Linafae said:
Hi,
I've been working on healthier exercise and diet plan for some time now.
I'm currently focusing on eating in a healthier way and have been reading that it may be better to eat 5 small meals a day and not the typical breakfast, lunch, dinner. I was wondering if anyone here does that? How do you manage it? Especially within a working day? At what times do you schedule the other 2 meals? What do you consider a "meal" as opposed to just a snack?
That's a lot of questions, lol...I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks.
Alot of people, such as me, think that eating 5-6 meals spread out over the day is better than eating 3 big meals. When you are contsantly eating food, your body has to constantly process and digest that food, which increases your metabolism ( which in turn increases fat loss).
Before I started my change to a healthier plan I was eating maybe 2 big meals a day with liltte snacks in between. I sometimes skipped breakfast and I usualy ate right before I went to sleep. Those are all bad habits and I ended up gaining maybe 6-10 pounds over the course of a year and I gained a small gut.
But I needed to change my diet as well as begin to consistently excercise.Since I started working out, I changed my diet and diet habbits. I now eat 5 sometimes 6 meals a day. I start with a protein shake and a few low fat fruit bars for breakfast around 5:30 am. Eating a big breakfast sometimes gets me sick so I stick to a light breakfast. oat based fruit bars with low fat are good, but you could also eat fruits or instant oatmeal if you wanted. protein in the morning stimulates and increases your metabolism for the rest of the day.
My 2nd meal is usualy my first break at work around 9am. I have a light instant meal such as a lean cuisine or budget gourmet, with a protein bar along with either gatorade or green tea. green tea speeds up your metabolism, and gatorade I drink mainly because I do alot of moving around and lifting heavy boxes at work and it recharges my body.
My 3rd meal is lunch around 12:30 pm. Ill eat the same thing I did for my first break, a lean cuisine or budget gormet type meal with a protein bar and a gatorade or green tea( sometimes water). I try to eat a different meal for lunch to mix things up though, such as maybe a rice meal for break and for lunch a pasta type meal( I try not to eat alot of pastas though).
For my 4th meal ill eat another protein bar and drink water or greentea during my last break. Green tea is almost as good as water, but it speeds up your metabolism slightly faster I think.
After work ill go to the gym for an hour and I might eat a protein bar before I god, ju7st for an energy boost. Your body burns more fat when you have minimal amount of food in your stomach so I try to either eat 1-2 horus before I go to the gym or afterwards. Although some people say its bad to eat after a workout, it works for me.
My 5th meal will be the last meal of the day for me. usually itll be a homecooked meal, maybe potatos and lean meat or something with alot of omega 3 fatty acids like salmon along with green tea/water.
After that I dont eat anything else untill the next morning. So throughout the day Im getting about the same amount of pretien as my body weight ( which you should get, 120 pounds = 120 grams of daily protein). And at the same time I only intake 1500-1600 colories daily. Anyone can keep up a diet like this. The hardest part I think is the first 2 weeks when your ebody is still adjustting to this diet. But after that, your body will start to crave food every 2-3 hours and youll get used to eat smaller yet more spread out meals a day. Now there are alot of healthier foods to eat than what Ive listed, I was just listing the foods I eat as an example. But the key is to scheduels meals around your daily scheduel, if you have breaks every 3 hours, try making it into a meal break.
Small snacks are good as long as they are healthy. But yeah, 5 meals a day is better IMO.
