January 24
Nutritional Basics – I have to figure out when to eat. In the last few years, while several diet books have recommended 5-6 mini-meals for reasons of blood sugar management (affecting insulin, appetite, cravings, inflammation, etc.), others have recommended three squares with nothing in between, and the latest fad book recommends only eating within an eight hour window. All use good science to back up their recommendations. What is a person to do?.
Personally, I had favored the ever popular no-food-at-all-during-the-day plan – where you starve all day and eat everything not nailed to the floor late in the evening. Despite my resistance to the suggestions of the nutrition community to adequately nourish my body during the hours that it works the hardest (i.e. daytime), I thought they just didn’t “get it”. Once turned on, my hunger switch wouldn’t go back off – or so I thought. I truly thought my planned binge eating on the weekend was just that…planned. I didn’t know that Saturday’s binge was the inevitable response to weekday starving. Turns out, for me at least, nourishing myself with enough of the right foods during the day actually turns off that hunger switch for me. Really good to know.
And, across the board, it is my observation that even grazing during the day would be less of a problem if it weren’t on delicious, immediately digested (and gone from your stomach) dry, crunchy snacks, but instead on any sort of protein and produce combination. I have virtually never had to suggest that anyone eat less leftover sauteed broccoli rabe with chicken sausage. I bet that if we asked ourselves to snack on real foods rather than hyper-palatable junk, we would be able to tell right away if we were really hungry and could just listen to our body rather than worry about whether or not we are on the 3 meal or 6 meal plan. Either would be fine. Took me about fifteen years of being in practice before I put this together for myself.
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