Why eat small meals throughout the day
Many dietitians and trainers recommend eating 4-6 smaller meals per day. Science supports that the fewer calories we consume, the more weight we’ll lose. This fact leads people to try not to eat anything until lunch, and then don’t eat anything after 7pm either. Most end up eating only two real meals per day, healthy or unhealthy. The truth is that you can do more harm than good and messing with your weight loss goals and even your digestive health when you skip meals or binge on 2 meals.
Here are a few reason why many nutritionist and I believe eating smaller meals more frequently is important.
More Energy!
If you have just coffee and a sweet pastry for breakfast, I’m willing to bet that you experience a mid-morning crash that can make you want to go for something sugary to try to keep up at work or more caffeine. Likewise, if you don’t eat much throughout the day and then eat a big lunch, there’s a second afternoon crash that hits. Eating too infrequently can cause major spikes and crashes in your blood sugar levels. When we eat small regular meals 4-6 times per day we can keep our blood sugar levels steady. This will help regulate your energy levels throughout the day, and help keep you from giving into sugary cravings and caffeine overload.
Quick and Steady Metabolism
Here’s the best way that eating small frequent meals helps with weight loss. Eating more often helps stimulate your metabolism and keeps it from going into a starvation mode. Though I love intermitted fasting “done right”, we have to remember that when we go without eating for hours at a time too often, our body will automatically slow its metabolic rate to conserve energy. It’s how we are made! Metabolism is supported by a specific formula, and through steady consumption of small meals, it responses best to fat burning.
Less Cravings
Preparing to eat 4-6 meals about 3 hours apart is key in keeping your appetite in check. If you’re eating healthy whole foods each meal, like lean protein, veggies and slow-burning carbohydrates like whole grains, you’ll stay full throughout the day and will be less likely to have cravings and binge. Now, if you eat only twice per day, you may be so hungry that you over eat, eat less healthy foods and end up eating more overall calories than you would with 4-6 meals. Not to forget, that awful over eating feeling that you experience, and then you’re ready for a nap!
Hormones In Check
There are several hormones in our bodies that affect hunger levels, metabolism and weight loss such as insulin. Eating too infrequently causes larger insulin spikes when we do eat. This has two negative effects. First, the spikes increase fat storage. Second, the spikes are followed by crashes which cause us to experience strong hunger and crave sweets. Regulating our diet and consumption with a routine, helps keep our hormones leveled and working how we are meant to operate.
Improves Digestion
Eating smaller helps us digest better – because we’re putting small, manageable quantities of food into the body- bit by bit rather than a big food bomb twice per day. It’s easier for our gut to process and absorb vitamins and minerals from our foods when we eat smaller quantities more frequently. In fact, many doctors recommend eating smaller meals more frequently to help patients with digestive conditions like acid reflux, frequent constipation issues, etc.
If you need help with this process- reach out to me! I am so happy to help you start planning meals and benefit from the few things I just mentioned.
