How and When to Eat

  When I joined weight watchers a couple years back, I was infatuated with the point system. It seemed so simple. As long as I stayed under 40 points, I could eat whatever I want and still lose weight! I abused this system, I would eat virtually all of my points in one salty fat laden meal and then starve the rest of the day, maybe eating an apple or something until the next day came around. I remember proudly marching into Krispy Kreme and grabbing a donut thinking "these are only 4 points, I can eat 10 of these a day and still lose Wieght!!" But what I failed to realize is that my body cared nothing about points. What it really cared about is that I supplied it with the right type of nutrients to serve its functions. By eating one horrible meal a day, and starving it for the rest, I was essentially starving my system of the things it depends on to properly function. The result is that I was constantly hungry, I was low on energy, and I eventually breached that 40 point ceiling in an attempt to satisfy the deficit that I imposed on myself. Obviously there are people who have done weight watchers the right way, and have succeeded, But my issue with Weight Watchers is that it didn't teach me anything about food. I only had to look at the points, not the nutrition facts and as long as they didn't add up pass 40, I was going to be on the next commercial of weight watchers standing next to Jennifer Hudson.

When I started this journey in January of 2011, I decided that I was going to teach myself about food, and more specifically how food and weight loss really go together. I discovered two key things in my research.

1. Your body can only absorb a finite amount of calories per meal

2. Your body can store less fat when you eat more often

Most experts say that your body can only really process about 300-500 calories at a time. This means if you eat a #1 combo from McDonald (1130 calories) your body has at least 630 extra calories that It can't do anything with. That 630 spare calories will actually be stored as fat which your body wont touch unless it absolutely has to. Having learned this, I begin splitting my meals into 5 separate small portioned meals a day. I followed a schedule of:

6:30am- meal 1

10:00am- meal 2

1:00pm- meal 3

3:30am - meal 4

6:30pm- meal 5

At the end of the day I was taking in roughly 2000 calories and because I was eating appropriate calorie portioned sizes, My body was making use of every single calorie I put into it, there was nothing left over to store as fat. Of course you will have to make some determinations and adjustments to your eating schedule. The first thing you need to determine is how many calories your body needs. On average this tends to be 2000 calories for guys and 1500 calories for women. There are plenty of sites that give you calculators and other tools to determine this, but the most effective way is to listen to your body and adjust as you go on. You won't get it perfect week 1, but you will have it down after a couple of weeks.