Eating Small Meals To Aid Weight Loss

Why small meals are important for losing weight?

Our digestive system works best with only small amounts of newly ingested energy and nutrients at one time, thus if you eat a meal and consume more energy than your body requires at that specific moment in time, then your body has to store the excess in the fat cells. It doesn’t always matter if you consume fewer calories than required over the whole day. Being in a negative energy balance only increases the chances that any new fat stored will be used up at some point when you don’t eat much for a few hours or when energy expenditure increases dramatically. But this is no guarantee. At some point the body may need carbohydrates so it’ll burn blood sugar, glycogen or convert muscle protein into sugar. Fat burning is at the bottom of the oxidative hierarchy, thus there is no guarantee that sufficient amounts will be burned at any time.






Eating smaller meals helps because there’s always less potential energy to be stored as fat. So at a time when your body can burn excess fat, it can continue burning off old stores and help you lose further weight.

Eating little and often also helps provide the body with regular protein to maintain muscle tissue. And as we always say, more muscle tissue means a higher metabolism and a faster fat burning potential.

Eating smaller meals has one more benefit; it stops you from feeling full and drained like after a big meal. After a large meal we never feel like moving for hours, until the meal has been digested completely. This means you’re not likely to get up and do stuff. In other words, you may become lazy for a few more hours. A small meal digested quickly, means you’ll be available to get up and do stuff quicker allowing you to burn more energy and fat stores.

So small meals, eaten often will have a triple benefit to losing weight.
1. Fewer calories ingested
2. A higher metabolic rate
3. Less belly bloating effects

Ways to help reduce portion size:
1. Drink a large glass of water before meal
2. Only add small amount to plate, then wait for 20 minutes and store the rest for the next day
3. Use a smaller plate

Smoking and drinking

Well it’s obvious that these two have to go as long as wellbeing is concerned. Anyone that is to do a diet plan must give up smoking and drinking. A great way to help your efforts in the gym is to give up some detrimental habits such as smoking and drinking alcohol. Smoking damages the lungs and dramatically increases the risk of lung cancer along with other diseases. Excessive drinking has also been shown to causes major diseases.
These two habits are definitely not worth having around.


Nicotine

Nicotine may also increase your basal metabolic rate slightly. This means that you burn more calories than you usually would when you are just sitting around. However, losing weight by smoking doesn't give you any of the health benefits that you'd get if you were losing weight by exercising -- it actually does the opposite! Over the long haul, nicotine can increase the level of the "bad" cholesterol, LDL, that damages your arteries. This makes it more likely that you could have a heart attack or a stroke.
Smokers who want to quit smoking may use nicotine patch to relieve themselves from the withdrawal symptoms. Nicotine patch only has one-third of nicotine usually found in cigarette smoke
Nicotine patch is available in three dosages: 21mg, 14mg, and 7mg. Its objective is to reduce the consumption level of nicotine gradually over time, usually in a period of 12 weeks.
Recently, an Austrian research concluded that regular exercise can help smokers using nicotine patch to quit smoking. In the study which involves 68 subjects, 80% of the participants who exercise remained smoke free at the end of three months compared to 52% who didn't exercise.
However, some researches believe that strenuous exercise can lead to nicotine toxicity. When you exercise, your skin temperature increases, your blood vessels expand, and your circulation improves. This will double the absorption of nicotine from the patch into the blood stream. As a result, you may suffer from a heart attack.

Alcohol

Alcohol, although having no nutritional value, also has seven calories per gram so excess consumption can lead to weight gain as well.
Alcohol is also diuretic so large amounts can put a lot of extra stress on your kidneys. During diuretic action, ant diuretic hormones are secreted. This can result in heightened water retention and no one who exercises wants that to happen.
If you must consume alcohol, do so in moderation and never consume alcohol right before exercise as this will impair your balance, coordination and judgment. Remember this, if you've taken the time to make the effort to improve your physical conditioning and your overall health, why take major steps backwards and impede you improvements by excess consumption of alcohol?

Avoid Junk Food Consumption

Junk foods are rich in harmful ingredients like fat, sugar, salt and preservatives that can result in serious medical complications such as coronary heart diseases, obesity, hypertension, diabetes and even cancer. Hence, it is very important to avoid these foods in the diet. Below listed are some useful ways of avoiding junk food consumption.

1. One should consume at least 8 big glasses of water everyday. This ensures effective removal of any toxins present inside the tissues and blood vessels.

2. Hunger is the biggest factor that makes a person vulnerable to junk food consumption. It is important to feed the stomach periodically with foods like nuts, cereals, fruits and milk.

3. It is important to change the diet pattern for a healthy living. One should start with a heavy breakfast, a reduced lunch and a very meager dinner. At every meal, the diet should be rich with fruits, vegetables and starch foods such as wholegrain bread, pasta and rice.

4. Fruits and vegetables are a great way of reducing toxin levels inside the body. These foods are rich in antioxidants and vitamins that can help in removing free radicals and lower the risk of coronary heart diseases.

5. One should avoid consumption of street food. Apart from lacking nutrients, food available on the streets can also result in food poisoning.

6. Another way of reducing the consumption of junk food is the increase awareness for fitness.

Getting Started

Reduce weight and to maintain it that way, it is essential that you are motivated, if you really want to Reduce weight, and want to improve aspects of your lifestyle. Some people lose weight by strict dieting for a short period. However, as soon as the diet is over, they often go back to their old eating habits, and the weight goes straight back on. Losing weight, and then keeping it off, needs a whole change of attitude and lifestyle for life. This includes such things as:
• Type of foods and drink that you normally buy.
• Type of meals that you eat.
• Your pattern of eating.
• Amount of physical activity that you do.
Top tip - ask family or friends to help and encourage you to keep to a healthy lifestyle.




Realistic
What is your goal weight? Many people aim to get down to a 'perfect' weight. This is often unrealistic and may never be achieved. If the weight that you aim for is too low, you are likely to become fed up about slow progress, and give up. To lose 5 kg is good. To lose 10 kg is excellent.
In most cases, most health benefits come from losing the first 5-10% of your weight. This is often about 5-10 kg

Timescale
What is your planned timetable? A weight reducing diet for about three months is realistic. After about three months, many people find it difficult to keep motivated. It may be useful to have a start and finish date for your weight-reducing diet.

Healthy eating and understanding food
Do you know which foods are the best to eat? In general, a healthy diet consists of foods high in starchy carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, but low in fat, sugar, alcohol, and salt. Can you list several common foods that are in each category? It may take some effort and reading to become familiar with this.

Food diaries
It is helpful to know how much you normally eat. Estimating from memory is not very accurate. It is best to keep a diary, and write down every amount of food and drink that you have over a week or so. Include even the smallest of snacks. Add up the number of calories that you eat and drink each day. You may need advice from a practice nurse or dietician to calculate calories. However, there are plenty of books that give calorie counts for different foods.

Planning what you eat
It is important to plan ahead. Perhaps you could plan each day's meals and recipes the day before. In this way you will know exactly how much food you will be eating. This is better than looking in the cupboard and fridge before mealtimes or snacks to see what is there.

Change of eating habits
Do you have any eating habits that can improve?Are you eating larger and larger portions when you have a meal? Try to deliberately take smaller portions when you have a meal. Do not feel that you have to 'empty your plate'. Perhaps change the plates that you have in your cupboard (which may be large) to more medium sized plates. In this way you will naturally serve up smaller portions.

Shopping
One step towards improving eating habits is to change the contents of your shopping basket

Physical activity
If you are able, aim to do at least 60-90 minutes of moderate physical activity on at least five days a week. (All adults should aim for at least 30 minutes on five days a week. However, 60-90 minutes is recommended if you are overweight or obese and are aiming to lose weight.) Moderate physical activity includes: brisk walking, jogging, dancing, swimming, badminton, tennis, etc.

Morale
The first kilogram is the easiest to lose. This is because you lose water from your body at first as well as fat. Be aware that the first kilogram or so may seem to fall off, but then the weight loss slows down. This is normal, so don't get disheartened!

Tempting situations and special occasions
It is important to recognise that holidays, festivals, eating out, etc, may interfere with your everyday food choices and eating schedule. Also, do you find that watching food programmes on TV makes you hungry? How about smells from the kitchen from someone cooking who is not aware that you are trying to lose weight? Do you get pressure from family or friends to eat or drink more?
You will be tempted by different situations to abandon your planned food intake. You have to identify any tempting situations and avoid them.