Do you know about the 6 meals a day diet? Actually, there isn't a single diet that recommends 5-6 meals/day {usually three meals, two daily snacks & dessert at night}. One eBook I received insisted that every half hour was critical! Whew, that's a lot of chow.
The rationale for all this eating is that frequent meals keep our metabolism stoked. And perhaps that is true. But what if I'm not hungry? Does it make sense to shove food down our throats when we don't want to eat? What about the signals from our bodies?
As an experiment, I decided not to eat until I am truly, really, genuinely hungry. Its been approximately 18 hours since my last meal and Im just now starting to get those hunger pangs that mean I need food so when I finish this entry I'm heading off to eat.
But the important question is ... who or what can I trust?
a) Some diet guru in a book?
b) My own body?
We have been taught - yes, taught - to distrust our own biological signals. Watch small children who haven't been corrupted by all kinds of ideas and notions about our bodies. They respond with total trust to their biological messages - unless they're so busy playing they don't want to quit.
After all, we weren't born with an eating problem. In fact, it's possible that the entire multi-billion diet industry would collapse almost overnight it we learned to simply trust the cues of our body, which surely ought to know when it needs fuel. Perhaps the entire answer to overweight is as simple as becoming reacquainted with ourselves. And as for the 6 meals a day diet ... if it feels good to you and your body, do it; if it feels awful (me!), then forget it!
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