Small Meals

This week start eating more, smaller meals.

By eating more meals that are smaller you will be having the same number of calories per day; however, you will be helping your body work more efficiently.

When you eat 5 to 6 smaller meals each day instead of only 1 to 3 meals you keep your body's metabolism (your fat burning furnace) up and running longer meaning you’ll lose weight faster. Whenever you eat a big meal, skip a meal, or wait longer than 3 hours before eating a meal your body's metabolism slows down and doesn’t burn as many calories.

	Eating 5 to 6 meals a day keeps your hunger levels way down
	You will stay satisfied longer and eating 5 to 6 meals a day keeps your energy levels high throughout the day.
	A person who eats 5 to 6 small meals a day will burn much more calories than a person who eats 1 to 3 meals because your body burns calories during digestion and when you’re eating more meals - your body will spend more time burning calories digesting food rather than storing it as fat.
	When we eat, our body digests the food and in doing so sugar rushes into the body so it can be distributed around the body to nourish it. This change in blood sugar level from very low to very high can trigger insulin to be released. By eating smaller meals with less gaps between them, the peaks and valleys of blood sugar are less extreme and so there is less that can be stored as fat.
	Another reason why eating 5 to 6 meals a day is a good idea is that by eating a meal every few hours throughout the day you are less likely to feel the need to "snack" between meals. Snacking serves to increase the calories you consume each day because snack foods tend to be unhealthy - chocolate, chips etc... Cutting out these temptations will also increase your chances of success when it comes to weight loss.
	The human stomach stretches with a large meal. If you regularly eat small numbers of large meals you may inadvertently stretch your stomach, thus not only making you look fatter but also meaning it can take longer for you to feel full, so leading to an ever increasing limit on what you feel you can eat at any one time. With more, smaller meals a day you don't feel "full" after each one. Your stomach is therefore able to return over time to it's original size this helping you to naturally consume less food.