It’s a well researched winning rule, easy to follow: eat smaller amounts throughout the day.
Are You in a Dangerous Relationship With Food?
The First Reason for eating a smaller amount has to do with the fact that the most energy consuming function your body probably ever does is digesting food. Even more than exercise, respiration, circulation, thinking, etc. You can walk for a much longer period of time, conserve more energy and travel farther if you “pace yourself.” The same holds true for the energy demands of digestion. Why does it take so much energy to digest food? The first step has to do with creating acid in the stomach. In order to digest food, the stomach has to have a chemical makeup that is very acidic. But, to be compatible with life, your body must stay alkaline, a different chemical composition. Maintaining the chemical balance between the stomach acid and the body alkalinity takes alot of chemical energy. In addition, energy is required to produce huge amounts of digestive enzymes for carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Since each and every enzyme must be made by your body from scratch, it takes a lot of chemical energy to make these proteins. If you pace yourself, you can eat a small amount without stressing your energy supply. Just as the electric company can supply plenty of power for everyone as long as we don’t turn on all of our appliances at once. The “brown outs” of summer we sometimes experience occurs when too many people turn on their air conditioner. Eating small meals conserves energy. Give your energy generator a chance to keep up with digestion by not overwhelming it when you eat a large meal. Avoid overwhelming your body with too much to do at one time. If you don’t digest your food – indigestion, yeast overgrowth, gas, inflammation, food reactions, etc. are the result.
The Second Reason for eating smaller amounts more frequently has to do with fact that if you take in too many calories from ingested food, you have to do something with them. Your body has to process the food into energy for immediate use or for storage. If you don’t burn up the calories, guess where the extra metabolic products go? Fat. Fat is the bank your body uses when it can’t use all the calories you consume. So if you can eat a fewer number calories at a time, your body has a chance to use more of them up without having extra leftover to store on your hips, thighs, and waistline.
The Third Reason for eating smaller meals is to provide a steady amount of sugar. Eating frequent smaller meals prevents the ups and downs of your blood sugar level so you end up craving less sugar. As mentioned earlier, you can overwhelm your digestive capacity. You can also overwhelm your body’s ability to handle sugar in the blood. Since the body will not (or should not) allow the blood sugar level to get too high, insulin and other hormones are secreted to lower the blood sugar. Often times, the insulin response is too strong and within a short period of time insulin has driven the blood sugar level down. As a result of the now low blood sugar, you get a powerful craving for sugar or other carbohydrates. You then usually overeat, and the cycle of up and down, yo-yo blood sugar results. Eating a small meal again will virtually stop this cycle.
The Fourth Reason to eat smaller meals is based on the immune response to ingested food. It turns out that a small amount of food enters the blood without first going through the normal digestive pathway through the liver. As a result, this food is seen by the body not as nourishment but as a threat and you will stimulate an immune reaction. Normally, a small immune reaction is not even noticed, but if a large amount of food (or if a food is eaten over and over again), the immune reaction can cause symptoms. Over time, disease develops. If I came to your home and entered uninvited through an open window, you would react much differently than if I entered through the front door after properly introducing myself. The same holds true for food that enters your body undigested. It is not nourishing. It is just an intruder. By eating smaller amount, the size of the reaction that occurs is small and inconsequential. A large meal, and thus a large assault of the immune system, could cause many symptoms of an activated immune system including fatigue, joint aches, flu-like symptoms, headaches, etc.
The Fifth Reason is so simple, that I hate to even mention it – you’ll feel better! One way that you can make it easier on your system is to use a digestive enzyme. We have several excellent products that make your body work a little less harder (so you have more energy for activities other than digestion!). Digestive enzymes reduce undigested food levels and the chance of stimulating an immune reaction, and help you get more energy out of your food.