Last week I watched a segment with Dr. Joel Furhman, who specializes in nutrition based treatment for obesity. The segment was about weight loss myths that the vast majority of people believe, and hence, not losing the weight the want to. One of the myths is one that I always thought was a myth, but all the experts disagreed with my thinking. Furhman suggests that eating 5-6 times a day to lose weight is a myth and in fact, we should be sticking to our 3 meals a day. He explained the science behind this quite well, but all we need to understand is that if we keep feeding our bodies energy, they will never need to use our fat stores, because, well, those are stored for times when we don’t have enough glucose in our liver to convert to fuel. We want to use up the readily available energy and force our bodies to burn fat.
If you are trying to lose weight and your efforts aren’t working, consider trying the 3 meal a day plan and sticking to it for a couple of weeks to see if that makes the difference. And once you are done with dinner, have a little something sweet to signal the end of the meal and be done until morning. I have a spoon or two of peanut butter with a little honey. Even with all the exercise I do, I have been adhering to this 3 meal a day plan since the new year and it seems to be helping me lose those 5 pounds that just never want to shed.
I will be at the gym this morning for my 2 classes and also for Ellen’s. Check in daily for this week’s schedule as Ellen is day to day, but probably will be out all week. I will sub as many of her classes as possible, but I know I can’t do her Friday classes so stay tuned for updates as well as other myths that we believe that may be hindering our weight loss efforts.
