When you eat calories matters

You may have heard a very popular saying in healthy circles that goes something like this: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. It turns out that this is some very good advice when it comes to burning calories. When it comes to losing excess pounds or maintaining ideal weight the time of day you consume your calories is a major factor.

Of course, you know how important it is to eat, especially, breakfast since through the night your metabolism slows down considerably. The all important morning meal literally wakes up your sluggish calorie burning metabolism. This is why breakfast is the worst meal to skip. Eating in the morning tells your body you are not in starvation circumstances so it is appropriate to once again start burning those available calories. Not to mention you feel much more energized when you consistently supply what you could call the wake up calories your brain needs to help you think properly and not feel fatigued.

Often the first mistake people make when they want to lose excess weight is to try to cut calories on day one of their commitment to reach a certain weight loss goal. This is very common right after the Holidays and sounds like a good idea after those extra Holiday calories have turned into an extra 5 or 10 pounds on the scale. Unfortunately, this Monday morning decision to eat less calories usually starts with breakfast. Sometimes the very strong willed can even make it through lunch on day one with very few or even worse no calories at all. Beside feeling terrible, with no energy, by the time dinner comes around most people are ravenously hungry. This often leads to eating way too fast and eating too much of what ever is available. Welcome to over eating and poor food choices. On top of this your body has now transitioned into survival mode which means the calorie burning mechanism is turned way down. This is actually a prescription for accumulating even more unwanted fat!

If I haven’t already convinced you of the importance of eating a sensible breakfast and lunch I’m sure the results of a new study will. Overweight and obese women were divided into two groups. One group ate a large breakfast, a medium sized lunch, and a small dinner. The other group ate the same number of calories, but in reverse order. They ate a small breakfast, a medium lunch and a large dinner. After 12 weeks the group that ate the large breakfast actually lost twice as much weight as the smaller breakfast group. Remember, the two groups were eating the exact same number of calories but just eating them at different times. Interestingly, the large breakfast group also had smaller waistlines and lower blood sugar levels. Perhaps even more importantly they had less insulin resistance and reported being less hungry.

This is some more great evidence that when you eat your calories makes a big difference. Why not take the next 12 weeks to reverse your tendency to gain weight by simply reversing the order in which you consume your calories. Eating like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch, and a pauper at dinner means you will be eating the way your body prefers. Of course, the best evidence will be your own scale.

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