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Skipping meals to lose weight
When I started as a personal trainer 25 years ago, the conventional wisdom was very definite about not skipping meals. The most important meal of course was breakfast. If you follow the most current information, this is no longer a given. Many nutritional authorities assert that skipping breakfast may have benefits.
The concept of intermittent fasting is simple. If you eat dinner at six or seven and skip breakfast, you add another four to six hours that the body is without food. After food is digested, it is converted to glycogen which is easily converted to energy. Once this fuel is depleted, the body needs to convert fat into energy.
The old idea of six small meals made sense because something called the thermic effect of food. This means after you eat food the metabolism is boosted by 10% to convert that food to energy. If you eat 300 calories you burn 30 calories to digest it.
If you eat 1000 calories you burn 100 calories. If you eat three meals of 333 calories you still burn the same amount, but you continue to replenish your glycogen. The body never needs to burn fat reserves.
I don’t recommend skipping more than one meal a day, but you may want to try eating a late breakfast and an early dinner or just skip breakfast and eat the same lunch and dinner. This might be the tip that helps you eat less and lose weight.
Put “losing weight” on your holiday wish list.
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I’m Derick Rotunno and I would be happy to discuss how we can help you.
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