Losing Weight and Feeling Great

Posts Tagged ‘3 hour diet’

Eat more and lose weight.  We keep hearing it, but is it really real?  What’s the difference between eating the same amount of calories in one meal versus 3 or even 6 meals?  Does it really make a difference?

One Meal, One Snack

Have you ever done this to lose weight?  Have just coffee for breakfast, a soda for lunch, intending to cut out all those calories and just have dinner?  Yeah, me too.

But have you also had this happen:  about 2 or 3 in the afternoon you get soooo hungry that you have to have a nibble of something — a snack.  That snack turns into grazing, and by the time dinner comes, you’re not hungry.  Ahh, then about 8 or 9 PM you get hungry again.  You didn’t eat dinner, so why not have a snack.  And that snack turns into a binge.  Argh!

Enter the Mini-Meal

In the latest cycle of dieting, eat more and lose weight has been the battle cry.  But does it work?  If so, how?

The idea is that whenever you eat, your body has to rev up its metabolism sightly, in order to digest the food.  With small, frequent meals, your body has a chance to finish burning up one meal, then it’s time for another.

The book
The 3-Hour Diet (TM): How Low-Carb Diets Make You Fat and Timing Makes You Thin
talks about this subject, and insists that small, balanced, frequent meals are the ticket to losing the weight and keeping it off.  It’s not counting calories or cutting carbs or anything like that. 

For myself, eating 5 or 6 times a day helps me to lose the weight, because I don’t get ravenously hungry, so I’m more likely to eat sensibly.

What’s also nice is that I can eat a little more and still lose the weight, eating several small meals a day.  Not a ton more, but on 1,300-1,400 I can lose 1 to 2 pounds a week.  (In my book, that’s better than 3 meals a day and 1.200 calories.)

More Info on How to Eat More and Lose Weight

I found an article you might enjoy on SparkPeople, about this very subject.  Hopefully you’ll find it both interesting and informative.  Click here to check out the article.

Eat more and lose weight — for us all!

The 3 Hour Diet by Jorge Cruise is rather interesting.  In a nutshell:  eat pretty much anything you want, but at three-hour intervals.  (Yes, there is more to it, but that’s the nutshell version.)

Mr. Cruise is (or at least was) the AOL Weight Loss Coach.  What he came up with is a way to keep your metabolism running at full strength by eating smaller meals every 3 hours.  And yes, it does have to be exactly every three hours, give or take 5 minutes.

On the 3 Hour Diet, you don’t count calories for meals or worry about what you are eating.  Although you do care about the amount (it isn’t license to stuff yourself silly every three hours), the "what" is left up to you.  With a few guidelines.

Every meal should include proteins, carbs, fats and a fruit or a vegetable.  Page 87 of the book has a picture that gives you a very good idea of the size of the portions — and how to easily judge them by using everyday objects.

Your snacks should be around 100 calories each for the morning and mid-afternoon, and about 50 for your before-bed munchie.

Overall it’s a pretty decent diet program, but I do have one or two minor concerns.  At one point, Mr. Cuise mentions that you can grab whatever is on hand for a snack, and mentions a candy bar.  Any sugar like what’s found in your average candy bar will send your blood sugar through the roof!  Suggesting some almonds or even peanuts for an emergency snack from a vending machine would have been better said.

The other concern is that you do have to eat every three hours, on the dot.  Now if your schedule allows that, this may indeed be the diet for you.  For most of us, 3 hours on the nose is tough (although if you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way).

Anyway, The 3-Hour Diet is an interesting book, and worth reading.  And as I said before — if your schedule permits, this might be a good diet program for you.