If I had known that I get to eat more meals in a day when losing weight, I would have started a lot sooner! The last thing you probably think about when trying to lose weight is eating more often, but it’s true – the tired, old philosophy of eating “3 big meals a day” is horribly out of date and just plain wrong. To really boost your metabolism and help you achieve your fitness and weight loss goals you should be eating smaller meals every 3-5 hours. The key here is smaller meals (you cannot have a 5-course meal every time you sit down!) and making sure what you put into your body is stuff that it can use.
Our bodies are strange creatures, and they very easily start to think that food is scarce when they don’t get nutrition every few hours. By eating smaller meals more frequently you are telling your body “Hey, it’s ok, there is plenty of food – here, try this and enjoy!” It helps your metabolism to keep going throughout the day and helps to provide regular doses of energy that your body can use to keep you feeling better and helps give you the motivation to be more active.
Without a doubt the most important meal of the day is breakfast. I can’t tell you how many years went by when I was skipping breakfast and just grabbing a donut or some other junk food from the convenience store or the break room at work. Is it any wonder I was 342lbs and growing? Make sure that you start your day off right – you want to fill your plate with proteins, healthy fats and a few carbohydrates. Think of this combination as the perfect “Good Morning Body” breakfast!
Here is a sample of what I had for breakfast this morning:
Scrambled eggs (yes, eggs are good for you!), slice of whole wheat toast with a teaspoon of peanut butter, a tablespoon or so (I don’t measure things exactly) of pecans and a glass of skim milk.
Now feel free to get creative with those eggs – why don’t you chop up some of those garden fresh tomatoes and put into them? How about a dash of cinnamon? Can I interest you in some chopped onion? Just avoid the salt and the cheeses and you will be fine!
Mmmm, let me tell you it was good! I’m not a morning person, but this boost of energy really got me up and going.
Losing weight isn’t easy, but we can do things to make it a little more enjoyable. Eating a good, healthy breakfast and making sure that we are eating multiple small meals during the day can go a long way to making this journey a lot more enjoyable – and helping you to stick to it.
So if you haven’t done so already, get off the computer and go make you some breakfast!
Another hot summer weekend here in Missouri – the type of heat and humidity that makes you want to stay inside with the blinds shut and the AC cranked down real low. It’s 3pm on a Saturday, and the YMCA closes at 5pm and I’m having a hard time motivating myself to get up, get out and get over there. I feel good about how much I’ve achieved, yet at the same time on this particular day I just want to dive into a huge bowl of rocky road ice cream.
