Dieting: It May be All in the Timing
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Dieting:
It May be All in the Timing
You begin your typical day with a croissant and a coffee. By mid-morning, you’re a bit overwhelmed with
work and so you eat some potato chips.
At lunch, you’re starving again so you eat a few slices of pizza and
more potato chips. By mid-afternoon,
you’re bored again, so you decide to sneak in a candy bar. Dinner means a multi-course meal of steak,
potatoes with sour cream, some pasta, and strawberry ice cream. Right before bed, you decide to sneak in another
candy bar.
Of course, there are obvious problems with this kind of diet. But, aside from the questionable nutritional
value of the food, there’s also the problem of the timing of the meals and
snacks. When dieting, it’s not only a
question of what you eat. When you eat
also matters. But, if you’ve been
conditioned to have three square meals a day and as many snacks as you want,
how can you go about changing your behavior?
To begin with, you should only eat when you’re actually hungry. This means you should not eat out of boredom,
sadness, fear, or for any other emotional reasons. Food exists as fuel to help rev up your body
for the challenges you face each day.
You should not look upon food as a means of comfort or a path to love.
At times, you may notice that you reach for a snack because you just
want a break from your routine. Maybe
your work is getting to you, or your children are trying your patience. You have to recognize the fact that eating
for emotional reasons is a learned behavior; so, in order to reverse course,
you simply have to unlearn the behavior.
It may take some time, but eventually you’ll find that you are able to
limit your eating to those times when your hunger pains start.
But you should also know that just because a person eats often, that
does not necessarily mean that he or she is overeating. A number of reputable diet plans recommend
eating five or six small meals a day in order to keep your metabolism humming
and to ward off hunger. However, these
meals should be carefully planned in advance.
Otherwise, you could find yourself packing on the pounds because of your
frequent snacks. For instance, you might
plan to eat bran cereal for your first meal of the day, a bowl of strawberries
for your second, some light turkey on whole wheat bread and some apricots for
your third, a cup of yogurt for your fourth, some low-fat cheese and crackers
for your fifth, and lean roast beef, green beans, and jello for your sixth meal
of the day.
When should you eat your small meals?
They should be scattered throughout the day—no more than four hours
apart. In this way, you can keep your
metabolism up, enabling you to burn calories consistently throughout the
morning and afternoon. Generally
speaking, however, you should only eat when you’re actually experiencing
hunger.
A survey conducted in 1999 found that 60 percent of Americans skip
breakfast. However, you should be aware
of the fact that eating breakfast can be a key to losing weight. If you don’t skip breakfast, you’ll find that
you’ll burn calories faster, leading to weight loss.
Try to avoid eating late-night snacks.
This is because your body will probably store the calories rather than
burn them off. Again, your snacking may
not be the result of actual hunger but simply because you have nothing better
to do at that time of the night. Simply
changing your nightly routine may help you to keep away from food at the midnight hour.
No doubt, it can be quite difficult to change your eating routine. You may have eaten three large meals all your
life, and you find it difficult to stop.
However, just a few subtle changes will help to transform both your
day—and your appetite. If you find
yourself reverting to your old routine, forgive yourself, and start again. If you are kind to yourself, it’s more likely
that you will eventually be able to find a diet plan you can live with—one that
will not only help you lose weight, but keep you satisfied as well.
Categories:
lose weight
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