3 reasons to eat 3 meals a day

These Are The Best Reasons Why You Should Eat In a 3 Meal A Day Format: 

1. You Have Greater Control Over Your Caloric Intake Admit it you hate counting calories. Personally I would much rather focus on portion control and stacking my meals with as much protein as possible.  The simple fact is if you want to get lean and lose weight you must take in less calories than you are burning. Eating 3 meals a day has all but removed snacking between meals. This pretty much eliminates a big portion of calories I used to take in. Also the average person usually goes overboard with their calories when snacking.  Nuts are a great example.  You can go overboard when eating nuts and when you don't control yourself you can mindlessly snack on nuts until you have taken in 1000+ calories. No snacking in between meals has allowed me to cut a 1/4 of my calories down so I can eat a little more protein with each meal and we all know that this ninja loves his protein. Getting rid of snacking has also allows us to increase our production of Ghrelin.  We'll talk about this in our next point. Now you might ask…"If I don't snack Won't I get hungry?"

That leads me to reason 2. Eating Less Frequently Gives You More Appetite Control Eating is a learned response. I realized this when in I forced myself to eat breakfast in the past. I was never a breakfast person but low and behold after 1 month straight of eating first thing upon waking I started to get hungry right when I woke up. Weird huh?  Have you experienced something similar perhaps? Research also proves that a higher meal frequency (5-6) leads to more hunger pangs in men. I've also learned that your hunger response relies heavily on ghrelin. What's Ghrelin? It’s a hormone that precedes and indeed predicts mealtimes, induces hunger and is secreted when you’re about to eat.

Your ghrelin secretion schedule follows your eating schedule, and it’s a fast responder, so a after a few days of going a new schedule of eating, your body should get used to it.  I usually give my clients around 2-3 weeks to reschedule their hunger responses when they get on our nutrition plan. In the meantime, you may have to deal with a little extra hunger at your previously normal mealtimes.

Breakfast Skipping aka BS'ing (no not that type of BS…get your mind out of the gutter) Since then I have also adopted a habit of skipping or delaying breakfast until 12-1ish in the day.  I wake up and go through my morning ritual then go to work un-interrupted until I have to eat which is around 12pm. After my delayed breakfast I then eat every 4 hours until my last meal at 8pm. After 3 weeks of doing this my hunger response had been muted and another weird thing happened along the way…

3. Eating 3 Meals a Day Gives You More Of An Appreciation For Healthy Foods. Truth be told, I make sure that I have a nice protein fueled "Breakfast" as my first meal of the day…whenever that may be.  If it's not available to me then I'll delay until I am able to eat one. Then I go another 4 hours until my next meal (usually after my workout) drinking water throughout. Again, I'm not thinking about food and it's lead to myself developing an increased appreciation for the healthier foods…
especially my proteins and vegetabizzles because they keep me fuller longer. Again it all comes down to planning and being deliberate in your habits. I truly do believe that meals are meant to be enjoyed but food was meant to be used as fuel to use throughout the day.  So I pack on my veggies in every meal and eat a load of protein to keep my fully satiated keeping my carb intake to the post workout portion of my day. It is possible to be a "foodie" and enjoy healthy meals. Side note:  When did becoming a "foodie" give people the license to eat like sh*t?  When I tell people that I follow a "paleo" style of eating they go on to give me an excuse like this: "Oh I'm a foodie…I couldn't do that" and "Oh I love my food too much to eat like that." People got a get real with themselves.

You call yourself a foodie to give yourself a reason to eat crap foods.  Admit it.  FYI You can still eat healthy meals that probably taste better than the most of the crap average North Americans put into their body. Eating in this fashion has really given me clarity on what I'm putting into my body and healthy food just tastes better. Eating Less Frequently Equals MORE Freedom When I was eating frequently I was a maniac. I was tied to an eating schedule and I'd get paranoid when I would miss a meal thinking my metabolism was going to automatically shut off. When you are a former fat kid like myself that is the last thing you want. After I adopted a 3 meal a day approach it really opened up a lot of things for me; The most important one being I can actually have a clear mind. You don't have to wonder where you next meal is coming from. You don't have to worry about missing a meal or a snack and having your metabolism "shut down".

 This is probably my most controversial video ever but if you can get the concepts you will save yourself from a lifetime of dieting frustration and crappy results. Today we are going to talk about the one diet that rules all. If you’re looking at this and you’re wondering who this guy is, I just watched The Hobbit, so, yeah, Gandalf came to mind when I was working on this Metabolic Mondays post, and that’s supposed to be Gandalf and that’s supposed to be his cane. When he’s in The Lord of the Rings movie, he has that one cool line where he says, “You shall not pass,” and then he jams that cane down and then all this crazy stuff happens. So, yeah, that’s pretty much where the inspiration came from. I hope I didn’t scare you with that.  We’re gonna talk about one diet that pretty much goes against, flies against the face of pretty much all the stuff that you see out on the Interwebs and also in books and all this kinds of stuff. I’m gonna tell you that there really is, I’m gonna say there really is no one diet—and we’re gonna actually be talking about this—there really is no one diet that rules all. This is exactly what this video is all about. I’m gonna show you exactly what I mean. Misconceptions About Dieting The first thing is, we have to make sure that we let go of the misconceptions about diets. We have to figure out what is a tool and what’s a lifestyle. A lot of people say that, “Oh, I’m a Paleo eater,” or, “Oh, I’m an intermittent faster,” blah, blah, blah. In reality, intermittent fasting and Paleo are just diet tools.

To talk about the concept of intermittent fasting just very quickly, I only consider a true intermittent fast to be anywhere from 24 to 36 hours. Let’s not talk about, if we’re talking about two meals a day, three meals a day, yada-yada, all this kind of stuff, all that stuff is really just meal structure. Tools Vs. Structures I know it sounds a little bit crazy, and I might get flamed a lot for this, but, honestly, intermittent fasting is a tool, and the only way to use it is to really go 24 to 36 hours. We’ll be taking about that maybe in a future blog post, but, again, things like Paleo, that’s a tool to actually detox your body and to eat right, especially after the holidays.  And I wanna talk about the misconception that there are magic numbers in the universe that’s gonna, essentially, if you go by this certain meal structure at eating at, like, 6 a.m., 12 p.m., and 4 p.m., then you’re gonna magically lose weight and all this kind of stuff. Really, the numbers, there’s really only one number, and we’re gonna be talking about that in about two minutes. In terms of meal structures, I want you to kind of get rid of all that notion in your body and your mind and just know that the structure that you have to choose is the one that you choose for yourself. It’s not one that’s arbitrarily chosen for you by some fitness expert, and that includes me too. The Problems With Diets Problems with a lot of diets that I see is, man, they’re just really too dogmatic. You have your fitness experts say, “If you don’t eat this way, you’re not gonna lose fat.” You have a lot of trainers that put their clients under a specific meal plan, a specific, I guess you could say a specific meal structure, and expect them to go on it. If they don’t follow it, then they actually say that you failed on this diet and whatnot. In reality, it’s all about creating your own structure that’s right for you. Again, it’s just way too dogmatic.

A lot of people’s experiences are based on their own individual results, so they base it on the results of themselves and their clients, but, in reality, the results actually go across the board, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about right here, because true transformations are like a center of the town. And I mean true transformations; ones where you lose the weight, you get into ideal shape, and you actually keep it off.  It’s like the center of the town in the fact that there are a billion different ways to actually get to the center of a town. There are a billion different roads, there are a billion different ways to travel. I hope you’re not using Apple maps because you may not even get to the center of town, as I have experienced a couple times. True transformations are like the center of a town. It’s essentially the way that you put out for yourself to travel; it’s your own individual way. Again, this is gonna be about making your own truth. I’m gonna help you and I’m gonna ask you a couple questions, and we’re gonna try to help you find your own truth when it comes to dieting and fitness. The Good

Thing About Diets The good thing—as bad as I said diets and all that kinds of stuff are and all that, you know what the good thing is?

 They actually give you a structure to follow. If you’ve never had a structure to follow, then you wouldn’t know exactly what your own truth is. You can’t go happenstance; you have to actually model success and then build upon that and innovate it.  What you have to do with these diets—and I’m pretty sure you’ve done it—you’ve actually done the diet, you’ve gone on the structure that they’ve asked you to, and you probably modified it a little bit to cater to your own individual needs, and that’s a good thing about structure, because it actually gives you that opportunity.  If you didn’t go under that in the first place, then you wouldn’t have figured it out. That’s a good thing about diets. I’m not trying to hate on anything or anyone, because I believe that everyone is making a great contribution to the fitness community, but at the same time, you have to be careful with the advice that you get, especially when it comes to people who are so committed and so narrow-minded in their dogmatic views.  How To Get Instant Long Lasting Results.   True long-term results equals freedom of choice—and that’s your choice—and that includes always following your own truth, right here. Your own truth is the only thing that matters. I wanna say that you are an individual person.

You probably know this already, but you have individual needs; you have a certain circadian rhythm that your body is naturally inclined to.  I’ve actually had two clients in my fitness-training facility—actually, more than that—you know, some clients are inclined to eat five meals a day; some clients are inclined to eat even two meals a day. It doesn’t really matter. Both meal structures actually get you results, but it’s a fact of finding your own meal structure and finding your own truth. I want to get this out there; this is important. You are an individual; you are not a diet. And your diet is directly related to what your own truth is and no one else’s. I want you to get that out there, and I want you to start believing it.

Fitness Myths Be GONE!

A couple myths I wanna get out the way before we get into the actual meat. Food does not equal your metabolism. We’ve done numerous studies—and I’ll leave my intermittent-fasting resources at the bottom of t his video just to show you that food really has no affect ton the metabolism. I look at food almost like a hormone, or I look at it as a point system. If you put a bag of chips into your body, that’s like a minus 5. If you eat vegetables if you eat nice broccoli, nice fish cooked in the right way, that’s like a plus 5.  So, every day we’re making these plus fives, minus fives in our lives, and, in reality, it’s just going to be, the food is really just used to help your hunger, help your satiety, and also bring the proper nutrients to your body that it needs to survive. Again, I look at food as a hormone, almost like a fat-loss hormone. The better food that you put into your body, the better your body’s gonna look, the more lean it’s gonna look; and the more crappier food you put in your body, the worse your body’s obviously gonna look and your skin’s gonna take a little bit of a hit as well and all sorts of things are gonna start happening in your body that’s what I call bad joojoo.  You wanna get yourself eating the right foods. We have plenty of food guys out there that point out which ones are right and which ones are wrong.

I’m not gonna point those out right now. It might make this video way too long. 1st Big Question:  Are you A Day Eater Or Night Eater? Here’s the meat of it. Here’re some things that you have to ask yourself. One: Are you a day or are you a night eater? And what I mean is, do you tend to take in most of your calories at night, or do you tend to take in most of your calories during the day? Is there a certain time of day where you just cannot eat past?  I talked to one of my clients; she can’t eat past 6 p.m. and that’s fine, so what I asked my client to do is actually frontload her calories more toward the day. This would mean eating a little bit earlier and spacing out her meals so that her last meal will end up at 6 p.m. After 6 p.m. she just doesn’t feel like eating, and there’s no point in forcing her to eat if she doesn’t want to, if her body’s natural circadian rhythm doesn’t allow her to eat past that time.  You have to think about this way: Don’t force yourself to do thing just because some fitness expert or magazine tells you to. You have to listen to your own body. And the thing about the nighttime is, a big percentage of people in the population, they tend to take in their calories after eight, after nine, after ten. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the thing is that I have some clients that I’ve talked to that insist on eating first thing in the morning at eighty-thirty and still insist on eating at 10 pm. at night. You have to think about it: That’s about 12 hours of feeding; that’s more than 12 hours of feeding. How are you supposed to space out your calories in the 12 hours? And, also, are you really making a compromise with yourself?  You have to get true, and you have to get honest. When do you take in most of your calories, is it at night? And if it is at night, then what I say is backload your calories, backload your food intake.

Skip your breakfast, eat more toward later in the day. You can eat at one, you can eat at two, depending on what your schedule is. Again, you don’t have to follow anyone’s meal structure whatsoever; you only have to follow your own, and that’s the main thing So, that’s one: Are you day or night?  2nd Big Question:  Where Do Your Foods Come From? Second thing we talked about already, food quality. You have to look at things on almost like a plus-one, minus-one scale. When you put crappy foods into your body, I would actually say, let’s just say putting crappy foods into your body, that’d be like a minus 6. If you put good foods into your body, that’d be a plus 3. You know the effect that bad foods have on your body. When I say “bad foods,” I talk about things that come in boxes, things that come in packages, like that 300-calorie Michelina’s pasta. That’s definitely a good way to get yourself hungry probably a half an hour, 45 minutes later. Any types of cereal, I generally just hate cereal in general; I think it’s horrible.

Let’s not get into it right now because we can talk all about how food companies actually process all the wheat and all this kind of stuff.  Anything that comes in a box or anything that comes in a package, generally not that good. If you actually get it from the produce section, the meat section, then that becomes a plus 3. The only reason I say that the bad food is a minus 6 and the good food is a plus 3 is because I have to expound on the fact that eating a crappy food in your body is going to set you back even more than eating the good food, so you always have to eat the good food and fight the good fight. 3rd Big Question:  What Is Your Height And Your "C" Balance The next thing is: How tall are you? I have two clients. One, her name is Stephanie; she’s actually a trainer for me now. And the other girl is Heidi. Stephanie, she’s about five-nine, five-ten, and she just loves to eat five meals a day; that’s the way her body works. And the thing about it is, because she’s about five-ten, she actually has more calories to work with than a girl like Heidi, because is about, I’m gonna say, generously, probably five-two, maybe five-three. Heidi, if you’re watching this, don’t hate on me now.  Heidi is in the program where she’s eating about two to three times a day.

 And this is all about how tall you are because, in reality, it all relates to what’s going on down here, what’s the caloric balance and how much do you have to use throughout the day, and that’s the main thing. You could be a shorter person—say, five-two, five-three—and still want to eat about five to six meals a day, but you also have to keep in mind that all those five to six meals, they have to fit within your caloric balance, which is your C balance. You have to find out what your C balance s for the ideal weight that you wanna eat. A lot of times what people don’t realize is that when they gain weight or if they’re a weight that they don’t like, they pretty much just ate themselves to that point.  If I’m a 183-pound man and I wanna get down to 163 ’cause I know that’s where I’m gonna be leanest—and I know that’s where I’m gonna be leanest—then I know that I have to eat for a person that’s 163 pounds. I have to eat the right foods and I have to eat the right meal structure and I also have to stay within my caloric balance for that type of person. Again, you have to eat the way that attracts the body that you want to yourself.  Again, are you tall, are you short?

Sometimes tall people have more of a caloric balance to work with than others, and short people, I would actually reduce the amount of meals that you eat. I would actually say, through my boot camp and through the fitness training that I do, this is very true. Taller people can eat about five or six meals if they wanted to, and shorter people have to split up their meals into about two or three. It’s just better to eat bigger meals. We’re gonna talk about hunger and satiety in another meal but remember that.  Putting It Altogether Let’s put it all together. Find out what your caloric balance is. There are a number of calorie counters out there. I like MyFitnessPal personally; I used it primarily to get myself into shape for my photo shoot that I did last year. And just to let you know, I’m gonna be doing a photo shoot May 15, 2013. I intend to get into better shape than I was last year, so watch out for that. But you have to find out what your C-balance is.

I use MyFitnessPal.com; you can use any calorie counter that you want. Be real with yourself. Where do you eat most of your calories? Where? Where is it? And be real and make a compromise. If you eat later on during the night, don’t feed yourself first thing in the morning. Don’t give yourself that 12 hours of feeding time; that’s just it. Don’t do it. If you can’t eat past a certain time, like 6 p.m., whatever, 5 p.m. even, then you can frontload your calories; it’s fine. You don’t have to follow anyone else’s meal structure other than your own. Eat for your height. Again, if you’re taller, you can have more meals. If you’re shorter—I say taller is anywhere between five-ten and up. If you’re shorter, you can eat less meals. Again, even taller people, some people like to eat three meals a day and that’s totally fine, but you have that opportunity to eat a little bit more. Eat real food. This is where kind of eating Paleo comes in. Paleo is a good tool to just eat real food that your great-great-grandmother would’ve eaten fifty-, seventy-some odd years ago. That’s essentially what Paleo is, just making sure that you’re eating food that your great-great-grandmother would eat; think about it that way. And it’s a tool. Try This Test The next thing I would say is—and we’re gonna go over this very, very quickly—right now we’re doing a little bit of a detox for my girls, and we’re going to get rid of gluten and dairy for the first two weeks because, you know, a lot of people out there, they don’t know what types of food allergies they have, and you have to see what types of effects certain foods have on your body. That’s why we get rid of the gluten, that’s why we get rid of the dairy.  We’re going over it very quickly, but at the same time, do that kind of two-week test for you, and then after the two weeks, start introducing that stuff back into your diet, and see how your energy levels and your body actually reacts to it.  I hope you got a lot of value out of this video. If you did and if you liked what we talked about, please “Like” and share this video with all of your family and friends. You’d be doing me a huge solid by doing that. Also, put this stuff into immediate action. Start with one thing and then work your way.

The Freedom Diet Conclusion Again, my whole thing about 2013 and beyond is helping you find what your nutritional truth is going to be. And everybody’s different but there are certain ways, certain questions we can ask ourselves to actually find out what exactly it is. That’s my mission to help you not only this year but in the years past. Just know that you’re not gonna do this alone; I got your back. One thing I wanted to mention before you leave: Diets are cool but there’s no point in looking good if you don’t feel good, if you don’t move well, so the next video we’re gonna be talking about one thing that you should be doing in your workout that 95 percent of people aren’t doing. If you don’t end up doing this before your workout, you’re pretty much wasting your workout. That’s what we’re gonna be talking about in the next Metabolic Mondays video.  I hope you got a lot of value out of this. I had a lot of fun talking to you about it and doing that whole Gandalf thing in the beginning. “Like” it, share it, and let me know if you’ve got any questions in the comments below.  This is your boy Dan, and I hope you have a great day. Trust you’re doing great. Take care.

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