Recently a young man asked me about losing weight. His question was, as he has quite a lot of weight to lose he wanted to lose it really quickly as in 20 Kgs per month. I advised against this.

To lose this weight, he’d have to speed up his Metabolism. But like most people, he was under the impression that to lose weight, he would have to starve himself. In other words, eating less = less calories eaten. Therefore eating less must make him lose pounds and inches. ·

This is Myth Number 1

It is better to eat smaller meals more often, say every two to three hours, rather than eating two to three big meals a day.

You know how babies are usually ‘Demand Fed’ meaning instead of being fed by the clock, they are fed when they are hungry. If you have ever tried to feed a newborn baby when it’s not ready, you will know what I mean. It just isn’t interested.

So what happens? In time the baby’s body adjusts to three meals a day and it is then considered ‘normal’. But as adults it would be better to go back to ‘Demand Feeding’.

Why is this?

What Is This Metabolism?

Metabolism is the breaking down of the food we eat into energy. You will probably have heard about counting calories, calories are units of energy. So eating more calories per small meal will produce more energy. More energy will burn more fat ………. Burn fat and you lose pounds and inches.

The more often you eat the quicker your Metabolism. ·

This is Myth Number 2

Eating less will make you lose weight. Wrong again.

Why is this?

Eating Less Makes You Lose Muscle What happens is your body is receiving less food. So it thinks to itself ……… ‘there’s going to be a famine so I must store whatever food I’m receiving as fat’. Fat can be changed into ‘Energy’ but will only be stored for emergency use. Meanwhile, your muscles will be depleted. This means they will lose their tone and become soft and flabby.

Bearing in mind, your heart is a muscle; you don’t want your heart going soft and flabby, do you? It could cause all sorts of problems.

So the answer is if you want to lose weight, better than starving yourself, it would be better to have smaller but more frequent meals.