Eating Five Small Meals Or Snacks Per Day

Coaxing your most primitive survival mechanisms into releasing your stored fat will require some conscious planning on your part. Eating five small meals or snacks every 2½ to 3 hours every day for the rest of your life is a very important component of permanent weight management. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were structured for us so that we could farm, hunt, fight wars, and work in offices and manufacturing plants- however, eating three large meals per day is not how our bodies want to be fed.

All of us were born with a starvation protection device, and it is hardwired into our cells to ensure our survival. If you go too long between meals, this primitive survival instinct does not know that food is as close as the refrigerator or the next convenience store. Your body simply thinks it is starving. Consequently, it will expend only a minimal amount of energy to fuel the most basic bodily functions and store the rest as fat. When you finally get around to eating again, your body(which is in survival mode) will store much of that food in your fat cells for later use. To coax your body into releasing this stored fat, you must remove its fear of famine. Your starvation protection mechanism must never be allowed to go into action. Your body must never think it is being starved. If you can relax the starvation protection mechanism, you will have great success. If you do not, your efforts will be futile.

Timing, as they say, is everything. The quickest way to activate your natural fat-burning ability centers on the timing of your meals. Your starvation protection mechanism can be lulled into a sense of security only if it is reassured that your body is being fed. Instead of eating the traditional three big meals, I want you to eat five smaller meals or snacks throughout the day.

Again, this is about activating your natural body fat-burning furnace. It is essential that you eat your first meal or snack within sixty­minutes of waking up and a small meal or snack every 2½ to 3 hours. Without a doubt, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Many of us go without breakfast and, as a result, rob ourselves of the most fundamental step to jumpstart our metabolism into high gear. After a Full night of rest and many hours without food, the body needs to be fueled as soon as possible. When we go without this vital meal, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to fuel the furnace of our metabolism. The only exception is if you are going to do an aerobic workout immediately upon waking. Then you can wait until after you exercise because you will be utilizing primarily your fat stores as an energy, source, which is what we want to do.

The objective is to speed up your metabolism to its highest possible level, burning all the fuel you put into the furnace quickly and completely. When you eat a small meal shortly after waking, you jump-start your metabolism. After 2½ to 3 hours, your body will have used up that fuel and you will need to replenish your fuel source. I can't say it often enough: to keep your metabolism on its highest setting, eat five small meals or snacks throughout the day.

If you eat five small meals or snacks throughout the day and at roughly the same time each day, your body will soon get into a new rhythm of eating. In essence, it will begin to trust that it will be fed regularly. It will begin to trust that it does not have to lock down what is held in storage within your fat cells, and it will begin to release body fat naturally. Your body will adjust so that it expends what you eat for fuel rather than conserve or store away nutrients for later use. This is the process of speeding up your metabolism.