A healthy diet is not only a necessary component healthy way life, but also an excellent, trouble-free way to lose weight, restore your health and improve your quality of life.

First you need to get used to the idea that you must always eat at the same hours so that the body prepares for the process of taking and digesting food. When you get used to this thought, begin to carry it out.

"Liquid food should be chewed, solid drink." Digestion begins in our mouth, and experts recommend thoroughly chewing food (32 times), because then the substance lysozyme is produced in saliva - the first defense against bacteria entering our body.

This rule always works and in any case, whether you want to lose weight, gain weight or just be healthy: breakfast should be protein-vitamin! That is, in the morning you must give the body protein and. The body will receive energy from carbohydrates, proteins will provide building material for muscle and organ cells. Together, these components will give you satiety.

• Two-egg omelet, green salad and cereal crispbread, a cup of herbal tea, a small fruit.
• Porridge (buckwheat or rice no more than two to three times a week, pearl barley, corn) together with skim milk or yogurt, green tea without sugar.
• Boiled sea ​​fish, 100 g fat-free cottage cheese, tea without sugar, apple.
• Durum wheat pasta, mushroom stew, green tea.
• 100 g of boiled fish or steamed meat, rye bread, 100 g of low-fat cottage cheese or yogurt, whipped with berries.
• Chicken breast sprinkled with green bean parmesan, lemon tea, small fruit.

In 2-3 hours for lunch you need to give the body fiber: eat a fruit that contains a lot of fiber (pears, raspberries, avocados, kiwi, apples, figs, strawberries and strawberries) and drink kefir or yogurt.

For lunch eat foods with complex carbohydrates: whole grain cereals, durum wheat pasta, of course, protein and a portion of salad seasoned with naturally non-mayonnaise. If you are used to eating soups for lunch, then you need to give up the side dish, just eat fish or meat.

As one of the options for a healthy diet for lunch, you can eat

• a serving of stewed vegetables and brown rice, a small fruit and a glass of mint tea;
• 250 g of baked or boiled fish, mixed vegetables with asparagus;
• 200 g chicken breast, stewed zucchini, vegetable salad;
• boiled lentils with onions, salad with cucumbers and low-fat yogurt;
• stewed mushrooms with dill, cucumber, radish and asparagus salad.

For an afternoon snack you can eat sweets. But do not think that you will finally "get hold of" cakes, pastries and sweets. It can be

• 250 grams of fruit
• Glass of black currant
• Kiwi, apple
• Dried fruits and yoghurt

For dinner eat foods that contain fiber:

Combine chicken without fat, fish, lean meat with a salad of fresh vegetables. As a last resort, stewed cabbage, you can also drink a glass of kefir and eat 100 g of low-fat cottage cheese.

• vegetable stew, chicken breast, green salad with radishes;
• lentils with onions, stewed vegetables, two apples;
• boiled meat with lettuce leaves, vegetable puree soup;
• boiled chicken, green salad, one apple.

As you can see, it is not at all difficult to comply with a proper diet, the main thing is to tune yourself to, perhaps for someone, new dishes and products, turn on willpower and act.

Bon appetit and be healthy!

Most of the materials on weight loss advise to eat at least 4-5 times a day, assuring that without observing this rule it is impossible to get rid of excess weight... In this case, the diet of "ordinary" people - that is, eating 3 times a day - is automatically recognized as erroneous both for weight loss and for gaining muscle mass.

You can also hear that the processes of "distillation of food into fat" depend primarily on the time of its intake - they say, in the morning any calories are burned, and after six o'clock in the evening even a low-calorie salad goes straight to belly fat. Based on this rule, refusing breakfast "breaks the metabolism" and is equated to the main violation of the diet.

How often should you eat for weight loss?

Scientific research strongly suggests that both the maintenance of health and weight loss, it is the total daily calorie intake that is important, and not the frequency of meals (1). Basically, if you tend to overeat, then with 5 meals a day you will eat more food than 3 meals a day. In addition, what kind of food you eat plays a key role.

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The frequency of food intake in no way accelerates or slows it down. In fact, with three meals a day, you can lose weight without any problems, and with five meals a day, you can gain weight (which bodybuilders do successfully). Much more important is not how often (or at what time) you eat, but what exactly is included in each meal.

Scientific sources:

1. Meal frequency and energy balance,
2. The causal role of breakfast in energy balance and health: a randomized controlled trial in lean adults,

When we try to stick to our chosen diet, we pay great attention on what we eat. But at the same time we absolutely do not think about exactly when it is better to sit at the dinner table, how many times during the day we should eat and what will happen if we decide tightly.

The typical number of meals a day is three. And that's if you're lucky. Some people mistakenly believe that if they stop eating altogether or limit their meals to once a day, they will lose weight in half the time. But usually such experiments lead to nothing but stress and health problems.

It is advisable to eat every 3-4 hours. This improves fat burning, prevents the release of excess insulin into the blood, allows leptin (a hormone that regulates energy metabolism) to work its magic and control appetite and metabolism. It also keeps the balance of the production of cortisol, the stress hormone, under control.

Don't skip breakfast! Our grandmothers were right when they said that the day should be started with a good hearty breakfast. It gives you the energy to start a long, rewarding day. If you skip breakfast, very soon the feeling of hunger catches you by surprise and you begin to interrupt the feeling of hunger with everything that comes to hand. And in offices, you usually come across sweets and cookies.

Do not eat three hours before bed. Eating before bedtime raises body temperature, increases blood sugar and insulin levels, and decreases melatonin and growth hormone production. All of these factors affect sleep and the natural fat burning that occurs when we sleep. In addition, poor sleep leads to the fact that we may overeat the next day.

If it so happens that you have time to eat before bedtime, it is advisable to eat light food with a low and high content.

Start your day with protein. To improve appetite control, it is best to eat protein at breakfast and leave carbohydrates for lunch or dinner. Tomato omelet is a great quick breakfast!

Never get down to strength training on empty stomach. For these activities, your body needs energy to get optimal results. But cardio can be done 30 minutes before meals.

This does not mean at all that you need to fill up right before training. Just do not start exercising if you have not eaten anything for a long time and you have a feeling of hunger. Before the workout itself, you can have a snack with bananas, nuts or dried fruits - high-calorie, quickly absorbed, provides the necessary energy and relieves hunger.

Focus on food. While eating, it is undesirable to be distracted by something that does not concern your lunch. Concentrate on your main activity, experience all the flavors, finally relax and rest. Your lunch is an island of peace and tranquility in the midst of the stormy ocean of a working day.

Proteins come first. With meals, eat protein foods first, and then everything else. Proteins send a signal to your brain that your body is full. Thus, you will eat exactly as much as you need.

Drink alcohol after meals. If you decide to have a drink with dinner or any other drink, it is better to do so after you have eaten, rather than during. Alcohol after meals increases the production of hormones that control appetite and digestion.

And if you decide to drink white wine in the evening - keep in mind that it increases your appetite and the chance that you want to eat is very high.

Good day.

We continue to search for grains of truth in the sea of ​​conflicting information related to proper nutrition and weight loss. And such a question as the number of meals per day and the size of the portion has not yet received a clear and unambiguous answer. Personally, it seems to me that it all depends on what nutritional principles you follow when losing weight.

For example, it requires a radically different schedule and size compared to. Because their goal is the same - weight loss, and the approach is completely different. In Ducan, a decrease in the total calorie content is due to an increase in proteins in the diet, and in Protasov, due to an increase in vegetables (fiber) in the diet.

So, I will try to sort out popular ideas about meal times and the amount of food, depending on which system they came from, so that there is an understanding of what will be more effective with your chosen method of losing weight.

What portions and how many grams should you eat

In most cases, if it comes on weight loss, the basic rules boil down to reducing the portion, switching to fractional meals, separate meals, not eating after six, a ban on drinking fluids with meals, refusal from starchy foods and sweets. Have you named everything? Or do you still know some common rules that guarantee you weight loss in as soon as possible? At the same time, such rules change over time. Remember, three meals a day were once the norm. And today they advise five, and sometimes seven. Try to figure out how it is better here. I'll try.

If you are too lazy to read and only the conclusion is interesting, then I will not be original and will say right away: everything, as always, depends on the characteristics of your body's work. It works differently for everyone. It depends on age and lifestyle and, of course, on gender. There is no one-size-fits-all recipe that works well for everyone. This is why diets exist.

Diet is an attempt to create an equally effective way of losing weight for everyone. And since we are all different, we have to take the most scanty amount of food as a starting point, at which absolutely any person can be guaranteed to lose weight. Not even overweight.

So let's take statements like these and try to look at them from a common sense point of view.

How many times a day should you eat

As a child, we were told that optimal amount is three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Today's recommendations from nutritionists are completely different - you need to eat in equal portions, dividing them into 5-7 meals. The point here is that if you throw food into the stomach often and little by little, then the process of digestion and assimilation will go evenly, and not in jumps, as if you ate the same amount of food in one sitting. This is commonly referred to as fractional meals. How justified is this?

Different foods are absorbed over different periods of time. Let's say you started eating not 3 times a day, but 6. It turns out that the break between meals was two hours. It doesn't matter what kind of food you eat - any food takes from 4 hours to digest and assimilate. Therefore, there will not be such an effect that for each next meal, all the food eaten before is completely absorbed and the body is ready to accept and digest the next portion. And there is no such thing that smaller portions are better and faster absorbed. Any amount of food will be in the digestive system exactly as much as needed for digestion. The only way it can help is getting rid of the heaviness in the stomach in case you really overeat. Breaking the meal in two will make it easier for your stomach.

But this, anyway, does not in any way apply to weight loss. If you continue to eat the same food and the same amount on which you gain weight, then smearing it over the clock will not give any result.

And if you understand that the matter is in the amount of food and not in the number of meals and reduce portions, then there will be no heaviness in the stomach.

As a result: frequent visits food without reducing portions as a way to lose weight does not work.

How large should the portions be?

Oh, regarding this issue, there are so many recommendations that my head is spinning. "The portion should be right in the palm of your hand," "no more than 150 grams of food at a time," and others.

But in fact, what is important is not what size your plate is, but what lies on it. I have already said more than once that the most "dangerous" in terms of gaining excess weight are carbohydrates. I don’t want to talk about "fast" and "slow" carbs and glycemic indices right now - all this popular but unnecessary information. I'm talking about the property of carbohydrates, when they are excessively supplied to the body, to be stored in the form of subcutaneous fat.

Therefore, for example, when you eat mashed potatoes with fried chicken leg, the danger is not the fat on which the meat was cooked, but the potatoes. After all, fat is very important element for our body, cell walls are built from it, and the hair from it is healthier, and the nails are stronger. Therefore, the fat will go to work. But if there are enough carbohydrate reserves in the body, then carbohydrates from potatoes will accumulate in the form of fat.

When to limit portions

To limit the intake of carbohydrates in the body, low-carbohydrate diets are usually used. This is a way of eating in which carbohydrates are either completely removed from one of the meals, or left in each, but its amount is significantly reduced. Standard advice on avoiding breads, buns, pastries, and sweets is essentially one of the options for a low-carb diet, as these foods are just carbohydrate bombs.

And it is precisely in the case where carbohydrates are in every meal, it is necessary to control the portion size.

If you decide to lose weight according to the "you need to eat less" method, then no wise advice on the control of the size of the portion "by eye" will not be able to help you. Only a scrupulous calculation of calories can guarantee the result. And this is very, very difficult.

For example, you ate one apple. Its calorie content is 52 kcal / 100 grams. How many grams was your apple? And how many of these calories in an apple are represented by fiber, which is not absorbed and whose calorie content, as it were, should not be taken into account? You consumed 30 to 70 kcal. You have no more precise answer. And then you ate a baked apple. Its caloric content is 46 kcal / 100 grams. The difference seems to be minimal and insignificant. Here are just a baked apple loses liquid, and if earlier it was a 100 gram apple of 52 kcal, now it weighs 2 times less and its calorie content is 23 kcal. Feel how this counting starts to get annoying?

Weight Loss Serving Size

That is why, with a diet that involves counting calories, it is recommended to make a minimum list of the simplest foods and stick to it throughout the diet in order to clearly know how many calories you are consuming.

Let's say you have chosen buckwheat, chicken, tomatoes, eggs for your diet.

This means that in the next 2-3 months (or how long you are going to follow the diet), you will only eat these foods and only in one form. If you decide to boil eggs, then it will no longer be possible to fry them for a change. Because fried eggs will have a higher calorie content than boiled eggs (due to the fat). It's the same with chicken and other foods. Only one type of cooking - no deviations. Because your goal on a low-calorie diet is to find out how many calories you need to eat per day to start losing weight.

In the future, you will have to eat a certain amount of the selected products throughout the week, and at the end of it you will have to watch where the arrow of the scales has moved. If the increase or has not changed, then you need to reduce the portion size (for example, you ate 300 grams of chicken per day, and now you will need to cut it to 200). And, of course, all products must be weighed and calories counted. At some point, the weight will start to decrease - this will mean that you have found the calorie intake that you need in order to start losing weight. You will stick to it exactly until progress stops. And he will stop. After all, the smaller you get, the fewer calories your body needs.

But this, in fact, is a rather large topic, let me write a separate article on it so that I can highlight all the nuances.

As a result, for now I will say: it makes sense to control the portion size only when you have a clear idea of ​​why you are doing it. It makes no sense to reduce the size of the pasta portion if you are eating dumplings for lunch tomorrow. This is useless because there is no starting point from which to start counting the calories you need.

What time should you eat when losing weight

As time goes by, there is usually only one problem - dinner time. With breakfast and lunch, everything is more or less clear and depends on the work schedule. Breakfast - before work, there is a specially designated time for lunch. But with dinner, people have difficulties.

In some systems, it is not advised to eat after 6 pm, in others, no later than 2-3 hours before bedtime.

Personally, the second option is much closer to me. Because if I work until 5pm, how am I supposed to have dinner before 6pm? In the car on the way home? Or on the bus? And if I go to bed at one in the morning, how can I survive 5 hours without food?

But, as with all the previous points, the main point in all this will not be so much the time as the choice of products. If you decide not to eat after six, then subconsciously try to eat thoroughly so as not to go to bed at 12 at night with a sucking stomach. As a result, you will fill your stomach and walk around with a feeling of heaviness in it all evening.

Immediately before going to bed, you should not eat either. We must give time for the stomach to digest maximum amount food and sent it for further processing. This usually takes 2-3 hours.

But you can't go to bed hungry either. best idea... You will toss and turn for a long time, drink water to kill hunger, and then go to the toilet. Agree not The best way to spend the night.

See how many nuances there are? And I haven't told you about the choice of products yet.

What to eat before bed

Although it's easier with this:

• if you are on a low-calorie diet, then you need to immediately allocate the rate of calories per glass of kefir 30 minutes before bedtime (kefir "slips" quickly, the stomach does not digest it for a long time)
• if you are on a low-carb diet, then it is better to eat cheese or boiled eggs (without yolk) a couple of hours before bedtime. The amount should be such that you just bring down the feeling of hunger, and not overeat. You can't say more precisely here, because our organisms are too different to prescribe any one specific portion)
• if your diet is vegetable, then you can eat a couple of fresh cucumbers or carrots an hour before bed. Previously, it is not necessary, tk. vegetables are digested pretty quickly too.

Well, I kind of noted the main points. While writing this article, thoughts came to write articles about low calorie diet With detailed description the choice of products and about the importance of water for weight loss. So, drop by one of these days, I will write a couple more useful articles.

And for today I have everything. Thank you for your attention.

Hello my dear readers! I wrote this article under the impression of an interesting video. In it, a nutritionist explains how to eat better and how often. So, where is the truth - there are small portions 5-6 times a day. Or eat only 3 times (breakfast, lunch, dinner), but in a big way 🙂 Let's figure out together how often you need to eat.

Nutritionists say there is no single answer to this question. For most people, the optimal ratio of food is, of course, 5-6 meals a day. This approach implies:

• 2-3 full-fledged receptions (I mean the first, second and even a small dessert for lunch)
• 2-3 snacks (this can be a salad, a handful of nuts, sour milk).

But there are 20-30% of people for whom this amount of food is not suitable. These are people prone to overeating and food addiction.

Some people cannot bring themselves to eat a limited and distributed amount of food per day. For them, every meal is a torment and a struggle with themselves. Perhaps you are familiar with such thoughts - " I know that I need to eat less in order to lose weight (so that the sore does not pop out again). But I cannot stop. I'll take a small piece. I promise to eat only it ... and then no, no».

But they cannot stop. No wonder there is a harsh but fair term "food as a drug". For such people, every meal is accompanied by an excruciating struggle to stop in time. It is for this category of people that it is useful to eat 3 times a day..

What category should I classify myself into?

The ideal answer to this question can only be the person himself. You need to carefully analyze your diet and psycho-emotional state during the day. And assess how much they are related to food. If the mood is largely dependent on the number of meals. And sitting down at the table it is impossible to resist eating further and further. Most likely, food addiction makes itself felt.

Food addiction - obsessive consumption of food is not to satisfy hunger, but to improve mood, leading to health problems

To figure out which category you belong to, do an experiment over the course of a week:

1. measure your weight daily - it should become a habit;
2. experiment - eat 3 times one day (naturally, the food intake will be more in volume and calorie content). And the other day, try 6 meals a day.

And watch your condition. Then you can tell yourself which diet is right for you.

Yes, in modern world sometimes it is impossible to follow the rules of eating at the same time. There is no need to feel guilty about my eating wrong today. Better to learn to be flexible. And with understanding refers to life situations.

« Yes, I was busy today. Today I ate something tasty and healthy for my body 3 times. Tomorrow my day is not so busy and I can return to my usual diet.". Calm yourself down. If you start to blame yourself, then there will be more harm to the body.

What are the breaks to take between meals

For most people, a fasting break of more than 3-4 hours is undoubtedly harmful and leads to an eating disorder. After that, you can easily break loose and mindlessly eat everything, increasing the daily calorie intake several times.

Hunger break - break between meals - should not be longer than 6 hours

But, if you eat 3 times a day and this diet suits you, and the arrows on the scales show an adequate figure, then this is your diet. And then this hungry pause is of secondary importance. Because 3 meals a day, as I wrote above, is suitable for a small number of people. Which 5-6 meals a day is not suitable, because they eat as much as they can fit into each meal 🙂

If you have a snack with fast carbohydrates, such as a chocolate bar or some kind of dessert. That fast carbohydrates in 20-30 minutes they will lead to hunger. This is a simple physiological mechanism. After consuming fast carbohydrates, sugar enters the blood as quickly as possible. Accordingly, the pancreas is forced to release insulin in large quantities. It allows you to remove glucose from the blood and send it to the right places(muscles, liver, etc.).

But, on the other hand, the rapid release of insulin leads to the fact that glucose begins to abruptly leave the blood. And the absence of glucose in the blood many people call one understandable and scary word "zhor". That is why if a snack consists of only one chocolate bar, sweets, sweet dried fruits, which are 100% glucose, there is a great risk that you will aggravate your hunger. And literally in 20-30 minutes you will want to chew on something else.

This will not lead to anything good. And, especially if you are losing weight, then fast carbohydrates (sweets, etc.) should always be consumed after a full varied meal. Where there are vegetables, fruits, side dishes, meat or fish.

Serving size

The daily calorie content of the average person is from 1500 to 3000 kcal. They need to be obtained from meat, cereals, vegetables and fruits. Servings can be large but low in calories.

Eating implies the well-known plate rule: 25% meat, 25% side dish and 50% vegetables and fruits

There are many principles of nutrition - the rule of "palm" or no more than 200 grams at a time, and so on. Some people start to follow them. The main thing to remember is that any rule must meet the most important criterion: “ Enforced for the rest of your life and was as less restrictive as possible". Therefore, do not seek to set yourself rigid prohibitions and restrictions. You will not be able to keep all of them always and you will surely "fall out". Learn to feel and be flexible in your diet.

Is it harmful to eat once a day

Throughout human evolution, our digestive tract is not adapted to a single meal. Yes, there are many examples in wildlife where such food is acceptable. But this is definitely not applicable to humans.

Therefore, remember that one meal during the day will bring you health problems. A mechanism will work in our body according to the principle "where it is thin, there it breaks." Someone has it overweight, others - indigestion, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, cardiovascular and many others. This is guaranteed. Therefore, you need to eat regularly.

Remember, our body is given to us once. Refuel it regularly

It is often written on the Internet that in prehistoric times it was not possible to adhere to such a fractional nutritional system. So they filled up a mammoth, they piled up to the dump. And then they sat on the branches and waited for the next hunt. This is the famous theory of the obesity gene. Which says that people, starting from the primitive communal system, survived those who had a tendency to store energy. Since food was rare enough. And in fact, they slapped the mammoth once, it was necessary to eat it, put it in the sides. Because it is not known whether next time you will be lucky to find a mammoth ... or everyone has already been devoured 🙂
But in Lately, there was another authoritative theory that arose in the study of the life of Australian aborigines. They still lead a primitive communal lifestyle. According to her, throughout the history of mankind, people survived who do not have the obesity gene. And they do not tend to store energy in the form of body fat. In prehistoric times, people with greater weight moved worse and could not escape from predators. Simply, they were eaten first.