How To Create A Feeding Schedule And Achieve Better Health

If you ever want to see a perfect eating “machine”, spend a day with a newborn baby.

• They eat only when hungry-not when they’re bored, anxious, depressed, happy, mad or sad.
• They eat only as much as they need.
• The most important aspect of their food is nutritional value, not taste, texture or smell. (Have you ever tasted breast milk? I have. Don’t ask why. That’s not important. Let’s just say it’s not appetizing.)
• Finally, they eat frequently (as any parent will confirm). They eat almost continuously throughout the day…not just three “square” meals.

In a perfect world, this is how we’d eat. Alas, the world is not perfect (Damn those makers of chocolate). But one thing you can do to be more baby-like is adopt the habit of frequent feedings. I refer to meals as feedings because the word “feedings” infers that you are eating more for nutritional value than for entertainment, therapy or to medicate yourself. Just like a baby.

Over and over again, you’ve heard or read about the importance of eating 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day. Why? Because…

IT WORKS!

Eating frequently through the day helps you…

• Eat fewer calories throughout the day. Research has shown that people will consume nearly 10% fewer calories per day simply by eating smaller, more frequent meals.
• Experience fewer hunger pains. Eating frequently throughout the day helps regulate your blood sugar and insulin levels which in turn control feelings of hunger.
• Normalize cortisol levels. High stress leads to high cortisol levels which can lead to severe health problems. Dr. Bill Timmons of Bio Health Diagnostics found eating frequently helped normalize cortisol levels.
• Lowers serum cholesterol levels. One large study in England showed that eating small, frequent and healthy meals reduced blood serum lipid levels. Even when they ate fewer calories but ate them in two or three meals, subjects ended up with higher cholesterol levels.

Step 1: Eat Within One Hour of Waking

The first and most important meal of the day should occur within one hour of waking. Eating early in your day helps consume fewer calories per day, helps lower cholesterol and improves insulin resistance-a major factor in heart disease and a pre-cursor to diabetes.

If you find yourself saying, “I don’t have time to eat breakfast”, then you aren’t serious about your health or about losing weight. You are lying to yourself and everyone who listens to your excuses. Stop arguing for your limitations. Remember this…

You are not the busiest person on earth. Your challenges are not unique. I guarantee that somewhere, someone is facing the same hectic morning schedule as you and is still managing to eat a healthy breakfast.

It may sting a little to hear it said, but it’s basic stuff.

So write down when you are to eat your first meal. For example, if you get up each morning at 6:30 a.m., then your first feeding is no later than 7:30 a.m.

Step 2: Plan Lunch and Dinner

After your first meal, write down when you typically eat lunch and dinner each day. For many people that means lunch at 12:00 p.m. and dinner at around 6:00 p.m. So if that were the case, your eating schedule would look like this…

Wake-up: 6:30 a.m.
Breakfast: 7:30 a.m.
Lunch: 12:00 p.m.
Dinner: 6:00 p.m.

Step 3: Fill In The Gaps

To keep from feeling hungry or experiencing dips in blood sugar, it’s important to eat something every three to four hours. Take a look at your eating schedule so far. Wherever you see “holes” of more than four hours, insert another feeding.

In the example above, you can see there’s a four and a half hour period between breakfast and lunch. So you would place another feeding somewhere around 10 o’clock.

Next, you need to fill in the space between lunch and dinner. Now your eating schedule might look like this:

Wake-up: 6:30 a.m.
Breakfast: 7:30 a.m.
Snack #1: 10:15 a.m.
Lunch: 12:00 p.m.
Snack: 3:30 p.m.
Dinner: 6:00 p.m.

Step 4: Eat Your Final Snack 1-2 Hours Before Bed

Let’s clear up this long-standing weight loss myth. Eating a small, balanced meal or snack in the evening, one to two hours before bed won’t make you gain weight. Eating highly processed, high calorie foods such as chips, cookies and sweets late in the evening, before bed will make you fat.

For most people, late evening is a low-energy time of day spent sitting on their behinds not doing anything strenuous. And late evening tends to be when many people pull out the snacks. Combine low energy demands with high-calorie foods and…voila! You gain weight.

So one day some weight loss “expert” figured the best way to lose weight was to eliminate eating anything after a certain time. While your energy demands may be lower in the evening, your body still requires energy to keep functioning.

If you eat dinner at 6:00 p.m. and don’t eat anything until the next morning at seven or eight, what you’ve done is starved your body of energy for twelve hours or more. The result? You wake up feeling famished and are more likely to overeat during breakfast.

Eating a small meal or snack before bed eliminates this problem. Plus, it…

• Prevents binge snacking due to overwhelming hunger.
• Provides your body with the nutrients it needs to repair and create tissue while you sleep – particularly important when strength training.
• Promotes better sleep.

Okay, back to our schedule…

Looking at what we have so far, our schedule looks like this:

Wake-up: 6:30 a.m.
Breakfast: 7:30 a.m.
Snack #1: 10:15 a.m.
Lunch: 12:00 p.m.
Snack: 3:30 p.m.
Dinner: 6:00 p.m.

Now insert a feeding between dinner and your bedtime. For example, if you normally go to bed at 11:00 p.m., your eating schedule would now look like this:

Wake-up: 7:00 a.m.
Breakfast: 8:00 a.m.
Lunch: 12:00 p.m.
Snack: 3:30 p.m.
Dinner: 6:00 p.m.
Snack: 9:30 p.m.
Bedtime: 11:00 p.m.

Late Night Eating Guidelines

Please understand I’m NOT talking about eating a four course meal and heading off to bed. Obviously overloading your body with calories during the part of your day that requires the least amount of energy would be unwise. To get the most benefit from your last feed of the day, follow these simple guidelines:

1. Make sure your snack or meal contains a mix of protein and fat with a small amount of carbs. An even better choice would be to opt for a snack containing just protein and fat. (Carbs are the body’s source of “quick” energy – something your really don’t need at this time of day.)

2. Your last feeding before bed should be no bigger than your biggest meal that day. The goal isn’t to stuff yourself before bed. You want to provide your body with some fuel for its overnight energy requirements as well as help maintain normal blood sugar and insulin levels.

Challenges To Eating Frequent Meals

At this point, if you’re like many of the people I’ve personally coached on how to create a feeding schedule, you have two main concerns:

1. You don’t see how you can eat this often with your busy schedule.
2. You’re afraid of eating too much food and not losing weight.

Both of these concerns will be addressed in future articles, but let me just say…

Everyone believes they’re the busiest person on earth. Well, I’ve got news for you…

We ALL lead busy lives. Eating 5-6 times a day will require you to plan your meals…to give thought to what you will eat and how you will get the food you need. Saying “I’m too busy to eat this way” is a copout…an excuse. Nothing more. If you want to achieve your fitness and weight loss goals, you will find a way to make it work.

Second, do not worry about eating too much food. Nothig says the feedings have to be the same size. Breakfast, lunch and dinner can be similar in size with your snacks being lower in calories.

If you like, you can make breakfast the biggest meal of the day, with lunch and dinner being slightly lower in calories. It’s your decision how to split up your calories.

Eating small, balanced meals throughout the day is most certainly one of the best things you can do to achieve maximum fitness and weight loss results in minimum time. If you put the effort into creating this new habit, you will be rewarded.