I have to admit it. As a stay at home mom I am always close to my kitchen and feeding hungry kids. I am around food all the time. I love food! But I don’t like what food does to my waistline.

It seems that all the diet and fitness websites are recommending people to eat frequent meals in order to lose weight. Eating 5- 6 times a day is the best way to eat if you want to shed those extra pounds they say. The thing is… I hate this! I like to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible. I like to eat till I am full and eat when I am hungry. Eating three times suits me just fine.

If I was to snack I would be eating way too much food. For some reason it just encourages the munchies and grazing. I end up eating more food and calories.

Reasons for Increasing Meal Frequency

1.    The reason behind eating smaller but more frequent meals is that you will be less likely to overeat during your main meals if you have a snack.

-    This is great if it works for you but if you are like me and it backfires on you and you end up eating more than the benefits of snacking is not doing you any good.

2.    Eating small meals will boost metabolism.

-    That is actually not true and it only helps boost sales of high sugar shakes and protein bars. The fitness magazines all contain precious advertising that keep them going. So they will obviously want to promote the “eating frequent meal myth”. Here is a great article that dispels all the baloney regarding meal frequency and regarding metabolism Lyle McDonald writes:

“Quite in fact, it takes at least 3-4 days of fairly strict dieting to impact on metabolic rate (and some work on fasting shows that metabolic rate goes UP acutely during the first 72 hours of fasting); a single meal means nothing. You will not go into ’starvation mode’ because you went more than 3 hours without a meal. Nor will your muscles fall off as an average sized food meal takes 5-6 hours to fully digest, as I discuss in The Protein Book.”

It is a relief to know that if you are not hungry that you don’t need to eat more.  Now I don’t have to worry about bringing food along with me if I go out and that even fasting can be beneficial.

If you feel better eating more frequently and it helps you reduce your overall calories than do it.  But if you are like me and snacking stimulates your hunger and you end up eating more you don’t have to worry about it and enjoy solid meals less frequently.

To your health and wellness,

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