Thursday Thoughts from Coach Jill,
L is for Low fat meals 6 times a day.
Today I’ll continue working my way through the acronym “BE SLIM”.
In review:
B is for breakfast. A nutritionally balanced one. Not Orange juice and a bagel. Avoid fast carbs, and sugar. Make sure you get at least 10 grams of protein.
E is for Exercise. Fitbit wearers are well aware that many “extra” steps throughout the day really add up. .
L is for Low Fat Meals. Small ones, 6 times a day. This could also be titled “The Myth of 3 Square meals a day”.
Fats are a tough subject to manage in a small space. There is a great deal one can learn about fats if one were so inclined. I’d suggest the book “Fats that Kill, Fats that Heal” by Udo Erasmus if you’d care to get into the various atomic compositions of the kinds of fats that can be found in our daily diet. From him I learned to to take the cautions on Trans-fats seriously. And, if you have a hard time falling asleep, this book will send you to dream land in no time.
Like “protein”, “fat” is a macronutrient. Fats are a wide group of compounds comprised mostly of fatty acids. A quick trip to Wikipedia will show you that there are about 13 non saturated, and 10 saturated normally occurring, fatty acids. Your body uses the various fatty acids for various purposes throughout the day.
Fats are not there just to make your pants too tight. Fatty acids are essential to our proper functioning. The problem is that its too easy to get too much fat in our diet – and we gain weight.
Carrying around too much fat is detrimental to your health. Like I needed to tell you that.
If you are interested in adjusting your metabolism so that it burns the stores of fat you have accumulated, read on.
Keep in mind that our bodies were designed to be stingy with the calories we eat. Many fats are easily digested and stored. Excess sugars in our bloodstream alert our body that a wealth of calories are being consumed, and much of this will also get stored as fat. Yes, our bodies can converts some nutrients we have in abundance into other nutrients it needs. Essential fatty acids and essential amino acids are the exceptions. Our bodies can’t synthesize these. We must get them from our food.
So, what’s the plan?
“L”is for Low fat meals, 6 times a day. They need to be small. You need to maintain a calorie deficit if you want to lose weight. So for example, 1500 calories a day could be distributed as 5, 200 calorie meals, and 1, 500 calorie meal, again, all low fat. Research shows that of people eating the exact same diet, the ones who spread that food out throughout the day into 6 meals lose more weight. Make sure balance of macronutrients is something like 55% carbs, 30% protein, and 15% fats, and keep the sugar component as low as you can. Honestly, too many of the protein bars are candy bars with protein added. There are times for those, but lets leave that for another day.