NUTRITION: Watch your weight
As studies have shown, regularly scheduling your eating can lead to a whole host of benefits, such as a faster metabolism, more balanced blood sugar and a lower levels of blood fats. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- And if your digestion is up to scratch, it’s going to be pretty tough to lose weight. The thing you really need to help you to lose weight is regular meals.
- As studies have shown, regularly scheduling your eating can lead to a whole host of benefits, such as a faster metabolism, more balanced blood sugar and a lower levels of blood fats (like cholesterol).
Miriam, 22, was high-flying executive who had no time to eat. She regularly skipped meals so she couldn’t understand why she carried a small tyre around her waist.
So when I suggested that she needed to start wearing a watch, she was intrigued.
Paying attention to our circadian rhythms, or internal clock, helps to maintain balance in our bodies. Our body clock tells us when to wake up, when to eat, when to sleep and also helps to regulate our hormonal and immune systems.
When our hormones aren’t quite right, our digestion is affected too. It’s our hormones that are responsible for controlling things like hunger, satiety (how full we feel), blood sugar and even the breakdown of the carbohydrates, protein and fats that we eat.
SCHEDULE EATING
And if your digestion is up to scratch, it’s going to be pretty tough to lose weight. The thing you really need to help you to lose weight is regular meals.
This is how I explained it to Miriam: Imagine that you’re meant to make an important presentation at 3pm. You’ve allocated your time so that you’ll be prepared by the afternoon.
Then suddenly, you get a call at midday saying that the presentations been moved to 12.30pm. What happens? You find yourself panicking and scrambling to get things done.
Chances are, the presentation won’t be as good as what it would have been. This is exactly what happens to your body when you start throwing food at it whenever you feel like it, as opposed to at scheduled times.
As studies have shown, regularly scheduling your eating can lead to a whole host of benefits, such as a faster metabolism, more balanced blood sugar and a lower levels of blood fats (like cholesterol).
One of the most recent studies even goes as far to show that scheduled eating may even be more important than the number of calories consumed.
So, if you are in the habit of skipping meals, make a point of finding times that you can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.
Set your alarm to go off at those times. You will be happy with the results.
