When people ask this question, they usually mean one of two things. They’re either asking if you can eat more food during the course of the day, or, they’re wondering if they can eat more often during the day.
The answer to both of these questions could be yes, but it’s dependent on how much and how often you’re eating now. It may come as a surprise to some of you that just as many people under-eat these days as there are people who over-eat.
In order to maintain your current body weight, the average male needs to consume around 2500 calories per day (this number will vary amongst individuals). For women, this number is closer to 2000 calories per day.
The problem for many people is that they’re actually eating too little to lose weight effectively. If your total daily calorie consumption is more than 1000 calories lower than the (above) recommended calorie intake, you’re actually forcing your body into starvation mode.
Starvation mode occurs when your body experiences a drop in calories (in other words, a lack of food). Your body begins to prepare itself. It does this by decreasing the body’s energy expenditure, in other words, slowing down its rate of calorie burning.
Your body is actually doing this as a protection mechanism. It doesn’t know that you have a fridge full of food or a McDonald’s down the street. As far as it’s concerned, there’s a famine taking place. It tells itself that it might not be getting any food for a while, and then adapts itself to be able to survive over a long period of time without much food. The body’s metabolism becomes extremely efficient, and it starts using whatever calories it does get in the wisest way possible. When starvation mode is in effect, you’re not losing fat as quickly as you could be.
This starvation response has been developed by the body over many millions of years of evolution. Long before there were quickie marts and fast food joints, man had to go out and hunt for his food. Often times a person would only consume 4-8 meals in an entire month! As you can see, it was necessary for early man to have this starvation response in order to survive. In the modern world of fat loss however, this basic metabolic response, is something that needs to be avoided at all costs.
The starvation response is the reason why people who eat too little don’t lose weight as fast as they want, and it’s the reason why people are eating more to lose weight. The starvation response can also be triggered by having too few meals per day. A perfect example of this is the people who skip breakfast and lunch and only have one large meal per day. Just as eating the correct amount of calories per day is important, so too is eating frequently enough to keep the starvation response from rearing it’s fat, ugly head.
It’s recommend that people spread their recommended 2000 – 2500 calories per day over 5 or 6 smaller meals. This is by far and away the most effective way to turbo-charge your metabolism and avoid starvation mode. If you have the discipline to do this, combined with a good exercise regime, you won’t have any trouble keeping off the pounds.
