Read an Excerpt
Lean Habits For Lifelong Weight Loss
Mastering 4 Core Eating Behaviors To Stay Slim Forever
By Georgie Fear Page Street Publishing Co.
Copyright © 2015 Georgie Fear
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62414-113-3
CHAPTER 1
LEAN HABIT 1:
EAT 3 OR 4 MEALS PER DAY WITHOUT SNACKING
WHAT TO DO
Factor in adjustments to your schedule, but plan three evenly spaced meals over about a twelve-hour period. The goal is to eat only these three meals with nothing in between, so (for now) don't worry about how much you are eating—just focus on sticking to the three a day, not skipping any and not snacking in between. All food counts as snacks, and any beverage with significant calories also counts as a snack. If you have black coffee with a small amount of milk and no sugar mid-morning, don't worry about it, but a latte or a glass of wine should be considered a snack and is best to have with meals, not between.
Allow your body and mind at least a few days to get used to the new pattern. It may feel strange at first, but it gets easier once your body adapts. Your stomach will produce ghrelin surges at the times it normally expects food, so for the first few days of a different meal schedule you may feel transient hunger at the times you used to eat. Your body will quickly learn the new meal pattern, however, and those feelings will go away. If you are accustomed to eating every few hours, bear in mind that you may have to increase your meal size so that you can be satisfied for longer. Eating three miniature meals (instead of six miniature meals) is not healthy, habit-based weight loss. That's just dieting harder, and not a maintainable strategy.
Special circumstances may make you better suited to include a fourth feeding. If you exercise intensely after your evening meal, you may benefit from a shake or snack rather than going to bed without any post-workout nutrition. Also, if your work or personal schedule requires that you go seven or more hours between two meals, a feeding in the middle can help you get through that long period without building up an excessive appetite for the next meal or having to eat an uncomfortably large meal before to "make it through."
This situation often arises when people have lunch at noon and dinner at seven or eight p.m. If it's not possible to have lunch a little later, that means a long time between meals. Clients in this scenario often feel that they have to choose between two undesirable options: either eating an uncomfortable volume of food at midday to get to dinner, or eating a reasonable lunch but feeling starved by the time dinner rolls around. Getting overly full isn't comfortable, but getting overly hungry typically leads to munching while cooking or overeating when they finally get to their meal. Planning to eat something around three or four p.m. is very helpful in this case. However, to prevent adding excessive calories and preventing weight loss with the additional fourth meal, we make sure:
1. That lunch is appropriately sized so they are hungry for the midafternoon feeding.
2. That the midafternoon meal is sized to allow for hunger to return before dinner.
So, if you plan a fourth meal or snack to bridge the gap between two other meals that are seven or more hours apart, keep in mind that you don't need the snack or preceding meal to be very large. Your next meal is only a few hours away.
Last, if your schedule varies day to day or you have a different pattern on weekends, it's okay to have three meals some days and four meals others. Many people don't get up as early on weekends as they do during the week, so they find three meals works best for Saturday and Sunday, even if a longer waking time makes four meals better suited for Monday through Friday.
WHY IT'S WORTH IT
Satisfaction is key to the success and longevity of any nutrition plan, and this habit is going to help you form a pattern of eating that is as physically satisfying as possible.
(Three cheers for being satisfied!) Most people can rely on willpower to temporarily stick to a program that doesn't satisfy their appetite—but not for a lifetime. Eating three satisfying meals, with no snacking in between (and no mini-meals!), helps you lose fat without having to be hungry all the time. Best of all, you can eat until you are actually satisfied, a concept which to many dieters seems like a distant memory. When all your food is concentrated into meals, with no snacks or impulse bites between, you can sit down to a full plate of food, get comfortably satisfied and still achieve a calorie level low enough to help you lose fat. Research shows that between-meal snacking, even on "healthy" foods like yogurt and fruit, can add up to excess calories without improving satiety. So avoiding snacks and having more filling meals is a great place to start getting more satisfied.
EATING THREE SATISFYING MEALS, WITH NO SNACKING IN BETWEEN (AND NO MINI-MEALS!), HELPS YOU LOSE FAT WITHOUT HAVING TO BE HUNGRY ALL THE TIME. BEST OF ALL, YOU CAN EAT UNTIL YOU ARE ACTUALLY SATISFIED, A CONCEPT WHICH TO MANY DIETERS SEEMS LIKE A DISTANT MEMORY.
HOW IT WORKS
You already know that fat loss requires consuming fewer calories than you burn. Yet most dieters find that reducing calorie intake leads to decreased feelings of satisfaction and increased hunger. These sensations can make us pretty uncomfortable. My goal as a coach has always been to help my clients achieve that calorie deficit in the most comfortable way possible. The experience of losing fat doesn't have to be all that bad!
People trying to control calorie intake often fall into a pattern of eating lots of small meals throughout the day, so they don't have to go long periods without food. Or, they might set out to eat small, low-calorie meals (like a salad with chicken breast and low-fat dressing) but end up hungry just an hour or two later and steal three mini Kit Kat bars from their coworker's candy drawer, or raid their grocery bags on the drive home, and by the time they pull into the driveway, they've eaten four cups of bagged popcorn. Trying to eat meals that are too small is one of the easiest ways to go wrong in weight loss.
Eating six small meals per day used to be popular advice for weight loss, until research started to show that it didn't have any benefits. We've all heard trainers tell us to "stoke the fire of our metabolism" by eating often, but this has been debunked by scientific study. You don't burn any more calories by eating frequently. Eating many small meals backfires for many people because they end up eating enough calories to maintain their weight if you add them all up. Research reveals that the more frequently people eat, the higher their total calorie intake tends to be. As studies have been amassed using different populations and different diet prescriptions and meal patterns, it's become increasingly apparent that there is zero metabolic or satiety advantage to eating six times a day versus three times a day. Whether you call eating incidents meals or snacks is inconsequential.
EATING MANY SMALL MEALS BACKFIRES FOR MANY PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY END UP EATING ENOUGH CALORIES TO MAINTAIN THEIR WEIGHT IF YOU ADD THEM ALL UP. RESEARCH REVEALS THAT THE MORE FREQUENTLY PEOPLE EAT, THE HIGHER THEIR TOTAL CALORIE INTAKE TENDS TO BE.
A 2011 paper in the Journal of Nutrition observes findings on eating between meals, explaining why it promotes weight gain: "The energy content of snacks was never compensated for at the next meal and led consistently to a positive energy balance compared with no-snack conditions. Biologically, the snack-induced insulin secretion suppressed the late increase in plasma FFA (Free Fatty Acids), which may have contributed to the inhibition of satiety."
A study published in 2012 investigated the impact of meal frequency on appetite and hunger by providing two groups of men with the same amount of food, but divided into three meals or fourteen meals. Throughout the day, blood samples were collected to analyze hunger-related hormones, and subjects answered questions about their hunger and fullness. The three-meal pattern was significantly more satisfying, with men reporting less hunger and more fullness throughout the day. Blood samples showed that levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin were significantly reduced by eating three times per day, and blood sugar was lower over the total course of the 24 hours, which is also favorable for metabolic health. If the subjects got the same total amount of food though, why wasn't hunger equally satisfied when it was given in many little meals? One of the researchers explained that when meals are too small, they simply don't cause enough of a hormonal stimulus to fully "turn off" hunger: "The differential responses between smaller and larger eating occasions may simply be due to the inability of the body to detect the size of a smaller eating occasion as an adequate physiological load, reducing or eliminating the eating-related responses typically observed when larger eating occasions occur."
Frequent eating doesn't provide any extra metabolic benefit. It leads to higher calorie intake, and provides less satisfaction than three meals. Doesn't sound so promising for weight loss, does it?
A study published in August 2013 found that consuming high-sugar, high-fat snacks between meals not only caused weight gain but also decreased serotonin transporter activity in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain known to be involved in body weight regulation. Adding the same exact high-fat, high-sugar foods to the main three meals of the day, however, did not cause the same changes in neurotransmitter activity.
Although we know that serotonin plays a role in weight maintenance, more research is needed to clarify the precise impact of decreased serotonin activity that may occur with snacking between meals. It seems clear, though, that snacking between meals causes different neurotransmitter signaling changes compared to simply eating more food at meals.
While people in research studies can help us learn more about the biological effects on appetite, there's a real-world practicality to be considered too: the amount of effort it takes to follow a meal pattern. Most people who have tried to stick to a plan of small frequent meals know that while there's something nice about being able to eat more often, it requires a constant effort to keep to restricted portions. We can't go unsatisfied or partially satisfied perpetually. The difficulty of constant restraint and never feeling truly satisfied often trigger episodes of rebound overeating, or at the very least, a growing sense of discontent and resentment. I don't want to stop eating at "80 percent full," as one popular weight-loss adage instructs. I don't want to go through life sub-satisfied in any way, come to think of it. That sounds like a pretty raw deal.
Have you ever thought you are "too hungry" for your own good? Have you suspected that maybe you have a miscalibrated meter somewhere inside that makes your body want more food than it seems to need? If so, listen up: having three or four satisfying meals also can help "reset" your hunger and fullness cues. Research suggests that three or four eating episodes per day without snacking leads to a metabolic shift toward burning more fat and relying less on carbohydrates. This metabolic shift further decreases appetite and helps to repair symptoms of glucose instability caused by metabolic inflexibility.
HAVING THREE OR FOUR SATISFYING MEALS ALSO CAN HELP "RESET" YOUR HUNGER AND FULLNESS CUES. RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT THREE OR FOUR EATING EPISODES PER DAY WITHOUT SNACKING LEADS TO A METABOLIC SHIFT TOWARD BURNING MORE FAT AND RELYING LESS ON CARBOHYDRATES.
What does that mean? You are likely to be metabolically inflexible if you experience hypoglycemia, sudden feelings of needing to eat now, and swift bouts of dizziness, nausea, cold or crankiness if a meal is delayed. Your body has two main fuels, carbohydrates and fat, and a healthy metabolism can readily switch between the two depending on fuel availability. The unpleasant symptoms mentioned above arise from your body suddenly running short of fuel, and they occur if your physiology has adjusted to preferring carbohydrates and has a harder time adjusting to burning fatty acids. Mastering this habit by eating three or four meals per day can actually help to improve these symptoms by helping your body stay flexible to fuels, readily burning fat or carbohydrates depending on your needs.
Less frequent eating improves your ability to burn fat because it allows for long enough intervals between meals while you're in a fasting state. If you eat often, you never get into this state. In the fasting state, after you've assimilated the fuels from your last meal, your body turns from absorbing and storing fuels into using stored fuels. During this time (typically three to five hours after you last ate) is when your body switches on its fat-mobilizing and fat-burning processes. Your muscles and liver, which comprise a sizable segment of your metabolically active tissue, both switch from using carbohydrates to using stored fat as fuel. This transition away from relying on glucose is an adaptation that keeps your blood sugar steady, as glucose slowly released from stores in the liver is available for the brain to use.
If you suffer from episodes of hypoglycemia or low blood sugar on a regular basis, your muscles and liver may not be efficiently making this switch to oxidizing fat as well as they could. The solution: gradually train your body to go longer between meals so it improves its ability to burn fat for fuel.
Eating between meals, or eating again in less than three hours (interrupting the body's approach of the fasting state), shifts your metabolism back toward carbohydrate burning, priming you to store excess calories ingested as body fat, as opposed to burning them off. In fact, measurement of a person's RQ (respiratory quotient, the ratio of carbohydrate to fat burning) is highly predictive of their risk for obesity. The key here: the more carbohydrates you are burning, the more readily you store fat. When you get several intervals during the day of fasting for five or more hours, you burn more fat, your blood sugar doesn't crash and hunger doesn't come upon you like a destructive tidal wave. It behaves more like a gently rising tide.
Enhanced fat oxidation is a powerful metabolic tool in getting lean, but let's not overlook the logistical benefits too—fewer meals per day requires less planning, less thinking about food and fewer dishes to wash. I did the cooler and Tupperware thing for years. It was only after I stopped that I realized how much effort I saved by not having to pack up and carry three "meals" to work, and how much more productive I became with less hunger distracting me and fewer breaks for food. Being freed from washing a mountain of plastic containers also added precious free time to my day to do things I enjoy.
Additionally, letting yourself get fully hungry between meals increases your sensitivity to leptin, a hormone that helps to naturally promote leanness, decrease appetite and promote energy expenditure. Maintaining leptin sensitivity is associated with maintaining your weight loss for the rest of your life. People who decrease their leptin sensitivity (through yo-yo dieting, high fat intake, inadequate sleep or other factors) are more likely to regain weight they lost and gain weight slowly as they age.
You might be tempted to think that eating only once or twice a day might therefore be even better than having three or four meals. However, research also shows that eating less than three meals isn't optimal. People who eat only one or two meals a day have been shown to have higher body fat levels than those who eat three times daily, and controlled feeding studies have concluded that eating fewer than three times per day results in poorer appetite control.
RESEARCH SUPPORTS THAT THE SWEET SPOT FOR OPTIMAL APPETITE CONTROL AND MOST COMFORTABLE FAT LOSS IS EATING THREE OR FOUR TIMES PER DAY–NOT MORE, NOT LESS.
Among my clients, I've observed several people try to make a two-meals-per-day plan work, but in most cases it does not. Typically, a person can initially stick to a calorie deficit eating two meals, but after a day or two their meals tend to creep upward in size until the person is in calorie balance again, and not losing weight. The physical and psychological stress of extended fasts on a daily basis, as well as the liver glycogen depletion that occurs, may be mechanisms behind why two meals a day just doesn't help most people to lose weight and maintain athletic capacity (even if the individuals do like it for simplicity).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Lean Habits For Lifelong Weight Loss by Georgie Fear. Copyright © 2015 Georgie Fear. Excerpted by permission of Page Street Publishing Co..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
