It just drives me crazy when people tell you that you have to do something, but they don’t tell you why. We have all heard that we should eat 6 meals a day. The problem is that no one knows why. Logically, it doesn’t make any sense. A person would think that eating more times a day would lead to a fatter body. However, there is a great scientific reason why eating more times a day leads to weight loss. Some diet companies have tried to explain it to us, but the problem is that they use long scientific words that the average person can’t understand. Who do they think they are, using words like that? Anyway, I’m about to explain it to you as if you were a two-year-old, so I know you can understand it.
In order for you to fully understand this technique, I need to explain to you what the word homeostasis means. Homeostasis is the way your body maintains normality. For example, our bodies are always 98.6 degrees. If the body gets too hot, we sweat. If the body gets too cold, we shiver. The same is also true when we eat. The body has a fixed level of glucose (sugar) in the blood that allows it to stay in the bloodstream. When we eat, blood glucose (sugar) levels rise. The brain then immediately tells the pancreas to release insulin. Insulin takes the extra glucose (sugar) and puts it into our cells for fuel. This brings our glucose (sugar) levels back to normal. The reason why I explained this is because I wanted to emphasize the importance of how our bodies combat any type of change. Now I need you to remember this, because it will be important later.
Before I can explain the 6 meals a day diet, I must first cover one more point. If you really want to lose weight, you need to understand that dieting is not a one or two month deal. It is a lifestyle change. You have to make your diet part of a “normal” daily routine. If you paid attention before, you learned that the body fights very hard to maintain normality. This means that if you go on a two-month diet and lose ten pounds, as soon as you go off that diet, your body will fight like hell to gain those ten pounds back. This is the only reason why more than 90% of all diets fail.
Now, to explain why the 6 meals a day diet works, I first need to explain human nature a bit. First and foremost, when you eat a meal, only a small portion of what you eat is actually used as energy. The rest is stored as fat or digested. Which one depends on how you eat on a daily basis. If you only eat one meal a day, your body learns this very quickly. It sends a signal to the brain that says “hey, this person is starving me all day, so you need to store more food as fat.” If you don’t know what fat is, it’s basically stored energy. Here’s a fun fact for you; sumo wrestlers eat one meal a day. They are some of the fattest people in the world. Think about it!
When you eat 6 meals a day, your body sends a signal to the brain saying; “hey, this person is going to eat again in two hours, there’s no need to store this extra food as fat. Go ahead and digest the rest.” Phew! Mix this principle with a little cardio and you’ll be a fat burning machine!
When I was doing personal training, the first thing I would tell my clients was to take exactly what they are eating right now and divide it into 6 small meals. This diet is a bit difficult to start because it requires a bit more planning. That’s why I recommend taking small steps. Once you get used to eating 6 meals a day, start changing the types of foods you eat. If you do it all at once, you will be completely overwhelmed and you will definitely fail. You must learn to walk, before you can run.