There are so many people who think losing weight is about cutting your daily caloric intake to an extemely low amount- maybe to the point of just skipping meals altogether…  There are so many people on roller-coaster fad diets, probably too many to count, and most of these people are unsuccessful in their weight loss efforts.  These low-calorie diets are not successful because they slow down your metabolism, and this causes your body to enter into starvation mode, almost like famine.  In starvation mode, the body burns very few calories because it is attempting to store the few calories it is being fed for energy.  Your body will actually hold on to fat and burn muscle tissue for it’s energy needs…  These diets can cause extreme fatigue and hunger, which is the reason for their lack of success.  Often times too, the low-calorie diet doesn’t carry the right combination of foods.

Successfully losing weight is a learning process.  It involves making healthy food choices, paying attenition to portion sizes, and eating small frequest meals throughtout the day.  The average female adult consumes 1,500 or more calories per day, depending on her activity level.  To determine exactly how many calories your body needs daily

To maximize the metabolic aspects of your food intake, you should incorporate five to six evenly portioned meals throughout the day.  The first meal should be within one hour of waking up, and each subsequest meal should be spaced two to three hours apart for the remainder of the day.  People have to abandon the thought process of three square meals a day:  breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Instead, get into the habit of adopting a cutritional patter of Meal 1, Meal 2, Meal 3, etc…  The reason for this is that traditional meal titles in this county are associated with eating certain patterns such as; breakfast shoud consist of eggs, bacon and bagels, while dinner should be meat and potatoes.

So how does splitting your daily caloric intake into five or six small meals a day increase your metabolism?  The human body’s metabolism is like a furnace.  If you  eat three meals a day, the furnace will begin heating up at the first meal and then die down until lunch, where it will heat up again, cool down until dinner, where it heats up one more time.  By eating five or six small meals during the day, the furnace will continue burning throughout the day without the cooling-sown periods.  This means your metabolism is functioning at an increased rate all day with little flucuation, plus- this causes your insulin levels to stay steady without peaks and valleys!!

Another way that eating small meals frequestly will help contribute to weight loss is by a mechanisn called the thermic effect of food.. When you eat a meal, your body begins the process of digestion, and this process requires the use of energy.  The body actually burns calories while it is digesting food.  This is sometimes the reason why people’s body temperature increases when they eat.  It makes sense that if the body has to digest more frequest meals throughout the day, then the daily caloric expenditure will be increased.

Another advantage of eating small frequest meals during the day is it will help to balance blood sugar levels and prevent hunger attacks.  This is in direct contrast to the low-calorie diets that cause blood sugar levels to experience increases and devreases through the course of the day.  Frequest meals also regulate insulin levels, which is necessary for muscle growth and glycogen storage.  One of insulin’s roles in the body is to transport glucose and amino acids into the muscle cells, where they can be used for envery and muscle growth.

Adopting this type of lifestyle will require a bit of meal planning and preparation, but it is certainly worth it.  Purchasing some Tupperware