Truth About One Meal A Day

The Truth About One Meal A Day

 

Isn’t eating one meal a day possible for us to stay healthy and lose weight?  Yes, of course.  But there are contrasting approaches.  Let’s look at both.

 

Small Multiple Meals Encourages Weight Loss?  Not Really!

 

Three squares a day -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner - is a way of life for many of us. But some health experts claim frequent small meals can rev up our metabolism and help us burn calories. While eating more frequently seems to help some people control hunger, the scientific evidence indicates that there's nothing magical about it.

 

A review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded there was no real weight loss advantage to eating six meals a day. Another study, in the British Journal of Nutrition, found no weight loss difference between dieters who ate their calories in three meals daily or six meals a day.

 

As for myself short term fasting, such as eating one meal or two meals a day has proven to work well.

 

Embrace Hunger

 

Hunger is a dieter’s worst enemy. We are trained to avoid hunger even we are on diet.

Wait, I'm going to suggest something that could be a taboo to most of us. You will get faster weight loss results if you allow yourself to get hungry from time to time. Of course I don’t mean to stay extremely hungry for a long period, but to extend the hours between meals is certainly beneficial.

Try look at it this way - If we cannot put up with hunger for a few hours, how can we face other greater challenges in life? With this in mind, here’s the one meal approach.

 

The One Meal Approach

If you have never fasted, it may sound scary if I ask you to eat one meal a day.  It is difficult if you try to shift to this meal frequency overnight.  But it is easy if you do it progressively knowing that you are doing something good for your body. 

 

Unlike the 6 or 10 small meal approach, you don’t have to worry about controlling the amount you eat or to spend time in planning and preparing the healthy snacks and meals.

Who Should Consider Eating 1 Meal A Day?

 

Please understand…I am not saying that you should adapt to this way of eating at all. If I feel I need food…I eat. This way of eating isn't about starving myself and it is out of my natural need for food. Of course this won’t happen overnight. I took time to build up this eating habit. Please don't eat this way until you have a deep understanding of the diet.

Fact is, if you want to lose weight, you need to change your eating habit in one way or another.  This is true to whatever diet plan you want to follow. 

About Intermittent Fasting and A One-Meal Plan

 

My blog is about intermittent fasting and I talk a lot about IF without going detail about the science behind it. Because I’m not a scientific person and generally people tend to lose interest when articles get too technical. Therefore I would like to point to websites that go in depth into the subject of IF. Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat

is one of them.

My suggestion is to go to Brad’s site and do some research to see if a 1-meal day makes sense to you. If it does, give it a try…if it looks impossible for you then continue to eat the way you have been eating. Intermittent Fasting works extremely well for a lot of people and has documented health benefits if done properly.

 

The good news is that Brad won’t tell you to eat 1 meal a day everyday. Instead couple of short fasts a week will work well. Here’s what he says:
 

"…. That's all fasting really is - a break from eating. How long you take a break for is completely up to you. I recommend 24 hours because it's simple, effective and easy to remember, but there's no magic to it. Pick the time that works best for you, then just take a break from eating for a while. When you feel you are done, start eating again. No pre-fast meals or post-fast meals. You go back to eating as you normally would."

 

Reading Brad’s site, you’ll be inspired by his real passion in helping others to stay healthy and fit. Personally I’m completely impressed by his mission to provide simple and effective ways to improve our weight loss, fitness, health and lifestyle. Even if you don’t want to buy anything, you should subscribe to his blog and gain further insights about intermittent fasting and healthy weight loss.


Brad Pilon – The Man Behind Eat Stop Eat

 

Brad is a nutrition and fitness expert.  He quitted his high pay job of being the head of research at a supplement company and venture into his passion for helping people wade through the marketing ploys to discover the truth about how to lose fat and build muscle simply and efficiently.

 

Based on his graduate studies, Brad developed a program called Eat Stop Eat which soon became the best selling dieting program in the fitness market.