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Should I eat when I'm hungry?
I think I'm suffering from information overload. In one article I read it says don't eat until you're hungry; in another it says if you don't eat enough you won't metabolise your food fast enough to lose weight. All this information is giving me a headache. At times I notice that I am simply eating because it's breakfast time or because it's lunchtime even though I am not really hungry. I've been doing this because I've read you shouldn't skip meals. What is the correct answer?
Regarding eating and the spacing of meals (or snacks), the basic concept is this: You want to keep your blood sugar even throughout the day so you don't have high peaks and low valleys of energy. Generally, you shouldn't go too long without eating because your body goes into a kind of "starvation" mode—it reacts as if it doesn’t know when the next meal will be, so it stores fat, and your metabolism slows down to make those few calories last as long as possible. Also, when you go a long time without eating you generally will wolf down the first thing that’s put in front of you. Go for seven hours without food, and most people will eat the basket that the bread comes in. For that reason alone it's not advisable to skip meals.
On the other hand, many people don't learn to respond to their body's internal cues and instead eat just because it's mealtime and there's food in front of them. In the ideal situation, you want to eat small meals frequently (every three to four hours) throughout the day. This will keep you from being too full and tired, from eating more calories than you can use, and from being on a blood-sugar roller coaster.
So the real answer is to listen to your body, eat when you are hungry and not go for more than four hours without food. For most people that means eating three meals and having a couple of nutritious snacks during the day.
Why not chat to other iVillagers about healthy foods on the Eating For Health message board. Take a look at some of the LIVE discussions happening now on the board:
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