Whether you’re attempting to lose weight, grow muscle, or simply live a healthy lifestyle, the rule of thumb when it comes to food is to consume small, frequent meals. Unless you’re an excellent athlete or are following a dietician-created meal plan to attain a specific goal, your body requires frequent meals to function at its best. We aren’t designed to sprint on an empty stomach!
Here are the top 5 reasons why you need to keep refuelling your stomach.
- It Takes Energy For Your Body To Function
This may seem obvious, yet it’s something that many people (particularly dieters) overlook!
Your body needs a specific quantity of fuel to carry out daily tasks (or calories). This number is determined by the quantity of activity a person performs as well as their muscle mass in relation to their body measurements.
The average woman’s basal metabolic rate (the number of calories she needs per day before factoring in expenditures like exercise) is around 1,493 calories.
Taking into account activities such as exercise, walking to work, and even showering, the average woman requires roughly 2,000 calories a day to maintain her weight. These figures are significantly higher for men, with an average basal metabolic rate of 1,662 calories and daily nutritional needs of roughly 2,500 calories.
Just remember – these numbers are averages and will differ between each person!
- It Helps Ensure You Reach Your Daily Nutrient Requirements
As previously said, your body needs a specific quantity of caloric fuel to function.
However, this must be broken down into proportionate amounts of protein, carbohydrate, fats, minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients.
You can guarantee that you get enough nutrients and necessary elements into your body by eating regular, varied, and balanced meals.
- It Keeps Your Blood Sugar (And Therefore Energy) Levels Constant
The easiest strategy to avoid extreme energy swings during the day is to eat regular meals that include a source of carbs.
Your blood sugar (glucose) can stay pretty consistent throughout the day since your body is constantly absorbing food and converting it to glucose. When you don’t eat regular meals and instead binge – followed by long intervals of non-eating – your blood sugar levels jump and fall dramatically, resulting in a lack of energy.
- It’ll Boost Your Metabolism, Helping It Run Efficiently
Want a faster, more efficient metabolism? Then start eating regularly!
When you don’t eat at regular intervals throughout the day, your body develops a binge-to-starve-to-binge cycle.
As you educate your body to operate in ‘starvation mode,’ this will have a negative impact on your metabolism over time. This implies that your body will start latching onto food as it comes in and storing it as fat, as well as digesting food more slowly to save energy.
- Big Gaps Between Meals Means Big Hunger Pangs, Followed By Overindulgence And Binge Eating
This is basically horrible news in general!
Binge eating, even on nutritious foods, is never a good idea. Again, this type of behaviour will wreak havoc on your metabolism and leave your body in bad shape. It’ll also mess with your digestion because your body won’t be able to digest significant amounts of food in a short amount of time. Finally, even if you try to eat healthily, you’ll almost certainly slip in some high-calorie, sugary, and/or unnutritious foods.
