It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that eating more often is the key to dropping pounds, but it works. Hear us out!
Common knowledge tells us that the best way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories per day. Right?
Well, not so fast…
The problem with this way of thinking is that the human body does not burn calories based on a 24 hour day. In fact, the 24 hour day is just an arbitrary interval of time, and it has no bearing on how your body burns calories. Our bodies burns calories as we eat them, not over the span of 24 hours.
This means that your daily caloric intake is almost meaningless when viewed all by itself. For example, let’s take a typical dieter who skips breakfast, but who then eats 800 calories for lunch, 800 calories for dinner and 200 calories for a late night snack, accumulating a total of 2,100 calories for the day. Most people would consider this dieter’s intake of 1,800 calories per day to be the the deciding factor in whether or not they lose weight, but that would be false.
What is far more important to analyze is the number of calories eaten per meal. For example, if that same dieter took those 1,800 calories per day and divided them evenly into 6 meals (300 calories for 6 meals = 1,800 calories), then their body would be able to burn more of those calories throughout the day. As a result, the dieter would boost their weight loss results.
Why is this true?
Again, your body burns calories as you eat them. If you feed your body too many calories in one sitting then the excess calories from that meal won’t get burned and may end up stored as fat tissue.
However, if you eat fewer calories per sitting, then your body has a better chance to burn all of the calories from that meal. If your body successfully burns all of the calories from any given meal, then your body will be forced to begin burning stored fat tissue for any additional energy (which equals fat loss for the dieter).
Give it a try! Make it a goal this week to eat fewer calories per meal, but increase the number of meals throughout the day. You should begin losing more weight, with only a slight adjustment to your eating habits. Let us know how this works for you!
