Eat More, Weigh Less: Why Frequent Eating Is The Key To Keeping Off The Pounds

Eat more food to lose weight? Sure, it sounds crazy. That's
probably because many of the weight loss plans you've
encountered in the past have told you just the opposite: eat
less, avoid this, cut back on that. But the simple reality is
that frequent eating—five or six times throughout the day—is a
common-sense way to healthy weight management. So just how does
it work?

The concept is called dietary thermogenesis, and it refers to
the energy required by the body to digest food. Digestion is a
very energy-intensive process, and it takes work to convert an
entire meal into the nutrients that your body will actually
utilize for energy.

It may help to think of thermogenesis as a process, along the
lines of refining oil into usable gasoline to run your car. The
refinery must burn energy to convert oil into the fuel you pump
into your car at the gas station. Every time you eat, you have
to burn calories in order to digest your food and unlock the
energy within your meal. And guess what? Eating increases your
metabolic rate. In fact, studies have shown that as you eat,
your metabolism increases by as much as 30 percent, and this
effect can last for up to three hours after you have finished
your meal.

Fasting, on the other hand, lowers your metabolic rate, which
is the reason why so many diets fail. When meals are skipped or
long periods of time elapse between meals, this slows down the
metabolic rate and decreases the rate at which the body burns
calories. So the key to maximizing weight loss when you are
following a reduced-calorie weight loss program is to
continually fire up your metabolism through dietary
thermogenesis. And how do you do that?

Eat smaller portions approximately every two to three hours. By
doing so, you will increase the frequency at which your
metabolism is fired up to fuel the digestive process. If your
metabolism is increased for as long as three hours after eating,
and you are eating every two to three hours, you will
consistently engage your dietary thermogenesis process.
Therefore, a very important factor in any weight loss program is
to eat every two to three hours.

You might be thinking that it is going to take a lot of work to
eat so often throughout the day, but in reality it should not.
There are 24 hours in a day, and you are awake for approximately
half of them. If you scatter your meals and snacks over the
course of about twelve hours, you will have eaten five or six
times during the course of the day. For example, if you eat
breakfast at 7:00 a.m., and then eat every two to three hours
thereafter, you will be done with your last snack at 7:30 p.m.
As a result, you will have effectively managed to keep the
thermogenesis process engaged, thus increasing your metabolism.

About The Author: Brenda Watson is a Naturopathic Doctor and
world class authority on digestive health issues. She is the
President of Renew Life Formulas and has been helping people
restore health for over twenty five years.
http://www.fiber35diet.com