How many meals should you eat in a day to lose weight?

Lauren Johan June 8, 2017

I googled this recently and it made my head spin! There seems to be hundreds of ‘doctors’ and ‘health specialists’ pushing some kind of book that claims to have the answer to this loaded question. And to make it more confusing they are all creating noise about completely different methods. 6 meals a day, intermittent fasting, 3 hour diets, 3 meals and no snacks. The list goes on…. The truth is there is no 'perfect diet'. It’s about looking introspectively; who you are, what you are ready, willing and able to do, what your diet and lifestyle is like as well as your current and historical relationship with food.

Take a look at your current diet

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

If you have been trying to lose weight and are not seeing results then you need to change elements of your diet to start making progress. If you don't take a look at what, when and how you are eating and just ‘keep trying to eat healthy’ then you will likely continue to bang that head against a brick wall.

Keeping a food journal can be really helpful. Jot down everything you eat and drink over the course of a week then take a look at what your week was like. Are you fairly consistent with the timing of what you eat or does it vary? Do you regularly skip meals or find yourself snacking? What kind of foods are you eating? Are you eating a more carbohydrate, fat or protein rich diet? Are those carbohydrates mostly from vegetables and fruit or more from grains, bread etc? Is your protein processed (e.g. sliced packaged meats) or from a whole source (fresh meat, fish)?

Know your body type

Are you an ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph? We are all built a little bit differently. This gives us different strengths and qualities and is important to consider when wanting to lose weight. It can be so tempting for women to look at someone with a body they desire and strive to copy what they eat in a bid to look like them. This method is usually frustrating, discouraging and rarely yields results. Following the diet of a waif thin 6 foot tall model will likely be a miserable experience for someone with a shorter and naturally more muscular build.

Take the test on bodybuilding.com to see where you fall. Then check out Precision Nutrition’s Body Type Eating to see what a typical meal breakdown for your body type should look like

Get a grip on your activity level

It can be easy to fall into the trap of sometimes feeling like you have worked out harder or for longer than you actually did. It can also be surprising to see how much baseline activity you get during the day, using an activity tracker can be a great tool to see how much (or little) you are moving.

Revisit your diet history

Your relationship with food is a very important factor for long term weight loss success. Have you have spent times heavily restricting yourself from meals and food groups then perhaps suffering a period of ‘falling off the wagon’ by overeating, feeling out of control with your eating or bingeing? If so spending time forming a healthy relationship with food should be the first step before thinking about weight loss. If you have been excessively restricting calories for an extended period of time then you may need to initially focus on regulating your adrenals and hormones to get your body working optimally again.

Understand your hunger cues

This means developing body awareness and working on mindfulness! A simple concept but not easy and takes practice. Many of us are out of tune with our hunger signals, often mistaking stress, fatigue,dehydration and other emotional factors for hunger. Why are you hungry? Do you approach meals starving? Do you forget to eat then overeat at meals? Or do you constantly feel hungry and like snacking all day? Do you use food as a distraction? Or as a reward? For some people having 6 small meals a day helps keep overeating at bay and overall calorie consumption in check, whereas for others restricting to 2-3 meals is easier to make better choices and allows for better consistency.

Sources:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/3-hour-diet-or-3-meals-a-day

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25242841 (The effects of 6 isocaloric meals pattern on blood lipid profile, glucose, hemoglobin a1c, insulin and malondialdehyde in type 2 diabetic patients: a randomized clinical trial.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680567/ (intermittent fasting)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23171320 (Intermittent fasting combined with calorie restriction is effective for weight loss and cardio-protection in obese women).

Musings on weight gain

Lauren Johan March 21, 2017

I felt compelled to write this post as I have been hearing a lot of grumbling recently about being annoyed with gaining “X” amount of pounds over the last few months. I watch clients stare in the mirror as they poke and prod at their waistlines wondering out loud, “Why cant I just lose these few pounds?” With a confused look on their faces they make the most commonly heard statement to the world “I eat healthy.”

I gained 10 pounds last year. Not because I stopped eating healthy food. I love eating and cooking healthy food. There are so many things I can blame on the weight gain. Like I was under a lot of stress and I was recovering from a prolonged period of calorie restriction and excessive exercise resulting in overtraining syndrome. While those circumstances certainly had an impact that led to where I am it is not the ultimate reason I gained weight.

Successful nutritional habits lie in our ability to CONSISTENTLY do the mundane things. It’s about mentally and physically showing up every day to do the habits that will help you reach your goals.

I gained the weight because I stopped mentally showing up each day. I didn't eat mindfully. Like listening to fullness cues, or working on catching and stopping myself from mindless eating or stress eating. I allowed my trigger foods like salted dry roasted nuts, dark raw chocolate and gluten free bread to become a staple in my cupboard (which results in ALL of them becoming a staple in my daily eating habits). I never allowed myself to be hungry and I definitely justified a lot of impulse food purchasing to take place.

Losing weight or maintaining a lean healthy physique is NOT easy for most people. It involves sticking to performing daily tasks and habits that may frankly feel boring. With all the exciting food out there it involves committing to a daily practice, and at moments you will feel frustrated.

Here are my musings of key behaviors that need to be adopted and maintained when it comes to successful weight loss:

Making the time to stock your fridge with healthy food.
Committing to keeping junk food or trigger foods (foods you have trouble moderating) out of the house.
Don’t succumb to impulse food purchasing.
Standing up to your inner voice that is telling you that you DESERVE this (eg I'm tired, stressed, life is hard etc).
Practicing MINDFUL eating. Sitting down to meals, and planning meals. NOT allowing yourself to stand in front of the fridge and eat, pick off others plates, snack in front of the TV, eat while walking around etc.
Work on getting used to feeling a little uncomfortable; eating less or eating different foods brings with it a period of discomfort.
Understanding that adopting new habits are hard and our brains are wired to resist the discomfort. It requires you to push against that every day until the habit is ingrained.
Being willing to sit with occasional hunger.
Focusing on the PROCESS, not the OUTCOME. You can’t make your body lose 5, 10 or 20 or 50 pounds. But you can adopt new habits every day that will increase your chance of getting to that outcome.
Plowing ahead without seeing immediate results. I hear a lot of clients say “I only get motivated to lose weight when I lose weight.” Constant validation is not a reality when it comes to losing weight. Our bodies are complex and sometimes a combination of external and internal factors will stall progress. If you cannot stick to a plan or commit to the work despite this then you cannot enable long term progress (or the yo-yo effect takes place).

5 Reasons Your Weight Loss Has Stalled

Lauren Johan February 13, 2017

1. You think of food as ‘Calories’

This one had to come first, because it is one of the most common behaviors I see that are holding people back.

Side note: Understanding the concept of calories can be useful to a health newbie, for example if you are eating fast food, packaged convenience foods, ice cream and pastries on the regular its good to understand how calorie dense these types of food really are. For people in this category who might be very obese or have diet related health issues understanding the concept of calories can possibly (still not that often) be beneficial.

Calorie counting is flawed for many reasons.

It is INACCURATE (you can read more on this in the links below);
It takes the focus away from the value of what you are eating;
It gives you a false feeling of security;
It usually leads to a dysfunctional relationship with food;
It takes away from developing a better understanding of your body and what it might need;
It takes up mental space you could be using for much more productive and rewarding things.

2. You are not being honest with yourself

Why do you want to lose weight? Is it for you or for someone else? Goals without gravity have no weight.

3. You are not being realistic

Weight loss requires change. Change comes at a cost. It requires sacrifice. Look at where you are now and where you want to be. In between now and that time some, or many things have to change. This doesn't necessarily mean drastic overhaul stuff . It’s more about adopting, building upon and sticking to small changes to your lifestyle. Primarily diet, exercise, sleep and stress.

Weight loss takes time and persistence. You may start a path to better health by taking small steps and get frustrated that things are not changing immediately. So you quit, convinced that method doesn't work.

Your weight loss goals are out of line with reality. If there are certain things about your lifestyle that you are not ready to change, or if you are looking to get down to a weight that is below a healthy range for your body type then it might be a good time to look inward and ask yourself if your current goals are healthy, sustainable in the long term and realistic.

4. You are not connecting with your body

This ties back into the whole calorie counting thing. Engaging in behaviors like calorie counting, tracking macros etc alienates us from how we feel when we eat. Trying to keep within some set of numbers puts us at odds with the messages our bodies are sending us. Our hunger and fullness signals get totally out of whack.

5. You are getting distracted

You start a week of healthy eating, cooking meals at home and picking well balanced options when out. Suddenly you read about some new kind of AMAZING diet or juice cleansing regime which doesn't include the foods you are currently eating. You ditch your plan and shift to the next. Then you read about another, even BETTER diet that totally debunks the OTHER diet and switch to that. The cycle continues….