When Why What

You may have heard of marathon runners talking about carbo loading, or triathlete's that always seem to have a water bottle attached to their lips, this is simply because these sports are very demanding and the wise athlete will listen to the experience of others.

Weight loss in the form of body fat, should also be an Olympic sport, as the science and effort strains required according to the experience of those that have succeeded is truly magnificent, when in reality learning from the millions of people that aim to lose weight incorrectly will give you the winning formula to success.

So when do you eat?

Simply put, you need to eat small well portioned meals (not liquid shakes) every 2 and half to 3 hours, any longer than this time, and your bodies blood sugar level will start to become too low and your bodies internal furnace will have no fuel to burn.

If you think about your digestive system as a large open fire place, you can picture how the food and fluid you eat will be used as a source of fuel or body repair.

To get a fire started, you need 2 things, firstly light kindle or paper, and a match to create the initial flame, if you don't have either of these, your chances of starting a fire our minimal.

You can pile the fire place full of paper, but without that match, you will get no flame, however once lit, the flames will be high, bright however burn out quickly.

In order to keep the fire going, you should place larger kindle and small logs on top of the paper to enable a more stable fuel source to burn, in order to stop adding more paper. If you were just to continually add paper to a fire, you will be left with a large pile of ash, as the paper would not fully burn and would give of very little heat, just that high flame.

Every time you eat a simple carbohydrate such as sugar's - refined flour - processed foods - fruit juices all you are doing is putting a very poor fuel source into your body, this will create a rapid rise in your blood sugar levels, which will cause your pancreas to secrete a hormone called Insulin to help transport this rapid rise in blood sugar "glucose" into your bodies cells or store it as glycogen.

Just like the paper that is bright and burns quickly, you will do the same, for 15 minutes you can feel great have high energy levels, then wham, the wrong fuel eaten has just caused peak rises in Insulin production, causing blood sugar levels to drop rapidly, making you feel tired, especially after than large pasta lunch "2 o'clock slump" .

Due to your lowered blood sugar levels " hypoglycemia" your body will generate natural food cravings - especially for simple carbohydrates "sugar". You can continue to add this cheap fast burning fuel supply, and just like the fire, eventually extinguish as their is only flames no real heat, your burning of cheap fuel will achieve unhealthy results in the form of type 2 diabetes.

If you decide to go to bed at night in a cold house, and place a few heavy solid logs on your lit fire, you know that throughout the night, your home is not only going to be kept warm, you will also have some glowing embers in the fire place to help you start the fire again to help warm up the house - you don't need a match just the right fuel to keep the fire burning, so you can add a little kindle in the morning.

Your bodies digestive system will work like a well kept fire if you look after it, if you eat healthy slow burning proteins, especially in your last meals, then your blood sugars, even though low first thing in the morning will not be at dangerous levels, likewise your digestive system "internal furnace" will be able to fuel and prepare your body if it is given the right ratio of nutrients at the start of the day.

Your breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day, it needs to not only contain a small amount of carbohydrate "wholemeal toast - natural wheat cereal" to start your furnace, some quality protein "egg white omelet" to help provide a slow release of energy "blood sugar", alternatively if you find it hard to eat a large meal first thing in the morning, look at having a glass of diluted fruit juice "50% water" as a simple carbohydrate, with a starchy natural oatmeal porridge, made with low fat milk adding some dried fruit to taste.

If you skip your breakfast, it will be like walking around your house on a cold day with no fire - but keeping your doors and windows open, put it this way, you wouldn't want to sit down in case you freeze; why put your weight loss on a freeze just because you can't get up a few minutes earlier or prepare the night before to kick start your day the right way.

Eating regular meals, will be hard work, as eating takes time, preparing the food takes time, however with planning you can establish a good routine, you can cook a selection of foods at one time or prepare the following days food the night before - its all about being prepared, going to the kitchen to find that you have nothing healthy is what often cause people to become overweight, as the first thing that many will eat when they open the fridge door is a nice slice of easy swallowing fatty cheese.

When looking at your meals, plan to have no more than 3 hours between your meals, not 3 hours and then a piece of fruit or an energy protein bar or smoothie protein shake, as these are not meals, just simple alternatives, your body was designed to eat and digest, keep your bodies natural furnace burning high with natural lean proteins.

Protein not only fuels your furnace, but also provides essential amino acids " building blocks" for the repair and rebuild of lean muscle tissue. This repair and rebuild is a high calorific expenditure, with the muscles in your body being the vital link to utilizing your fat stores as a fuel source to give you the slow release energy to carry out this process whilst at rest / sleeping.

Protein should not be consumed in large quantity's, as it can't be stored by the body, as it places stress on your kidneys, so any excess is excreted, which is an expensive process - look at the nutrition section for guidelines on protein intake.

If you start your breakfast at 7:00 a.m. This would mean that you would then need to eat again at 10:00 a.m. again at 1:00 p.m. for lunch, afternoon meal at 4:00 p.m. with your evening meal at 7:00 p.m. This will only mean that you have had 5 meals throughout the day, if having 6 meals, then make sure the last 2 you eat are high in quality proteins and lower in carbohydrates, as eating carbohydrates late in the evening can keep you awake, as well as the glucose from these foods will be converted into fat if the muscle and liver stores are full.

For people eating 6 meals a day, they will generally awaken earlier and eat more frequently. If your not use to eating this kind of volume of meals, then it will certainly be a bit of a shock to the system, if your only use to eating 1 - 2 meals a day, then look at eating 3 - 4 meals a day for the first few weeks, aiming to gradually increase your meals to 5 - 6.

Repeated again, the first meal breakfast is the most important meal, aim to eat early, and have a larger portion of your daily calories due to your furnace being run nearly empty, calories consumed at breakfast will be used throughout the day, as long as they are the slow energy release variety, rather than sugar rich cereals.

Avoid eating late at night, especially carbohydrates, gradually reducing the amount of calories for each meal throughout the day, aiming to finish your last meal with a lean protein.

Why eat 5 - 6 meals a day?

If you want to live in a warm home, then you will prepare fire place, small kindling pile "healthy starchy carbohydrates" whole grain bread / cereals to start your fire - small sticks little logs "Oatmeal" to get the heat going - larger logs - natural carbohydrates "brown rice - potatoes - yams" to create a solid burning fuel, with finally a combination of slow burning fuels such as your lean proteins and fibrous natural carbohydrates, these will be the heavy hard wood logs that you put on the fire once it is truly alight.

Frequent eating will speed up your metabolism, get the correct ratio of foods inside your furnace, and you will be running an efficient fat burning system, that will enable you to actually eat more.

High thermo fibrous vegetables and lean proteins should be the basis of each meal, with complex carbohydrates providing additional energy. Proteins can burn up to 30% and good carbohydrates 20% of their actual calorie content, whereas fats, sugars and processed carbohydrates have very minimal 4% or less thermic value.

This basically means that a meal which is 400 calories consumed, may only be 300 calories at the finished refined process if you let your digestive system do the work, or if you decide to let a food company refine your meals or use a protein shake, then your calories consumed of 400 will actually be very close to 400.

The whole digestive process requires energy to break down the foods into their usable state Proteins into amino acids "building blocks for growth and repair" and Carbohydrates "glucose" for energy. Fibre is not able to be broken down, however it plays an important part in the digestive system, by slowing down the digestive process, causing more calories to be used for digestion, enables of feeling of being full when eating at meal times and helps regulates blood sugar levels.

Just like your fire, if you place a regular supply of logs on it throughout the day, it will provide you with a warm home, if you decide to put on the fire all your good healthy logs at one time, then the chances are, you will actually put the fire out, or the heat will be generated when your fast asleep "restless night".

Having just 1 or 2 large meals a day works in the same way, your body can't cope with such large quantity's of healthy foods such as proteins and natural healthy carbohydrates, so the easy thing to do, is to store them as fat or excrete them out. If the foods eaten are unhealthy carbohydrates, then this will simply raise your insulin levels causing fat storage to take place.

Your goal throughout your day is to keep yourself from feeling hungry, if you feel hungry you will simply binge, with the binging being on sweet junky type foods, carbohydrate denial is just like nicotine denial to a smoker. Regulating your food intake so you combine natural lean proteins with complex carbohydrates will result in more balanced and stable insulin and blood sugar level, which will prevent food cravings plus other hormonal imbalances such as testosterone levels which are essential for muscle repair.

Set your watch or write it in your diary when you need to eat, waiting until your hungry will cause you to place too much food on your plate. Avoid missing meal times, once eaten your meal will generally burn through its thermogenic benefits after 3 - 4 hours, once this time elapses, your bodies furnace for burning fat is slowly going out.

Meal Replacement Bars and Protein Shakes are not a meal, however in emergency's they should be used, and as such stored in handy places such as the car - hand bag - desk at work - gym locker etc.

What to eat?

The nutritional section will give you a guideline to the food groups, however the easy thing to remember, is that if its natural and grown on a tree, or pulled from the ground, then chances are its healthy.

Foods become unhealthy when they are either over eaten or processed. Because of the negative calorie value of a number of green fibrous vegetables, its clear to see that these are not going to cause you to become over-weight.

Empty calories - processed foods - white flour / sugar are simply higher in their calorie per volume than those that are natural. Processed foods are easily broken down to glycogen, whereas natural foods need to be broken down by the digestive system - hence why this energy breakdown process uses far more calories - keep your foods natural - avoid the white plague.

You will learn more about the specific breakdown of food components in the Fueling Your Body section, however as a guideline for aiming to lose weight in the form of body fat, you should look at consuming your calorie intake in the following form.

15 - 20% of your calories from healthy fats. Remember that fats have a higher concentration of calories 9 calories per gram, so be careful will reading food labels, always workout your calorie intake as calories. A diet that is to low in fats, less than 10% calorie intake can cause problems, fats are needed to help slow down the absorption of carbohydrates into the bloodstream. Reduce saturated fats as they reduce insulin sensitivity, causing a raise in blood sugar and insulin release.

Always aim to use Essential Fatty Acids "EFA's" taking care when using oils for either salad dressings or cooking, as a single tablespoon of oil can contain around 120 - 140 calories 13 - 16 grams of fat, with dietary fats low in the thermogenic process the fat quantity consumed is easily stored as fat.

50 - 55% of your calories from healthy complex fibrous carbohydrates, taking care to reduce your carbohydrate intake as the day goes on - avoid carbohydrates last thing at night.

30% of your calories should come from your most important food group proteins, remember that these proteins should be in the form of food rather than protein shakes or bars - lean cuts of meats - egg whites.

Throughout the day you will also need to consume fluid, ideally in the form of water, flavor with a drop of lemon or lime juice, avoid vast quantity's of fruit juice, always dilute fruit juices with water, as even though they may have their good qualities, however there are a number of hidden sugar's in the form of fructose.

Alcohol should not be consumed if looking to lose weight, as this not only has a high calorie count 7 calories per gram of alcohol, it will also inhibit your eating control, and as such you will likely eat bad foods such as salted bar nuts, or high fat sugary deserts such as ice - cream.

Alcohol provides minimal nutritional value, however upon entry into the body, it requires large amounts of work from the liver to be detoxified, as alcohol can not be stored. This detoxification process will cause a strain on your bodies digestive system, causing a back log of food to be broken down in to their key elements, so the body will simply stores these foods as fats, with the view point of working on them at a later date.

Caffeine, just like alcohol should also be limited in its quantity's drunk, as both of these are diuretic and cause an imbalance in the intra cellular level of water, this basically means that water within your bodies cells is taken out to help the kidneys flush out these toxins, which cause dehydration and a poor absorption of essential nutrients.

Water is the one of the key secrets to fat loss, just a small percentage in bodily fluid loss, causes a massive strain upon the complete body - every single chemical reaction within the body requires fluid to take place. Aim to drink a minimum of 2 liters a day, far more if your sweating due to the environmental conditions or exercise.