Please Sir, Would You Eat Some More?
You might be surprised if I told you one of the most common pieces of advice I give my clients. It is: Eat More, Please.
In my practice, I have encountered a surprising number of people trying to get by on 600-900 calories a day. Thanks to the diet-mindset that is pervasive in the world of weight loss, there is a serious misunderstanding about what the body needs for weight loss.
Now let me be clear…. There’s plenty of people eating too much. In fact, most people who are struggling to lose weight are simply taking in more calories than their body needs. But, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of people who are starving themselves in a failing effort to budge the scale.
Your metabolism is like a fire. Too little fuel (and too infrequent fuel) and the fire sputters. For years (centuries!), we had to expend a great deal of energy to obtain food. It hasn’t been until the last couple decades where food could be obtained with the press of a cell phone button and delivered right to your door – maybe even right to your outstretched hand if you’ve got an obliging family member! There’s no hunting and gathering anymore, but our metabolism still operates in caveman mode. Eat too little and the message your body gets is: “Food is scarce. Conserve, conserve!”
To give yourself a fighting chance for weight loss, you need to eat soon after waking and continue to eat about every 3 or 4 hours (in portions appropriate to your calorie needs.) This provides the constant source of fuel your metabolism needs to stay fired up.
A word to the wise: the only way to know with absolute certainly whether or not you are taking in too much, too little, or just the right amount of calories is to keep a food log. The person who eats one meal a day may take in twice the amount of calories they need, and the person eating six meals a day may be shorting themselves. So frequency of eating is not an accurate yardstick.
Food for Thought: As I’ve said before, you have to log to lose. But logging can also be a great means of determining if you’re not eating enough or eating too infrequently. If your weight loss has been frustratingly slow despite your best efforts to curb your eating, use this tool to determine how you can fire up your metabolism and get your weight loss efforts back on track.
