Can eating less and more meals help you lose weight?
We eat mostly mixed foods. From the perspective of gastric emptying, the digestion time is about 1 to 4 hours depending on the composition of the food. In fact, before the food in the stomach is completely emptied, obvious hunger is already produced. If the interval between meals is too long (4 to 5 hours, or even longer), it is easy to produce hunger, which in turn leads to excessive eating.
The benefits of eating small and frequent meals for weight loss
Eating small and frequent meals is a good habit and is good for health. A survey shows that people who eat a lot can absorb calories better without gaining weight. On the contrary, if a person eats less, they can gain 600 grams of body fat after 28 days.
Increase satiety and avoid overeating
If each meal is separated by three hours, the feeling of fullness can last longer, and there will be less desire to eat, thus achieving the effect of controlling appetite.
We eat mostly mixed foods. From the perspective of gastric emptying, the digestion time is about 1 to 4 hours depending on the composition of the food. In fact, before the food in the stomach is completely emptied, obvious hunger is already produced. If the interval between meals is too long (4 to 5 hours, or even longer), it is easy to produce hunger, which in turn leads to excessive eating.
The harm of long-term satiety is huge. Regular overeating will not only overload the digestive system for a long time, leading to premature aging of internal organs and decreased immune function, but also excess calories will cause fat deposition in the body, leading to obesity.
Reduce body fat accumulation
Weight loss practice has proved that if you change to a 2-meal or 1-meal diet to lose weight every day, not only will you not lose body fat, but you will also cause extreme hunger due to excessive dieting, resulting in overeating and binge drinking. If you eat too much at one time, the human body will produce a lot of insulin, which in turn prevents fat from entering the blood and being absorbed and consumed by other tissues, and the body will absorb too much, resulting in the accumulation of fat. Eating too much will enlarge the stomach, making people feel hungry all day long. If you eat a few more meals a day, each time the amount of food is very small, the stomach will not be enlarged.
In addition, increasing the number of meals per day to 4 to 6 times will reduce the frequency of hunger messages received by the brain, so it will not cause feelings of hunger, and then eat and drink. This helps control calorie intake. Small and frequent meals can also relieve gastrointestinal stress, giving the body enough time to digest and absorb what you eat, and inhibiting the accumulation of fat and excess substances in the body.
Boost metabolic rate
A small amount of meals can help the body excrete waste materials, promote body metabolism, not only lose weight, but also detoxify and beautify.
If you go without food for a long time during the day, your metabolism will slow down significantly. Because fasting makes the brain think the body is starving, you have to reduce calorie consumption to prolong the consumption of stored fat. The advantage of eating small and frequent meals is that you always have something in your stomach to keep your metabolism high.
The dietary principle of eating small and frequent meals
The so-called "eating less" means that the goal is to eat until the feeling of hunger disappears. When the average person eats, they tend to eat until they are "full" or even "very full" before they stop. Although eating "very full" is less likely to make people feel hungry before the next meal, if you have to eat very full every time before you give up, your stomach will be "stretched". In the long run, once you don't eat so much food, it will be difficult to feel full. To change this phenomenon, you can reduce the amount of food at each meal, and add a snack (such as afternoon tea) between meals. When you feel a little hungry, you will add a little more food. This feeling of hunger will disappear, so that you don't have to starve until the next meal to eat.
You can't lose weight by eating too much, and you can't lose weight by eating too little, because the metabolic rate of the human body is not fixed. The body is very smart, and once it detects a decrease in calories, it will immediately make adjustments to prioritize storing calories! Because the body is alert to the difficulty of the external environment (no calories come in), it will immediately change its strategy, that is, burn less calories, and shift the body to the easiest mode of storing calories, which is to store fat.
One of the most important factors affecting metabolism is eating. Once you don't eat (or eat very little), your body will immediately reduce metabolism after a long time. So you must eat small and multiple meals, dividing your calories into four or five meals a day. If you are exercising and want to gain weight, it is best to divide it into six meals. Small and multiple meals will increase your metabolic rate, making you tend to burn fat rather than accumulate it. To lose weight effectively, you must grasp the principle of eating small and multiple meals.
interval between meals
If you don't eat for more than 5 hours, you will be so hungry that you will lose control of your health goals and nutrition concepts. You will eat whatever you see and cannot resist the temptation of eating from the outside world. Therefore, it is generally recommended to eat small and frequent meals 3 hours apart.
