Want to Lose Weight- Eat More!

[Renee Masters Alvarado]

Many people include losing weight in their New Year’s Resolutions. It is usually a direct response to bad choices and overeating at holiday parties and family gatherings. I would like to devote a series of blogs to help you reach your ideal weight – the healthy way – and with the least amount of frustration.

So, you decide to go on a diet and immediately cut out a meal or 2 and decide to pretend food does not exist.

Guess what? Your body now switches into starvation mode and starts storing everything not immediately needed for survival for future use. You have signaled your body that there is not enough and it thinks it is starving, so instead of losing weight your body is storing more fat. Not quite what you had in mind.

Plus, putting yourself in a psychological position of lack is not good either. I know personally when I have decided to really cut back on food to lose weight, I immediately feel hungry and want to eat – something I wasn’t experiencing a moment before. Just the mere thought that I can’t have something, makes me want it very badly.

What you need to do is eat more- more often and more of the right foods.

There has been a lot of research to show that eating 5-6 small meals a day is better for us than 3 larger meals. There are a couple of reasons for this. You don’t want your body switching into “starvation mode” where it stores everything as fat. Also, when we are very hungry, we tend to reach for the wrong things, like simple carbs – candy bars, donuts, crackers – to “hold us over”. It is far better to start each day with a plan for eating 3 healthy meals and 3 healthy snacks. Make sure you are eating something every 2-3 hours.

So, in the “eating more” category, what should we be eating more of? The simple answer is vegetables. Vegetables are full of fiber, nutrients and complex carbohydrates. That fiber will leave you feeling full and all those nutrients will give your body what it really craves – food for the cells. Plus, complex carbohydrates give the body a continual flow of energy as they take longer to digest than simple carbs.

Vegetables make great snacks and should be included in every meal possible, even breakfast. Whole oat and wheat zucchini muffins are great! You can even toss some veggies into your breakfast smoothie.

Here are some suggestions for healthy snacks:
∑ Carrots, celery, zucchini, and/or mushrooms with ranch dip
∑ Whole grain crackers with cheese, hummus, or nut butter (peanut, almond, cashew)
∑ Any kind of nuts
∑ A Dill pickle
∑ Whole wheat pita with tuna and sprouts

How much is a snack size? In general a serving size is the size of a deck of cards or a baseball. Just keep that in mind if you look at the nutrition or calorie count in any chart. So with your meals and your snacks be aware of your serving size and you can easily move to 6 smaller meals and start to watch that fat fall off.

Next up, the importance of protein.

[Elaine Villafane]

In the book"Mastering Leptin" by Byron J. Richards, he brings a different point of view to the having of many small meals during the day. Leptin is a hormone secreted by white fat cells that according to Byron regulates many other hormones, such as thyroid and adrenals, among others and regulates metabolism. He explains clearly in this book that we were not meant genetically, to be eating all day long and that our digestive and hormonal systems need a break from 4-5 hours between 3 meals, which is all he recommends...no snacking.
He quotes "Yes, you are supposed to get a snack between meals – but it is supposed to come from your liver."
I have personally tried it and have found that carb cravings and evening eating has drastically been reduced, as well as an increase in energy.
He has what he calls the "Five Rules", which are thought- provoking, simple and that make sense. You can download them right from the Web. Just another point of view that works very well, even for hypoglycemic individuals.
Elaine Villafane, MS
Nutritionist

[Patti Linn]

That is very true. One way of balancing your food intake is to divide it. If you have 1200 to use during the day try to have three meals of 300 calories each and two snacks made up of 200 calories each. or three meals of 250 each and three snacks of 150 calories each.

The mistake a lot of people make is skipping breakfast and snacks, figuring they can have 600 calories for lunch and 600 for dinner. Or they skip snacks and have 400 calories at each meal. Or they skip breakfast, lunch and snacks and take in all their calories at dinner or use most of their daily alloted calories for cocktails instead of food. You know who you are!