Fat Loss Tips.

Our grandparents were raised to eat three square meals a day and each meal got progressively larger as the day went on. The difference with them and us today is that they were far more active than we are. Most of them were involved in manual labor of some kind so had no problem burning large amounts of calories at one sitting.

That kind of eating is not suitable for our modern work free lives. Most of us do absolutely nothing that even vaguely resembles ‘work’ in the course of our day. We sit almost all of our waking hours. In the car on the way to work, at work, back in the car on the way home and our evenings are spent on the couch watching television.

Many of us still try and eat three meals a day, we usually have a small breakfast (if at all) a medium sized lunch and a large dinner, which may also include dessert. We have also been taught in the past that snacking or eating between meals is bad – and we have been told it would ruin our appetite. Unfortunately, these eating patterns make it very difficult to manage our weight in our inactive and sedentary lives.

The frequency of how often we eat each day has been shown to have a big influence on how much body fat we store. Many studies have proven that those eating four to six smaller meals per day have less body fat than those eating two or three meals even when both groups actually ate the same number of calories.

Eating larger meals spaced further apart means the body faces long stretches without food. This can cause the metabolism (the body’s engine) to slow down burning less fuel (calories). Hours without food can trigger the ‘starvation mode’ where the body anticipates a famine so conserves every single molecule of fat in preparation.

This is the reason why diets do not work. They trigger this ancient response so that when food is short the entire body’s metabolic engine slows down to hold on to precious body fat stores. Our body is still hardwired with these survival strategies and does not know there is a fridge full of food in the next room and it has no danger of starving.

The trick to losing fat is to eat so that this mechanism does not kick in. By eating 5-7 small meals each day of around 300-400 calories every 2-3 hours the body easily processes the smaller quantities of food so there is less chance it will be stored as body fat. These meals need to each be balanced and contain around 20 grams of protein as the center piece.

Add raw and cooked vegetables and a small amount of complex carbohydrates such as rice or sweet potatoes and you have a perfect small meal that will satisfy and nourish you. To make this work it is important that you prepare your meals each day for the following day so you can take them wherever you go. Then you will not be tempted to eat something that is not healthy and will not help you towards your weight loss goals.

These small meals keep your metabolism fired up, making fat loss and/or maintenance a much easier and healthier task. The tendency to be overweight is something that can continue throughout life so you will need to continually work at it to control it.

This process does not have to be unpleasant, your small meals combined with regular exercise to help burn up excess calories will help you shape a slimmer, fitter and more energetic body that you will be much happier with.