Eating Regularly For a Better Metabolism - Three Meals Isn't Enough

You may have heard how extremely low-calorie diets are not actually good for you. You may also read about people who consume a massive amount of calories a day and are, unsurprisingly, massive. Basic logic might indicate that consuming less than 2000 calories per day would cause you to lose weight, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Your average person needs about 2000 calories a day to function properly. Any fewer than that, and your metabolism slows down, causing more of those calories to be stored as fat. The result of this is that you feel sluggish, unable to think, and unable to exercise.

Your body is shutting down, thinking that since you can't give it enough food to function properly, it will have to do with what you have given it.




The same also applies on the short term, eating throughout the day. By only eating three large meals during the day, your resting metabolic rate in between those meals is relatively slow, causing much of the food to be converted into fat, because your body thinks that it won't be receiving any more nutrition for some time.

The solution to this, of course, is to eat a small nutritious snack between meals. I like to bring a little cup of yogurt and an apple to work to eat between meals. You don't have to overeat, or eat anything even close to a full meal, but you need to give your body something to work with. No, chips and empty calories are no good. You should go for something with real nutritional value.

You'll notice yourself thinking clearer and feeling more energetic throughout the day, just by continually giving your body something to work with and boosting your resting metabolic rate.

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Eating to Boost Your Metabolism

Depending on how much weight you need to lose, you may adjust your exercise and calorie intake so that you're aiming to take off up to two pounds per week, which means your body needs to use 1000 calories more than you're eating each day. Again, you'd do this through a combination of diet and exercise.

However, you don't want to do much more than that. And that's because if you drop your calories too drastically, your body will think it is starving. If it goes into starvation mode, it will drop your metabolism, which stalls your progress.

At this point, most people jump start the weight loss by eating even fewer calories. The body responds to this by slowing your metabolism even more in a desperate attempt to conserve energy.

It's a vicious cycle.

So what you need to do instead is eat in a way that fuels your body so that you have enough energy for your workouts and your metabolism keeps roaring all day long.




Here's how you do it:

Eat Multiple Smaller Meals to Boost Your Metabolism

Every time you eat a meal, your metabolism raises slightly. Thus if you split up your daily calories into six to eight small meals (rather than three big ones), you get six to eight mini metabolic boosts.

Eat Balanced Meals to Boost Your Metabolism

For now your goal is to look at your plate and eyeball your meals to strike a balance. Try to have about:

40% of the food on your plate consists of good proteins.
40% of the food consists of slow-burning carbs.
20% are healthy fats.

You can eat this balance for every meal. You can also look at your day's total calories and meals and seek an overall 40/40/20 balance. However, you might choose to eat the bulk of your carbs in the morning to fuel your day's activities. Your last meal can consist mainly of proteins and your fats.

Eat Clean to Boost Your Metabolism

Sure, in theory you could lose weight just by eating candy bars or McDonalds all day, as long as you were taking in fewer calories than your body needs each day for basic functions as well as to fuel your workouts. But if you don't eat clean, you'll end up with a whole host of problems, including:

More fat, less muscle. Your body may decide to burn muscle alongside the fat stores, which means you'll end up smaller... but flabby. You'll look like an old lady. And that look doesn't exactly drive the women wild on the beach!

No energy. Poor eating habits leads to poor energy. And that means you can't give 100% during your workouts, which leads to poor results.

Slowed metabolism. Let's say you find out you need to eat 2500 calories to lose weight. If you're eating "dirty" calories (like sugary, fatty, processed foods), eventually you'll have to eat even fewer calories. That's because these foods do nothing to keep your metabolism roaring.

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