The Truth About Metabolism
There is a popular misconception that metabolism requires constant meals every 2 ½ to 3 hours or it will shut down. This doesn’t make any sense because your metabolism has nothing to do with the frequency of meals.
Here are a few of the theories that support the notion of frequent meals for increased metabolism:
Theory #1: If you go too long without eating a meal your body will go into “starvation mode” burning fewer calories and storing fat out of fear that the next meal is too far away. During a famine, you would need to live off of stored fat. This is true. It is actually an excellent system for making your body more efficient at burning fat.But you really don’t want this efficiency if you want to burn fat. You want your body to burn and burn away without any thought for self-preservation. If you really want to lose weight, you need to eat every 2 ½ to 3 hours or else your body will switch to “starvation mode”.
The Truth: It’s true, your body does go into “starvation mode”. But it takes about 3 days of fasting to reach that point. If you go 4 hours between meals, you’re nowhere near the point when your body goes into “starvation mode”. You can rest easy knowing that meals that are spread out by more than 3 hours are not going to make your metabolism slow down.
Theory #2: The “Thermic Effect” of food. This is the energy that your body expends converting food energy into energy that your body can actually use. For instance, if you eat something that contains 400 calories, your body may use 40 calories to convert that into usable energy, leaving you with only 360 calories that could actually be translated into fat. This has led to the notion that if your body is constantly in the process of burning food, it will always be burning calories.
Yes, there is a “Thermic Effect” of food, but it isn’t at all related to how often you eat it. It doesn’t make any difference if you spread it out throughout the day or eat it all at once, your body will require the same percentage of calories to convert your food into usable energy in either case. So the idea that the thermic effect is somehow more effective when spread out throughout the day is fatally flawed.
There is nothing wrong with eating small meals throughout the day. Some people prefer this system because it helps them to make better dietary choices throughout the day. But don’t buy into the myth that if you go 4 or even 12 hours between meals, somehow your metabolism is less effective. This just isn’t true.
If you want to feel the true process of thermogenesis in order to burn fat, you should try a thermogenic or lipotropic fat burner. Thermogenic fat burners will increase your metabolism and help you burn fat faster, even while you sleep. Lipotropic Fat Burners increase your body’s metabolism to burn fat too, and also aid you in removing or transporting fat out of your body. Lipotropics are substances that prevent an abnormal accumulation of fat in the liver.
Don’t buy into the faulty information about metabolism that is circulating. Choose a plan for meal frequency that works best for you, and look for the true boosted metabolism effect in supplement fat burners.
