Christie Achenbach

Benefits of Eating Small Frequent Meals

Skipping meals, especially breakfast, may seem like the most logical way to lose weight, but it could do more harm than good. Think of your metabolism as a fat-burning machine; if you don’t give it the fuel it needs, it’ll stop properly working. When you wake up in the morning your body already has been fasting for about 6-8 hours so making sure you eat breakfast in the morning will help jump-start your metabolism. Then, eating several small meals during the day keeps it running.

Eating small, healthy meals frequently throughout the day is not only important for controlling appetite and cravings; it is also essential for maintaining healthy blood glucose, insulin and cholesterol levels.

If you don’t eat regularly, your metabolism slows down and your body absorbs and stores more of the food you eat, including cholesterol and fat. But our bodies are incredibly at adapting. If you eat more frequently, your metabolism speeds up because your body “learns” that more food will be on the way, thus burning off calories instead of storing them.

Think of skipping meals like hibernation for bears. Hibernation allows bears to conserve energy during the winter when food is short. During hibernation, bears drastically lower their metabolism in order to conserve energy stored as body fat because it doesn’t know when the next meal will come.

If you are someone that comes home from work and finds themselves starving and eating everything insight, there is a good chance you did not eat enough during the day. When you skip meals in the morning and/or afternoon, you are normally famished when you get home. No matter how great your willpower is or how many healthy foods you have stocked in the pantry, overeating is often inevitable. Eating the small frequent meals throughout the day will help control that ravenous evening hunger.

Try eating within an hour of waking and every 3–4 hours thereafter, but remember “portion control” is the key to losing weight. And remember, it is not the lack of motivation that causes weight gain; it is the lack of planning. Take a few minutes to pack healthy snacks before you head off to work in order to avoid running to the vending machine or driving through a fast food lane.

To summarize some of the many benefits for eating small frequent meals:
1. Decreases food cravings
2. Stabilizes blood sugar and insulin levels
3. Increases metabolism
4. You will feel better and have more energy
5. Lower levels of LDL cholesterol
6. Helps control hunger
7. Possible weight loss

January 14, 2011 - Posted by Christie Achenbach RD, CSSD, ACSM-CPT | Weight loss