‘three Square Meals A Day’ - The Best Approach For Weight Loss?

You probably have heard it your whole life, the healthiest people eat ‘three square meals a day”. Lately though, science has taken this approach and changed it to be more suitable for weight loss and diabetes management. Instead of eating three large meals per day, experts suggest eating four to five (and sometimes even six) mini meals per day. This article will explain the approach and why it is so useful for weight loss.

The human body, due to survival instincts from times of scarcity, keeps fat in stores called adipose tissue. This fat is used to keep us warm, protect our internal organs, provide energy for bodily functions, as well as keep an optimal storage of energy for when times get hard. Even now, in our highly advanced society where food is often plentiful, the body still decides to store food as fat if it doesn’t get it in a timely fashion.

By indulging in the three square meals a day approach, essentially you are eating breakfast, lunch and dinner roughly 5 – 6 hours apart. This time frame is apparently too long for the body to wait for energy and it goes into what is called starvation or survival mode. When this happens, a higher percentage of your next meal will be stored as fat.

The proposed solution is eating more frequent mini meals and hones in on this survival instinct and works around it. Essentially, you will be eating four to five meals per day, roughly 2 – 3 hours apart. This time span allows your stomach to break down the previous meal before moving it into the intestines. Constantly having something small and nutritious in your stomach will force your metabolism to keep moving due to thermogenesis, the ability of your body to burn energy by digesting food. By keeping your metabolism moving, your body is able to burn more calories and will not think about storing them in case of an emergency.

With smaller meals, your blood sugar levels will remain fairly constant throughout the day meaning you are also able to control your cravings significantly better. This is important to people who not only have diabetes, but are looking to control their insulin response as a method of losing weight.
Best of all, eating in this way helps shrink your stomach and avoids feelings of fullness which can cause lethargy and sleepiness. Aim for four to five meals a day and see how not only your energy levels change, but your weight on the scales dips also.

By: Richard McGovern

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Richard likes to write about various interesting topics and has been doing so for years. His latest website is zebrablanket.org which provides information on what to look for in a zebra throw blanket.