How many meals should you eat in a day to lose weight?

I googled this recently and it made my head spin! There seems to be hundreds of ‘doctors’ and ‘health specialists’ pushing some kind of book that claims to have the answer to this loaded question. And to make it more confusing they are all creating noise about completely different methods. 6 meals a day, intermittent fasting, 3 hour diets, 3 meals and no snacks. The list goes on…. The truth is there is no 'perfect diet'. It’s about looking introspectively; who you are, what you are ready, willing and able to do, what your diet and lifestyle is like as well as your current and historical relationship with food. 

Take a look at your current diet

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” 

If you have been trying to lose weight and are not seeing results then you need to change elements of your diet to start making progress. If you don't take a look at what, when and how you are eating and just ‘keep trying to eat healthy’ then you will likely continue to bang that head against a brick wall.

Keeping a food journal can be really helpful. Jot down everything you eat and drink over the course of a week then take a look at what your week was like. Are you fairly consistent with the timing of what you eat or does it vary? Do you regularly skip meals or find yourself snacking? What kind of foods are you eating? Are you eating a more carbohydrate, fat or protein rich diet? Are those carbohydrates mostly from vegetables and fruit or more from grains, bread etc? Is your protein processed (e.g. sliced packaged meats) or from a whole source (fresh meat, fish)?

Know your body type

Are you an ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph? We are all built a little bit differently. This gives us different strengths and qualities and is important to consider when wanting to lose weight. It can be so tempting for women to look at someone with a body they desire and strive to copy what they eat in a bid to look like them. This method is usually frustrating, discouraging and rarely yields results. Following the diet of a waif thin 6 foot tall model will likely be a miserable experience for someone with a shorter and naturally more muscular build. 

Take the test on bodybuilding.com  to see where you fall.  Then check out Precision Nutrition’s Body Type Eating to see what a typical meal breakdown for your body type should look like 

Get a grip on your activity level 

It can be easy to fall into the trap of sometimes feeling like you have worked out harder or for longer than you actually did. It can also be surprising to see how much baseline activity you get during the day, using an activity tracker can be a great tool to see how much (or little) you are moving. 

Revisit your diet history

Your relationship with food is a very important factor for long term weight loss success. Have you have spent times heavily restricting yourself from meals and food groups then perhaps suffering a period of ‘falling off the wagon’ by overeating, feeling out of control with your eating or bingeing? If so spending time forming a healthy relationship with food should be the first step before thinking about weight loss. If you have been excessively restricting calories for an extended period of time then you may need to initially focus on regulating your adrenals and hormones to get your body working optimally again. 

Understand your hunger cues

This means developing body awareness and working on mindfulness! A simple concept but not easy and takes practice. Many of us are out of tune with our hunger signals, often mistaking stress, fatigue,dehydration and other emotional factors for hunger. Why are you hungry? Do you approach meals starving?  Do you forget to eat then overeat at meals? Or do you constantly feel hungry and like snacking all day? Do you use food as a distraction? Or as a reward? For some people having 6 small meals a day helps keep overeating at bay and overall calorie consumption in check, whereas for others restricting to 2-3 meals is easier to make better choices and allows for better consistency. 

Sources:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/3-hour-diet-or-3-meals-a-day

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25242841  (The effects of 6 isocaloric meals pattern on blood lipid profile, glucose, hemoglobin a1c, insulin and malondialdehyde in type 2 diabetic patients: a randomized clinical trial.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680567/ (intermittent fasting) 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23171320  (Intermittent fasting combined with calorie restriction is effective for weight loss and cardio-protection in obese women).

willpower. it's more than the story you tell yourself

Willpower is not black or white. You don’t ‘have it’ or ‘not’. It combines a complex of multiple of things.

So what is willpower?

• Willpower combines your ability to be interested and engaged in novelty
• Willpower combines your attentiveness to environmental cues around you 
• Willpower combines your sense of internal principles, your sense of self 

What’s your inner dialogue when it comes to willpower? It could be “I really suck at exerting my willpower and I am a total failure” or it could be “I am iron clad and unflappable.” The story that you tell yourself about your willpower is critical. 

We all have willpower, no one is a ‘failure’ and can’t control themselves.

Instead of thinking in a blanketed, negative way about yourself recognize the areas in your life where you do have excellent willpower. It could be your attention and focus to your work, it could be the amount you dedicate to read, it could be drinking enough water, walking every day, cooking dinner 4 nights a week, or getting to sleep around the same time every night.. All of these require consistent effort which is exerting that ‘willpower muscle.’

Each of these obviously have varying degrees of effort, but there is still effort involved. Look at how you mentally apply yourself to tasks you are successful at to help guide you to gaining more control over situations where you feel your willpower fails you. 

Instead of telling yourself you have no willpower, change the story you tell yourself to: “In some situations I have trouble being decisive or being uncomfortable."Everything is a skill that can be tackled in segments. Just like learning a language, building physical strength or running long distances we start small and build upon it consistently to get results. 

By recognizing this you can look at that particular habit or activity that you struggle with and begin to break it down into smaller pieces. Work on those pieces one step at a time, to develop new habits and break old habits to support your goals. 

Working on habits, not willpower will get us moving closer to our goals. 

The importance of understanding protein, fat and carbohydrates for weight loss

It is time to ditch the calorie counting and start thinking about your macronutrients

Before I started on my educational journey into the world of health and fitness my only knowledge of macronutrients was the food pyramid, looking at the back of nutrition labels and reading ‘health’ magazines. I grew up in the era when margarine replaced butter, boxed cereal replaced fresh eggs for breakfast and ‘fat free’ reigned. 

In my mind it was all about total energy. 2000 calories or less per day. How many calories I burned would determine how many more calories I would allow myself. My obsession with having a slim physique made me think that with fat being the most calorie dense food then the logical thing would be to try and eradicate it as much as I possibly could from my diet. 

I had no idea that these 3 macronutrients are broken down differently in the body, elicit varying hormonal responses and in turn effect metabolism and all round performance.

The very basics on calories 

Protein, carbohydrate and fat make up the 3 key macronutrients. In very basic terms, macronutrients are what our body needs for survival. Each of these provide the body with energy, or calories to enable growth, metabolism, repair and other body functions. While each contain calories, the amount does vary.

Carbohydrate 4 calories per gram

Protein 4 calories per gram

Fat 9 calories per gram 

Note: Alcohol is not a macronutrient, yet is another source of calories at 7 calories per gram.

The truth is that a calorie is not really a calorie. A calorie from fat versus a calorie from protein or carbohydrates is broken down and utilized at a different rate in the body. This is a great article on Huffington Post where Dr Lustig succinctly describes why all calories are not created equally. 

The low fat craze of the 90’s that still seems to stick did not take into account that the breakdown of these nutrients requires varied amounts of energy from the body. This will elicit different hormonal responses which could be from the type of food, the quality and of course the individual. How could 100 calories of fresh vegetable be the same as 100 calories of french fries? When you think about it, it makes no sense! As individuals we are all different and for some more carbohydrates may be tolerated well, where for others a higher protein and fat ratio will yield better results. Genetics, lifestyle factors and diet history will all play a role.

Where to go from here?

If you have been doing the same thing with your diet for some time and you are not getting results, then it is time to look a little closer. Start thinking about each meal in terms of the three macronutrients and knowing what, when and where sugar is creeping into your diet. 

1. Where is the protein? Are you eating unprocessed animal products or more processed meats?

2. What kind of fat are you eating? Are you eating good quality monounsaturated fats, e.g. from nuts, avocados, seeds and cold pressed oils such as olive oil? 

3. How much and what type of carbohydrate are you consuming? What is the vegetable to processed carbohydrate ratio? For example vegetables versus pasta, quinoa or brown rice? What type of refined carbohydrate are you eating? e.g wild rice or jasmine rice?

4. What sugars are you eating? Candy or sweets? In coffee, soda, milk products or juices? 

Looking at your meal in terms of macronutrients can be a bit of an eye opener….. And I am just scratching the surface here. Check out the Precision Nutrition calorie control guide as a good starting point for constructing a better plate.

Sources:

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/fix-a-broken-diet

http://www.phillearney.com/nutrition/its-not-about-the-calorie/

http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-topics/Anatomy/your-digestive-system/Pages/anatomy.aspx