Would you believe that not eating enough can have the same affect on your body as eating too much? It’s true! When people want to lose weight the first thing most do is eat less. What you need to eat less of is junk food and more clean foods. Cleaning up your meals could actually result in eating more. I eat six meals per day. When people ask what I eat they can’t believe all that I eat for breakfast let alone the rest of the day.
How is that possible? Think of your metabolism as a fire. You have to feed the fire to keep it going. When you eat breakfast in the morning you are starting your fire (if you are not eating breakfast make a commitment to yourself to start tomorrow morning!). Each meal you eat fuels your fire. When you only eat breakfast, lunch and dinner you are getting your fire so low before each meal that you end up over eating and grabbing at whatever you can get your hands on because you are so hungry. You have gotten your body into starvation mode so your body wants more food to get your metabolism going again. When you eat every 2-3 hours you are constantly feeding the fire and keeping your metabolism burning at a steady pace. This keeps you on track with your clean eating and gives you the willpower to resist those not so good for you foods.
You may be saying, who has time to prepare all of that food. This is where time management comes into play. Prepare several meals at once and have them packaged so all you have to do is grab it. I grilled chicken for dinner the other night and cooked more than we needed. Today for lunch I had a salad with left over grilled chicken. Last Friday night I cooked a big batch of ground turkey and made sloppy joes with half of it and put taco seasoning in the other half. This lasted several meals into the week. Check out my post from last week for easy snack ideas.
We are all busy and time is limited but it is so important to get all your meals in. I have set the alarm on my phone before to remind me when to eat. I was folding clothes the other afternoon and realized I had forgotten to eat my snack! I stopped what I was doing, ate my snack (which was nice because I got to sit down for a few minutes) and then got back to the laundry.
If you are not already doing so, try eating every 2-3 hours throughout the day and see how you feel. You will have more energy as you keep your fire burning!
Balancing Life 