You’re reading The Healthy Boy, a living well series from Adam Reynolds. We’ll be following along as Adam eats and exercises his way through a healthier lifestyle, providing fitness tips, delicious recipes, and nutritional advice.
I love food. Period. When it comes to eating I get just about as excited as Britney Spears at the front of the line at Starbucks. I am either constantly eating food, or thinking of where I am going to get it. If I don’t eat every few hours, I get grumpy and irritable and am not very pleasant to be around. I go from Britney at Starbucks to Britney at a gas station with an umbrella and shaved head within minutes. So imagine my surprise when on embarking on my new healthy living journey I found that eating every few hours is not only good for you, but it is recommended and your body actually needs it.
There’s a catch though. It has to be healthy nutritious food. What? You didn’t think you could actually eat a donut every few hours and it be good for you did you? Well whether your goal is shed a few pounds, or to put on a bit of muscle and see more results at the gym, supplying your body with a steady flow of nutrients every 2 – 3 hours is in your best interest.
Why is it important?
How about we take this to the next level?
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1. Metabolism
Eating small meals every 2 – 3 hours (or around 6 meals a day) instead of the traditional 3 large meals speeds up your metabolism. Fast metabolism = you fitting into those skinny jeans. It tells your body that food is in abundance and that there is no need to store fat. When you don’t eat for longer than 3 hours, your body isn’t sure when its going to get it next meal, so it tells itself to stop burning energy and start storing fat – a very helpful trait for our ancestors but not so relevant in today’s world.
2. Stabilizing blood sugar
You know what happens when you have low blood sugar? You develop cravings for sweet or fatty foods and next thing you know you are chowing down like Kirstie Alley at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Eating whole foods every 2 – 3 hours mitigates this by providing your body with a steady supply of energy, therefore avoiding those nasty high insulin peaks. What does that mean to you exactly? Well lets just say it stops you pressing your face up against that vending machine at 3pm in the afternoon, and you will be more inclined to reach for something nutritious rather than that chocolate candy bar or bag of salty pretzels.
3. Nutrients for muscle growth
Did you know that protein can’t be stored in the body? Unlike carbohydrates, which can be stored as glycogen in the liver and muscle tissue or converted into fat, protein when consumed is broken down into amino acids and is used to repair muscle and other tissue in the body. Around the 3-hour mark all the protein you have consumed from the previous meal has been used to repair your tissues, or expelled, and therefore your body will begin to require more. What happens if you don’t give it more? Well your body will start sucking protein out of your muscles to provide to other vital organs, and for any of you who spend hours lifting weights at the gym in hope of buffing up a bit, this sucks as much as Lindsay Lohan’s attempted music career. So eating protein throughout the day every few hours will ensure that your body maintains an anabolic (muscle growth) state.
Now, as I mentioned above, I love to eat, and to eat often, so eating every 3 hours isn’t very difficult for me. But I know it is for a lot of people. People have busy lives, don’t have time to prepare meals or sit down to eat them 6 times a day, or simply don’t have the appetite and can’t stomach the idea of eating so often. So I have provided a few little tips on how you can try to adopt this new lifestyle;
• Prepare your meals in advance: Cook chicken or other protein in bulk and refrigerate for the week to divide amongst meals. Same with vegetables. Use Tupperware to divide your meals and have them ready to go.
• Have snacks ready: Have a stash of almonds or walnuts in your draw for a quick snack of healthy fats and protein.
• Buy pre-packed salad mixes: It’s easy to buy salad mixes in the produce isles of supermarkets these days. Open them up, add your chicken and veggies, some balsamic vinegar and you’ve got yourself a quick healthy meal in under 5 minutes.
• Have a protein shake: I prefer whole natural protein sources like chicken or fish to processed protein shakes, but the fact is they are quick and easy to make, and can supply your body with what it needs. Just read the label to ensure you are getting a nutritious one. Oh, and don’t eat protein bars – the benefit of the protein is outweighed by the sugars, artificial sweeteners, and fat they use to stick the bar together.
• Eat Breakfast: It’s the most important meal of the day, gets your metabolism and digestive system moving, and eating it every day gets your first meal done and out of the way.
• Ensure they are small meals: Now I’m not telling you to whip up and eat a Peppercorn-crusted filet mignon with a merlot-shallot sauce and a side of meringue streusel-topped sweet potatoes at every meal (although that sounds amazing, right?). Just ensure you eat a little protein like chicken, and some carbohydrates in the form of whole grains or vegetables. Keep the meals small and simple.
• Avoid starchy carbohydrates in your last meal or two: Your body doesn’t require a lot of energy at night, so that big bowl of pasta you are about to eat probably isn’t going to play nicely or become BFFs with your hips. Aim for lean proteins with vegetables in the evening. Unless of course you have just worked out, which is when a small amount of carbs will come in handy to replenish muscle glycogen.
So whether you are in that gym with hopes of building those guns and revealing those 6 pack abs, or whether you are just wanting to reduce that muffin top so that green peace doesn’t try to push you back in the water as you lay on the beach, eating every few hours is a habit you need to adopt — whether you are busy and have a lot on your plate or not.
PopCultureQueer
Queerty…seriously?! I mean, SERIOUSLY?! Why are you giving column space to someone who is regurgitating facts from sixth grade health class???? So far’s this guy has focused on not eating hot dogs and having small meals every few hours aka things that everyone knows already (especially us gays!).
DR
Uhm, I think this column is a great idea, but nothing I can’t learn from the free personal trainer at my gym… Or MSN Health, also free and online…
Fitz
It’s hard to find, but there is a great book by Sue Ferguson, who started ‘Diet Center’. In ’79, when I decided to get back in shape, that book and program saved my life. The centers have all failed, because they didn’t use magic shakes and false promises. But we learned to eat lots of whole food, and to move around a little everyday, and I am still at about the same weight that I was since then.
Just don’t eat anything ‘made’. No one you have ever met has ever gained a pound from eating whole, real food– even the ‘fattening’ stuff like avocados.
Fitz
Sorry– That was SYBIL Ferguson. Sue Ferguson is an addiction doctor I met at a conference, lol.
Bill
Since when is a 29-year-old man considered a “boy”? Get a life, dude.
jason
Headline should say “Eat More To Lose Less Only If You Eat The Right Stuff and No That Dies Not Mean 20 Whoppers And Oh, BTW, Homo Should Go To The Gym, As Well.”
jason
I cannot type.
fagburn
MUMMY!!! I can’t take any more of this!
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Baxter
Want to know the secret to losing weight? Burn more calories than you consume. That’s it.
A.G.
This is worthwhile (but basic) information, and I’m sure this guy must appreciate the promotion, but why do you copy his entire post?
Why not just make a brief mention with a click-on link?
Qjersey
Gee advice from another self educate expert? And his credentials other than being pretty are???
Lawrence
@Baxter:
Yes but we can do things to make us burn more calories, and feel full so we dont take in as much. The article is just about that…
Whats up with all this bitching?
alex
He lost me the first two lines:
“I love food. Period. When it comes to eating I get just about as excited as Britney Spears at the front of the line at Starbucks…”
Again with this stretching in order to put in similes and metaphors and references that just aren’t needed. What I love about the gays is our creativity and wittiness, but this guy offers none. I can appreciate that he’s trying to put a gay spin on wellness, but it’s totally falling flat. And again, it’s a five-pager essay.
Why am do I bother writing this? Because I think the idea of doing a daily fitness post is a great way to encourage more gays to be conscious of what they’re doing with their bodies. I’d love it if Queerty were not just about politics, celebrity gossip, and ogling at the half-naked photos, but if it were also about self-improvement in the areas of physical health, knowledge, and local activism.
Instead, this guy’s writing makes me cringe.
PopCultureQueer
@alex: Thank you Alex, you summed up what I was feeling in my first comment on this article just perfectly. I guess I just couldn’t come up with the proper words in my fit of “wtf?-ness” that I felt upon seeing yet another post from a writer who tries to hard to tell us facts that are mostly common knowledge.
If these posts weren’t so long winded and weren’t so heavy handed with the attempts to be witty and actually provided NEW information to us then I’d be all for it, but they’re not. To me it feels like whoever doles out publishing space on Queerty probably just wants to get in this guys pants.
Chris
He’s also repeating an urban legend, with no solid research backing it up, that everyone just believes because they’ve seen it on the internet a million times. Actual science shows that the “six meals a day” myth is totally untrue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/health/23really.html#
Like Baxter says above, the “secret” to losing weight is eating fewer calories each day than you burn. The “secret” to being healthy is eating foods that are nutrient-dense, and not empty calories.
Ultimately, it comes down to making good decisions about what to eat, and not just ingesting whatever is most economical and efficient for restaurant chains and corporate food manufacturers to serve us.
ChristineWithRegence
Great tips! For ideas on how you can take charge of your own health care costs, check out Whatstherealcost.org.