Lose Weight by Snacking Between Meals
Yes, it's time for another of my Top 100 Weight Loss Tips folks! In this particular article, number 78 in the ever growing series, I want to take a look at the strategy of snacking between meals to lose weight, even if that does sound counter productive.
All the diet books tell you not to eat snacks or you'll break your diet and gain weight, but there is evidence to suggest that when its done correctly, the opposite is true. We shall see!
Snacking Between Meals
Of course, when you first started reading this, I bet you immediately thought of breaking out the potato chips, cakes and biscuits as the "snacks" I was referring to. Wrong! By snacking, I mean eating small amounts of the right foods for your diet. You'll see why as we go along.
This is where you get to become your very own snack fairy! Here is a chance to turn the rigid diet strategy on its head and do exactly what they tell you not to do. It can actually be ok to snack between meals. Yes, really!
It is a well known fact that eating more small meals during the day rather than three large ones are better at keeping you satisfied and staving off any hunger pangs. That is part of the trick to this, in making sure that you don't get the sensation of being hungry, but instead go through your day feeling the sensation of being full up.
No Feeling Hungry
This follows the theory that in order to stick to any diet, you never want to feel like you're hungry. Plus, by letting your body know that it’s going to be getting a regular supply of the calories it needs to function, it gets used to that way of eating and the days of large meals are gone.
On the other hand, if you starve yourself between your regular meals, there's a very good chance that you are most likely going to eat more at the next sitting before your brain has a chance to tell your mouth to stop eating!
When you think about it in this way, the traditional breakfast, lunch and dinner set meals are merely social constructs that have been drummed into you throughout your life at their very core. If you apply logic and reason to it, you'll see that it's really not necessary to restrict yourself, your diet and your eating habits to those rigid constraints.
When you eat three big meals a day, the sudden food overload that your body has to process all in one go and which invariably it can't, means some of it gets stored as fat cells.
Eat Small and Often
When you eat small and often, you drip feed your body with the nutrients, vitamins and calories it needs to keep going. You don't overload and your body gets used to using the smaller amounts as it needs them and so is less likely to store any as fat cells.
This all means that in all likelihood you will probably eat less overall than you would with larger meals. Which means less calories throughout the day, resulting in a net weight loss for you.
Just keep your hands off the potato chips, cakes...
100 Weight Loss Tips number 77 follows in the very next post!
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Posted on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 0 Comments