Why to graze on food for weight loss

Eating little and often has numerous benefits for both weight loss / control and your energy levels explains Simon Lovell of www.thelunchboxdiet.com

We ate three squares a day and often, dessert was lumped into the end of the meal. Remember, “Clean your plate or you won’t get any dessert?” Another bad idea, but we’ll talk about that another time. For now, let’s learn why grazing, eating frequently throughout the day but in smaller quantities is the way to go.

Let’s talk about metabolism a little bit. Don’t run away! This won’t be a science lesson, just a bit of information so you can understand a little bit more about healthful eating. Metabolism is the rate at which we burn calories and provide our body with fuel. The higher metabolism is, the faster we burn calories. The lower our metabolism is, the slower we burn calories. See? I told you it wouldn’t be too bad. Of course, I’m not quite done.

Starving the body (as many do when trying to drop weight) lowers metabolism. When metabolism is low, it’s harder to burn calories. What the body is doing is slowing metabolism to conserve what little energy we are taking in via food. Whereas starving the body puts our metabolism into conservation mode (lowers it), eating frequently (but remember less) increases our metabolism. When we eat frequently, our bodies are being refueled constantly. Metabolism stays up to burn the calories quicker. It doesn’t need to conserve the fuel, it can burn it. Think about a hibernating bear. Metabolism slows way, way down in hibernating animals. It has to because the bear isn’t eating while it’s hibernating. All of that fat the bear packed on before going into hibernation has to be kept as long as possible even though the bear isn’t adding to it by eating. Understand? When our metabolism is low, it retains as much as possible. When our metabolism is high, it burns as much as it can. Keeping the fat is beneficial to the bear, but A. Bears don’t have to answer to the cardiologist and B. Bears don’t have to fit into today’s itsy-bitsy T-shirts!

So that’s one reason why grazing helps the cause of weight loss. It makes our bodies fuel burning machines! There’s another reason why grazing is good. How many times did you hear “don’t eat now, you’ll spoil your appetite for supper!”? True, if you intend to munch a bunch of junk right before a more healthful meal, then yes, you aren’t eating properly. But if you’re hungry at 3:00, you’d better have a healthful snack or you’ll be ravished at 6:00 and then you’ll overeat. Overeating not only packs on too many calories (eventually seen in the mirror), it also expands your stomach and trains it to be satisfied on more food instead of less. The next time you eat, you’re going to want more to satisfy your stomach. Training ourselves to eat less but more frequently adjusts that need to eat a plateful of pasta when we get home from work.

So if you shouldn’t have cookies before dinner (your mother was right about that one!), what should you have all day long while grazing? The Lunchbox Diet will show you how to graze effectively. There are certain foods that provide our bodies with premium fuel and others that just provide us with short-term fuel. It would be like choosing between fuels that will keep your car running from London to Glasgow or choosing fuel that will keep your car running to the grocery store.

It’s the same with food. No matter what the fad diets tell you, all food is broken down in the body into the same thing: glucose. So why does it matter if we have a crisp at 100 calories or a 100 calories from our lunchboxes? Because, the crisp is the fuel that keeps your body going for 30 minutes whereas the lunchbox food is the premium stuff. The lunchbox food has energizing vitamins and minerals and protein that has staying power in the body. The simple sugar in the crisp gets into the body and burns right through it. The protein lasts longer because it’s more complex. The vitamins and minerals keep everything running at optimum health. Another aspect of the grazing in the Lunchbox Diet is simplicity. Obviously, grazing all day wouldn’t be possible in an office setting or even a busy mum’s home if everything had to be prepared each time you went to the fridge to graze. I’ll show you how to graze healthfully with minimal effort and you won’t even have to tick off the boss!

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