Part 1 of 3
So many of us get so caught-up in losing weight we fail to completely understand the consequences of not eating enough food each day. You see it's not so much of caloric restriction as it is calorie management. So many times we feel like if I just stop eating I will lose weight. Well I wish it were that easy, if it were we would all be in great shape.
The trick to dropping unwanted body-fat may sound a bit confusing at first but once you understand how the metabolism works you will have a much better understanding.
Here's the facts
First we must understand why we eat and when we eat.
The obvious, "I'M HUNGRY" is NOT why you should eat. In fact if you wait until you are hungry you have waited far to long to eat and proper caloric management is disrupted.
(GOLDEN RULE: EAT FOR WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO, NOT FOR WHAT YOU HAVE JUST DONE)
I'm sure you've all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day....and this is true. But have you ever really wondered why?
Let's examine the word, "breakfast" separate the word and you have two words and it simply means, "break the fast"!
Most people will eat their last meal between 5-8PM and then we relax a while and typically go to bed between 10PM and 12AM. Then we sleep between 6-8 hours. In many cases allot of us have not eaten for 10-12 hours by the time we have gotten out of bed in the morning.
Understand this, if you have a healthy metabolism your blood sugar will be very low in the morning because you have not eaten for a long time. We are not always hungry simply because there is no caloric demand from waking up. Your body has been is a resting and rebuilding phase while you were asleep.
We all get our day started by waking up and hitting the floor with both feet just like everyone else does. But in many cases that's where the similarity stops. What everyone should do upon waking up is break the fast they have been in before they get hungry and keep feeding the body all day long so it never gets hungry and the facts are you will melt body-fat away.
However if you are like many Americans you will skip breakfast grab a drug called caffeine and get your day started with a stimulant. So let me tell you what happens when you chose either situation.
First lets go with the benefits of breaking the fast and eating breakfast.
1. (And this is KEY throughout the day) You will elevate your blood sugar to normal ranges. You see by not eating for 6-14 hours your glycogen storage will be low, yes you do still burn calories while you sleep. (I will get into that later) So it is important to get blood sugar into normal ranges first thing in the morning and maintain normal blood sugar levels all day long.
2. It prevents your body from going into the catabolic phase. Providing the body with proper nutrients upon wake-up will prevent the body from pulling nutrients from muscle tissue. You see our body behaves much like us, the last thing it wants to eat is fat, the nutrients your body craves are all found in the lean muscle tissue throughout our body. Once you blood sugar has bottomed out the body goes into starvation mode and will start wasting muscle tissue. The saddest thing about this over a long peroid of time is you are destroying your metabolism because muscle tissue and it's activity is the only thing that burns calories. Think about it for a minute, how many of you have had a steak with a ring of fat on the side and purposely eaten the fat first because you love fat? The answer is very few if any at all! The body acts the same way, just for different reasons. You see fat is our reserve energy source and if you do not feed the body the first thing that will happen is the body starts reducing its need for more calories by getting rid of the cause for more calories and that is your muscle tissue.
Here is the biggest problem we have, our body is very efficient at saving itself from us (LOL) by being able to store fat so easily and in many cases we are our own worst enemy and we aid our bodies into hanging onto stored body fat by starving ourselves.
3. Eating breakfast automatically elevates your metabolism for the rest of the day!
4. Eating breakfast also aids in brain function and sets the tone for a better day. Yes eating breakfast stimulates a hormonal release to energize your day.
The key is keep blood sugar in normal ranges and it becomes impossible to store body-fat.
Tomorrow I will explain why it's more calorie management than it is calorie restriction.
Here is what you will need to know more about.
1. The Glycemic index and how you can use it to maintain your blood sugar.
2. Proteins and the Protein Efficiency Ratio (PER)
3. Fats and their key role to a healthy metabolism
4. Feeding the lean body mass, not total body weight (your true BMR)
Food for thought, is resistance exercise the key to maintaining low body fat more so than cardiovascular exercise???
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