’s start with something babies “know” that we don’t. Babies naturally tend to want multiple “meals” throughout the day. But as they grow, they’re “trained” to eat the familiar three times a day—breakfast, lunch, dinner…you know the drill. And they become us.
What’s wrong with 3 a day?
When we eat only three meals a day, we tend to stuff ourselves. After all, we have to wait a long time for our next meal! Our blood sugar and insulin levels drastically rise and fall. We get tired. And hungry. By the time we can eat again, we’re starving. And we stuff ourselves again.
I don’t need to tell you that packing on the pounds is a fast track to a variety of health problems — heart and circulatory disorders, type 2 diabetes, even some cancers, and more. Not to mention you have no energy, and you don’t feel so good along the way.
Sound familiar? Now for the good news: Recent research shows that splitting your daily calories into more than three meals a day decreases hunger and fatigue, leaves you feeling more satisfied, improves health – and yes, helps you lose weight.
Need more proof?
• Better appetite control. Although not all research agrees, most studies show that eating more often lessens not only hunger but also how much food you eat at the next meal. On top of that, I recommend a fat-burning approach, which squashes hunger and cravings even more.
• Improved health. Eating more often lowers total cholesterol, LDL “bad” cholesterol, blood sugar, and insulin. All good things.
• Lower body fat. By decreasing blood levels of insulin, eating more frequently decreases body fat.
• Lower blood sugar. In a 24-week study, researchers looked at the effects of meal frequency in overweight people with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. They ate the same number of calories daily, with half eating three large meals a day and half eating six smaller meals a day. After three months, the groups switched places. When following the six-meals-a-day plan, the participants had better blood sugar levels. This wasn’t a weight-loss study, but those on the six-meal plan were less hungry and were more satisfied after eating.
Eat 6 times a day? Are you nuts?! It’s seriously much easier than you think. And your body and belly will thank you for it. Let me show you how.
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