Monday, July 6, 2009

Get Healthy… Hop And Jump But Don’t Skip


Recently I have seen a lot of comments about skipping meals to lose weight. This comes from many low-calorie or fad diets say this is the way to lose weight fast but they wind up not working in the long term. You can lose weight on them but it’s unhealthy, and as soon as you go off the diet the weight comes pouring back on. If you are trying to benefit from a weight loss or body building program, good nutrition is an essential part along with exercise.

The latest thinking is that you want to eat smaller meals more often. If you do the math that means about every2-4 hours in order to increase your metabolism and maintain your lean muscle tissue. It is more important to eat properly than to skip meals.

You will slow your metabolism down and put body fat on by skipping the last meal of the day. As an example, if you eat dinner about 6:00 pm, go to bed at 11:00 pm, wake up at 7:00 am and eat breakfast at about 7:30 am. That’s thirteen and a half hours since your last meal. Your cells are craving nutrition and are going to want to store the next meal as fat instead of burning the calories as fuel.

On the other hand when you eat frequent meals throughout the day including before bed you continue to burn calories and fat even while you sleep, but it’s not from skipping the last meal of the day.

Your meal before bedtime is not as important as breakfast or post-workout, but still very important. Many people eat junk before bedtime and that's why many programs fail. Go for healthier choices instead of the junk.

It’s important to stay out of a catabolic state where muscle and tissue breakdown. You want to keep your metabolism rate high so you continue to burn calories and fat even while you sleep. That doesn’t happen when you skip meals. What will happen is your body goes into a catabolic state, and the next time you eat something your body will have a greater chance of storing it as fat. And that is the vicious cycle when you skip meals. Metabolism drops, lean muscle tissue drops, body fat increases.

Stay away from the foods with high sugar or fructose content, not just at bedtime either. Foods high in saturated and trans fats out also. The foods you want before bed should be healthy and slow to digest. Some protein foods would be casein protein, cottage cheese, low-fat cheeses, whey protein, and natural peanut butter. Healthy fats would be natural peanut butter, nuts, other natural nut butters, and seeds.

The best carbs are dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, broccoli, or kale. The lighter veggies like potatoes have too much starch. You can also try some complex carbohydrates like oats, or whole-wheat products, but calories can add up quickly so watch the portion size.

The key to eating before bed is moderation. You should never feel stuffed, and you should drink plenty of water with it. The water will actually help fill you up some and ensure you don’t go to bed dehydrated. The quantity depends on what you are trying to accomplish, and how well you have managed your calories throughout the day. For sure it should be one of the smallest in terms of calories.

When to eat before going to bed varies from person to person, but from 15 minutes to 90 minutes is a good rule of thumb. It will be a matter of preference really. Experiment with what works best. Everybody is different.

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