Eat Your Way Lean

by Kris Pitcher

Eating more to lose weight is a really difficult concept for people to grasp. It goes against everything they've been led to believe. Less is more right? In fact, if I don't eat anything at all - won't I eventually lose weight? Well, no and plenty of people actually kill themselves doing just that. But I still see a lot of people who eat one or maybe two meals a day hoping to make a dent in their goals.

This kind of behavior sets our bodies up to do just the opposite of what we want. It tells our metabolism to shut down. "Shut it down! We've got a famine here!" Then you dump that one meal in...whoa Nelly you over do it too because you've unleashed a beast. A chemical hurricane starts in your pancreas as your body shoots insulin into your bloodstream to corral the sugars. Your cells convert all that fuel into fat and put it away quick. After all, we're in a famine and who knows when our next meal might be.

Eat by the clock!

We want to create a nice constant fuel source by eating frequently throughout the day. Every two to three hours you want to be having a meal. Let's take average Jane who weights 130 pounds and is maintaining her weight with 1800 calories per day. She'd be smart to break that out into 6 meals of about 300 calories. Each would be a combination of protein, healthy fats, and carbohydrates.

You can see her meals are not big...they're mini-meals at 300 calories. This constant fuel source tells our body, "We've got no shortage here, you're going to get the nutrients you need!" It also maintains our blood sugar levels so we're not rising and crashing. Our bodies want things nice and easy, homeostasis please! No herky-jerky dumps of chemical whirlwind causing huge meals.

Best yet, optimizing our fuel in this way helps us keep our metabolism (the rate at which we burn calories) higher. It sends the message that our body can use fat for fuel, and that it can count on us to keep the fire burning!

Eating more, and/or more frequently might be the boost you need to get you over a plateau, or to get your metabolism going again. Think about having 24 hours in the day. You want to eat in the morning when you wake up. After sleeping for 7-8 hours, you need to fuel. And it's OK to eat later in the evening. It's all a matter of what you're eating. I didn't say eat bowls of cereal, ice cream, and cookies in front of the TV before bed. I'm saying it's OK if you're last meal is before bed, you're 300 calorie protein meal. Follow? 

Think about your eating patterns. How long do you go between meals? Are you having 3 meals a day? Can you increase that to 5, or 6? It takes some work to figure out what you're eating, and think about how you can split it up into smaller meals. But it is possible, and powerful, to eat your way lean.