Worried about maintaining weight loss, or about gaining weight, over the holidays?
Remember that our bodies know what to do with food, as long as what we are eating is recognized by the body as food. Focus on whole, unprocessed, naturally occurring food, and remember to continue to send the signal to your brain that starvation is not imminent.
Our bodies respond to the signals we send them. Those signals tell it whether or not it might be a good idea to store fat, ramp up appetite, or slow down metabolism. One of the quickest ways to send the signal that fat storage is a good idea is to eat too little or to eat at the wrong times. This is especially true if you have a history of calorie restriction, dieting, or undereating. And most especially if you have experienced food scarcity.
If those things are true for you, one of the most powerful habits you can build is to eat three meals a day. At meal times. Focus on eating breakfast during what can be considered the morning, lunch in the middle of your day, and dinner at least four hours before bedtime. Eliminating snacking in between, or eating between dinner and breakfast will also help balance hormones that regulate appetite.
Here are some guidelines on how to do that, from my book, The Daily Hearth.
Three Meals a Day with Three Check-ins, and Drink Some Coffee
The foundational habit for this program is three meals a day and three check-ins.
Those three meals must consist of
1. A protein source (preferably high quality) and
2. Fat.
As we are able, we eliminate eating between meals, or at least we reduce the number of times we eat each day.
The three check-ins are three mini-breaks, where we relax, check in with ourselves, and take care of our needs at the moment. We can do this right before mealtime, or whenever works best.
Coffee in the morning with breakfast. Helps control blood sugar. Coffee can help curb our appetite, and also protect health in other ways. Focus on coffee in the morning, and eliminate all caffeine later in the day to protect sleep. But please be aware that this does not mean coffee drinks. Cream, sugar, flavored syrups, and other additives erase the benefits of coffee. Plain black coffee, or coffee with a tablespoon of cream with zero sugar is what is called for here. Coffee drinks from the coffee shop are milkshakes. Brew some coffee at home, and enjoy the pleasure of plain coffee in the morning.
The three meals are breakfast, lunch, and dinner. On the very dawn of creation, human beings woke up and had breakfast. Three meals a day is the basic meal structure of every civilization and culture.
And you know what? People of yore did not have doctors and experts to refer to, so they had to figure out what worked on their own. They passed information on about what worked and what didn't to their children and then their children’s children. And three meals a day was the advice that stood the test of time.
Your brain expects you to organize your life around the sun. It prepares for food when your eyes see daylight. When your eyes start to see dark, it shuts down digestion, because it expects that you will not be eating at night, and wants to use the digestion energy for other things.
In short, our bodies are designed to eat three meals a day in the daytime. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at times normally associated with these meals: Morning, Noon, and early evening.
Treat your meal times, or at least one of your meal times, as if they are sacred. They have been treated as such for eons for a reason. Eat at about the same time each day, as you are able. Make time to sit for at least five minutes in the morning and eat a high-protein breakfast with some fat on it. Maybe add in a piece of fruit, or toast, as you see fit. Drink some coffee.
Drink water, green tea, herbal tea, or water with lemon juice and electrolytes in it for the rest of the day.
Eat a lunch with more protein, think 3-7 ounces, more fat, and maybe some vegetables or fruit. Maybe some nuts. Whatever works for you. Lunch should be at least four to five hours after breakfast.
Eat dinner with protein, and fat, at least five hours after lunch, and a few hours before you go to bed. As you are able, try to eat more of your food in the morning and at lunch, and less after 3pm, or during the later part of the day.
If you are in the habit of eating between meals or grazing all day, first work towards not eating after dinner. Having a long time between meals aids digestion, resets leptin sensitivity, and allows ghrelin to work as it should. It also allows our insulin levels to fall, and so helps to reset or protect insulin sensitivity.
We also incorporate three check-ins. During a check-in, we take a deep breath and notice our immediate surroundings: the furniture we might be sitting in, the temperature of the room, and how we are feeling. We relax any muscles we might be tensing and think about what we might need. A sweater? A drink of water? Getting up and walking around? A chat with a friend? To go to the bathroom? We see what we can do to take care of our needs and do so. If we can’t, we just make a note and try to take care of ourselves when we are able. It might make sense to link your check-ins with your meals. Just “check in'' with yourself, relax, and take some deep breaths. See how you're feeling, if you need anything, and what you can do about it.
How do three meals a day help us control our weight? First, we are taking care of our body's physical need to be nourished. We are allowing our brain to know that food is plentiful, and we will be eating regularly.
We are also, through our check-ins, taking care of ourselves. Many of the people who have been through this program reported that at check-ins, they realize how thirsty they have been. They notice that they have to use the bathroom. Or that they are feeling foggy and need to go for a little walk or get up and stretch. Check-ins not only make us more aware of how we are feeling in the present, but they stop cortisol from rising because when we ignore the fact that we need some water and have to pee, our brain thinks that that is because we are in a stressful situation, and so it tries to help us out by pumping in the cortisol.
Eating three meals a day, at meal times with coffee in the morning.
This keeps our appetite from being dysregulated by:
Satiating the appetite by having enough amino acids in our bloodstream. Our brains need a certain amount of protein each day. When we have not hit the minimal level of protein we need to keep ourselves functioning and our brain working, our brains will not shut off our appetite, no matter how much we eat. Making sure we eat high-quality protein three times a day allows our brains to stop prompting us to eat in the hope that we’ll eat more protein.
Allowing Ghrelin to do its job. Ghrelin makes us feel hungry, and it builds up the longer we go without food. Then, once we start eating, it drops. That drop in ghrelin creates a feeling of satiety and satisfaction with our meals, and so, makes us less likely to want to continue eating once the meal is over.
Balancing leptin levels. Low leptin levels make us feel hungry, and tell our bodies to stop burning fat. Higher leptin levels shut off our appetite, and turn on our fat-burning. However, once leptin levels get too high, our brains stop listening to it. We stay hungry and out of fat-burning mode, even when we eat. Allowing time between meals allows leptin levels to reset, so we can once again respond to the leptin as we eat.
Stops NPY, a hunger hormone, from being released. NPY is an “emergency” neuropeptide that our bodies release when nutrients are too low, we are too tired or run down, or too exhausted or too stressed. NPY is like the hibernation preparation chemical: it makes us want to eat everything and anything, especially high-calorie food, and it also makes us feel tired and want to rest. By eating regularly, we keep NPY at bay.
Three meals a day supports our metabolism:
Prevents Starvation Mode: eating regularly allows our metabolism to regulate and prevents our bodies from going into starvation mode during which we feel tired,and hungry, and cannot burn fat.
Allows our bodies to burn fat, as leptin levels regulate, and NPY won’t prevent fat burning and also helps to control insulin levels. The time between meals also allows our bodies to reach the point where they can release glucagon, the hormone that prompts fat burning and also shuts off our appetite.
Supports muscle mass, our bodies’ access to essential nutrients is of utmost importance. If we don’t eat enough protein regularly, we will digest our own muscles. Lean body mass can burn fat even while we are at rest, so building it and protecting it is essential.
Allows time for glucagon to regulate fat metabolism. When we eat, insulin is released. Insulin’s job is to get glucose out of our bloodstream. When insulin is present, we cannot burn fat. As insulin levels drop between meals, our bodies release glucagon, which allows us to burn fat for energy when we need it. Time between meals is as essential as eating our three meals.
Supports insulin sensitivity and Leptin sensitivity Insulin shuts off fat burning, and Leptin allows fat burning. They both rise after eating, insulin especially rises when we eat carbohydrates. When these hormones are consistently too high due to overeating, we become insensitive to them, and so do not feel the hungry suppression of leptin, and our muscles don’t feel the energy boost from insulin. Time between meals, especially between dinner and breakfast, allows insulin and leptin levels to lower, and helps us regain our sensitivity to feeling satiated.
Three meals a day reduces our feelings of motivation and reward around food by:
Reducing feelings of hunger. Not allowing us to get so hungry, we are prompted to binge or have intrusive thoughts about food. Eating too little food, especially too little high-nutrient foods causes our brains to think we are in danger of starving to death. Certain nutrients are absolutely vital to our survival, and our brains will not shut off hunger until we get them. If we go long enough without eating enough, our brains will send out NPY which can cause binge eating in some people and causes overeating in everyone. It is well-documented that people who eat too little become preoccupied with food. Allowing ourselves to eat at regular, consistent intervals, foods that our bodies need allows us to remove food as a primary area of focus.
Sends our brain the message that we will be eating regularly, and so it does not have to be on high alert around food to prevent starvation. Our brains have a reward loop in them. When we are feeling an uncomfortable feeling, and then do something that makes that feeling better, our brains wire that behavior into our system by giving us a feeling of reward and pleasure. This ensures that we will repeat that behavior. When we go a long time without eating, get too hungry, and then eat, we are wiring food into our brains as a source of pleasure, comfort, and relief. For some of us, food can become the primary source of these positive feelings. Eating regularly helps to reduce the feelings of “being saved by food” so that we can teach our brain to get those feelings from non-food things.
Our Daily Hearth also includes three daily Check-ins. These check-ins support our weight goals.
Check-ins support a regulated appetite by teaching us to notice our stress and our current needs. This works to eliminate our brains’ tendency under stress to confuse other emotions or feelings with hunger.
Check-ins support our metabolism, by reducing feelings of exhaustion and depletion. When our needs are regularly getting met, and we get even these short breaks during the day, we do not become as depleted, and our metabolism does not feel it needs to save us by slowing down
Check-ins reduce our feelings of motivation towards and reward from food because we are getting our needs met in other ways, and stress is reduced. When our stress levels are lower, our minds can focus on things beyond survival.
