Stop Snacking Habit

Snacking can reduce our natural hunger cues and ruin our appetites. This can result in irregular eating patterns and lack of eating routine. For some people, this is the key reason as to why they gain weight.

This habit will help you "reconnect" with your body. The connection you have with your body is the most precious thing you have. It is your past, present and future. Understanding how your body can work for you and processing the knowledge to make it perform optimally, is the most important information you can ever learn.

Habit Challenge: Eat every 4-5 hours without snacking

For the next week, I challenge you to stop snacking.

One of the most important healthy eating habits you can create, is to ensure you eat regularly throughout the day, while being in tune with your hunger and fullness cues.

By missing meals we tend to under eat, which leads to a lack of energy and performance.

Drastic under eating also causes a reduction in your metabolism and can actually slow fat-loss.

How Can I Personalize This Habit

Choose where your current biggest pitfall may currently lie.

Are you skipping meals throughout the day? If so, which ones in particular? Are you mindlessly snacking between main meals? Are you doing this on a weekday or weekend, or both?

Think about what area needs your focus and attention the most to help you achieve this daily habit and put some small changes into place to make it a success.

Here’s an example to try

I am 90-100% confident that I will eat every 4-5 hours without snacking for 6 days per week after I set reminders on my phone. Don’t worry about making this perfect.

To begin, you must understand and accept your current situation. To do this, you must start listening to your body. It will always tell you what it wants and what it needs, you just have to learn to hear it.

You know that feeling when you just can’t keep your eyes open while watching TV? That’s your body communicating with you in urgent and powerful ways.

Our bodies send similar messages throughout the day regarding nutrition and wellbeing. Right this second, your body is telling you what it wants and needs. It’s your responsibility to hear, learn and translate these signals.

Our current habit is key to kick-starting this.

Here’s some key questions to consider daily:

• Do I feel true hunger at any time between meals?
• Was I hungry just before my last meal?
• How satisfied am I after each main meal?

As you eat your meals today, practice shining the spotlight of mindfulness onto the habit.

Turn the spotlight onto how the food looks, how it smells, how it tastes. Then focus on your body, your surroundings and all the other sensations associated with eating a tasty healthy meal.

Appreciate everything wonderful about the habit so that the habit itself becomes your reward.

The debate over "optimal" meal frequency rages on and general advice ranges from one large evening feast to the tradition of 6+ meals per day.

Which approach is correct?

Well, it depends. Nutrition must be matched to your physiology and current goals. And of course, for long-term success, it must also fit your lifestyle to be manageable on a day-to-day basis.

We can find "success" stories for almost every nutrition protocol/strategy, whether eating two meals per day or eight. This indicates that overall daily food intake is the key factor in someone’s results, not how many meals they have had.

Myths

The results usually come down to the fact that the person has found a nutrition system to suit them, one they can stick to consistently, that helps them adopt a set of healthy lifestyle habits.

What this shows us is that some of the time-honored myths can now be firmly put to bed.

Myth #1 Greater Meal Frequency Increases Metabolism

When we consume food we get what is known as the "thermic effect of food" (TEF). This is the amount of energy expended by the body during digestion. When we eat food we get a slight rise in our metabolism, however, eating more meals per day does not provide any significant increase to metabolism. Eating a greater amount of meals per day doesn’t raise the metabolism enough to impact fat loss. It is actually the total amount of daily food consumed that equates to our daily energy expenditure on digestion.

Look at the numbers. If you consume three meals per day at 1000 calories each, you get exactly the same daily energy turnover as if you ate six meals per day at 500 calories each.

Myth #2 You Must Eat Breakfast Upon Waking

It’s often suggested that eating immediately upon waking helps improve fat loss. This is not the case, as it does not kick start the metabolism for the day. In fact, it has been shown that going periods without food (usually skipping breakfast) can actually increase metabolism. We can get additional health benefits from short fasts, such as improved insulin sensitivity, nutrient partitioning, greater fat loss and induced autophagy (the cellular clean-up process).

Experience has shown that eating every 4-5 hours without snacks, is the perfect middle ground for the majority of people. It also provides a great place to quickly add or subtract meals to learn what works for you.

When to eat more frequently

When Building More Muscle Mass And Strength

To gain muscle we need to provide the building blocks - based on a high quality and quantity of food. This is when it would be best to eat more frequently - to ensure maximum muscle protein synthesis (MPS). Studies show approx. 3g leucine per meal is required for maximum MPS, hence quantity and quality of protein per meal is the most important factor. There is a reason why physique athletes and bodybuilders eat a lot of lean meat, as it makes for a complete amino acid profile (with >3g leucine) and typically offers the ideal 30-40g protein per serving. MPS has been shown to peak two hours following elevated amino acid levels (to allow for digestion), therefore, placing meal timings too close together is unnecessary, as you will see diminishing returns. An optimal eating strategy is around 3-6 meals per day, spaced every 3-4 hours, with a high quality protein source of at least 20g per serving per meal. So a typical eating schedule could be 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm.

When Suffering From Metabolic Damage Or Food Issues

If you are suffering from weight gain after "yo-yo" dieting or have been using a low calorie diet approach for some time, it would be best to return to a more regular eating pattern with increased food quantities. The aim is to restore homeostasis within the body and to balance hormones.

This is also true for those with previous or current physiological or psychological issues with food, such as cravings or binge eating cycles. A regular eating schedule will ensure blood sugar levels are constantly steady and you never reach a point of hypoglycemia.

A typical four meals per day approach, spaced every 3-4 hours, would be ideal with healthy snacks between meals, if required.

In general, you always want to ensure that your overall daily nutrient requirements are met. Remember to match your nutrition to your lifestyle, and not the other way around. Good healthy food should enhance our life, not hold us back.

Let me know, do you struggle with snacking?

Pam

P.S. The Protein is Power Habit is up next!