Feed Me...

Metabolism. As I said in my last post, for me, the key to loosing weight is understanding your metabolism. If there were some magic pill that could ramp up your metabolic rate (there is not, no matter what the advertisers tell you), weight loss would be easy.

Being that there is not a pill called the Metabolizer or the Meta-loss or whatever cute name the marketers would come up with, we have to work at getting our metabolism to run faster. The good news is not ALL of the work is physical activity (a good deal of it is, more on that tomorrow). Some of it is understanding your metabolism and then applying a little discipline. And the good news is, part of that means...eating! And most of us are where we are, in part, because eating is something at which we are good.

One of the easiest ways to keep your metabolism burning away is to give it a reason to be working. Every 3 hours or so, without the proper encouragement, it decides to take a wee nap. Now, there are two downsides to that:

1. Metabolism both breaks down molecules and builds them. One of the most abundant molecules in the human body is carbohydrates (these little buggers are great at making fat – they are also great fuel for all sorts of biological functions). If you let your metabolic rate slough off for a bit, you are not gaining the benefits of it breaking down molecules – things like carbs...and fat. You also are not giving it as many chances to build molecules - and one of the molecules metabolism is particularly fond of building is protein, which helps build muscles...which are FANTASTIC fat burners.
2. The second downside is that it takes longer for your metabolism to get back up to speed once it slows down significantly. Which means you are giving your body less chance to shed weight over the course of a day if you let it nap a bit.

One simple trick to keep your metabolism running (one that you've heard over and over again if you've ever tried to loose weight) is to eat more frequently. Do it every 3 hours or so – which means we are talking about 6 times a day. Once again, it has two big advantages:

1. Your metabolism is hungry. “Feed me!” So feed it. If you do, it will have a reason to stay awake and active. If you don't – it won't. Keep in mind you still have to consider your total calories for the day, but eating every 3 hours will help encourage it to keep ticking away. For me it works out this way: 350 calories for breakfast, a 200 calorie snack at 9am, 400ish calories at lunch, a 200 calorie afternoon snack and then (depending on the actual calorie counts of the day), I have about 700 calories left for dinner.
2. Protein fills me up. And as we mentioned earlier it also builds more muscle which are great fat burners! (If you don't want to bulk up, don't worry – not all muscle has to be big and bulky. You can also have long lean muscles). So, eating six times a day and making sure there's plenty of protein each time, keeps me from getting hungry and keeps building muscle for burning all that fat! (of course, I have to help the protein along with exercise, but more on that tomorrow).

I've been following these suggestions for 48 hours now. At weigh in today, I was at 264. Yep, 11 pounds in 2 days. Less than typical results and not sustainable over the long term, but a great kick start to the weight loss program!