6 is the ideal number of meals you should be eating each day for maximum fat loss and energy
Let’s talk about meal frequency. Most of the popular diets have 3-4 meals a day. This can be disastrous if you are aiming to lose fat. It provides a huge gap between meals and the metabolism slows down during these huge gaps.
Eating just 3 meals a day will cause your blood sugar levels to fluctuate through out the day. To maintain optimal health, activity and alertness you want to keep the blood sugars as stable as possible.
When you have a full meal your blood sugars instantly shoot up and the blood supply is diverted away from your brain and other vital organs towards your stomach. The brain gets less oxygen supply and that coupled with release of serotonin from the food makes the individual feels drowsy and tired.
Between the food intervals there is accumulating gastric acid in your stomach and that accompanied by a drop in blood sugar levels makes you feel hungry and you are likely to snack on something. There is also a fluctuation in energy levels throughout the day due to fluctuation in blood glucose levels.
The energy spent on metabolism is also decreased due to infrequent meals. But the good news is that the moment you increase the frequency of your meals all the above problems will disappear and you will have greater energy and better fat burning throughout the day.
The metabolic balance in your body is very powerful. It can develop new tactics to survive at the earliest possible moment. Even if you are having adequate meals, your body gets insecure during the huge gap between meals and begins to store fat and slows down the metabolism. This mechanism is kicked off within 3 hours of having an empty stomach and reaches the system is fully turned on within 4 hours.
When you give a gap between meals the fat burning comes to a halt and the body begins to store fat until it gets the next meal.
The next harmful thing that takes place is the breakdown of body muscle tissue. This happens because the body considers muscle as an expensive tissue and maintaining muscle in the body during times of starvation can consume a lot of energy… so the body decides to breakdown muscles and convert into energy.
If you are planning to burn fat and increase your muscle… this is the last thing you want to happen!
The body doesn’t care much about your ideas and what you want. It simply follows millions of years of biological programming and acts according to its protocol of survival.
The body gets into survival gear the moment it gets hungry, so the trick here is to not let it get hungry but at the same time not exceed your calorie intake.
So it is recommended that you divide your calorie intake into smaller chunks and consume them in 5-6 meals.
Remember this does not mean that you eat more. you are actually reducing the amount of food your take in. But you’re consuming food more frequently. So your body burns more fat and while retaining your muscle tissue.
When your body becomes trained to this form of eating pattern, it begins to trust the external source of energy and burns down all the excess energy stored inside in the form of fat. This results in a peak metabolism and works heavily in your favor.