Why Eating Several Meals A Day (Grazing) Is Good

You may have heard that grazing, in other words eating between meals, is a bad thing and should be avoided.

You might also have heard that instead you should eat 3 square meals a day and not have anything in between.

Well this could well be a good thing, if compared to the way many people eat. This is generally to have at least 3 large, fatty meals a day, snack in between, and wash them down with lots of sugary drinks, which provides too many calories and is particularly bad if you have a sedentary, inactive lifestyle.

Or the other way most many people eat, is to skip breakfast and lunch altogether and have one big meal at the end of the day, which actually promotes fat storage and a constant feeling of low mood and low energy levels.

So what's the alternative?

Well as is often the case, the best way is to do thing you've always been told not to. In other words the best diet to have is one where you're grazing throughout the day. This is the way your body is designed to eat and to explain why I'm going to take you back to a day in the life of your ancestors.

Imagine you lived a couple of hundred thousand years ago and it's an average day.

It's warm, it's sunny, and if the concept of time had been invented it would be about 7 a.m. Wednesday morning. You slept under the stars and then woke as the sun rose, relieved to learn that all 50 members of the close and extended family that make up your tribe are safe. They all survived the night without incident and they are all fit and healthy.

They're all very hungry too.

Yesterday you found trees bearing enough fruit to feed everyone, but now that's all gone so you and your tribe are going to need to look elsewhere for the day's calories. Some of them will stay behind to take care of the children, some of them will go hunting for meat, and some of them, including you, will go hunting for whatever you can find.

You set off towards the hills, on your way passing several bushes that bear a handful of berries which, although not much, is your first meal of the day and enough to dampen your hunger a little.

About an hour later, when amongst the trees, you notice a scattering of seeds and look up to see several branches that hold enough nuts and seeds to provide a decent meal. And there's even some left over to take with you.

After a brief rest you continue on towards the hills, collecting more berries and seeds as you go and eating whenever you get hungry. This isn't too often though, because berries provide a natural, quick, sugary boost, while the seeds give a slower, more constant energy source, along with some protein.

A couple of hours later, when you return to your tribe, you bring with you enough fruit, seeds, nuts, and vegetables to feed everyone, plus one of your cousins managed to make a kill so meat is on the menu tonight.

With your workday over you can spend the rest of the time socializing, telling stories, napping, and snacking on low- calorie, high-GI foods.

Not that you were counting, but by the time the sun sets and you settle down to sleep, you've probably had about 10 meals since you woke up. If you were to work out your Body Mass Index it would comfortably put you in the ideal range, and with all the walking and climbing trees you're slim, toned, happy, and full of energy.

So what's any of this got to do with now?

Well if you remember what I said earlier about the way most people eat today, the diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors is very, very different. In the past we ate several, natural, organic, unprocessed meals throughout the day, not one big meal at the end of it. Plus each meal was rarely more than 200-300 calories each and took time to digest, unlike the processed food constantly in the stomach of someone who eats large meals all day AND snacks on chocolate and sugary drinks. This way is a little closer to what our body wants and expects, but there is another factor that spoils it.

If our ancestors were walking, climbing, gathering, and hunting every day, they would not only be fit, they would have a fast metabolism and require a relatively large amount of calories.

In contrast, today we're driving, taking the elevator, gathering from fast-food restaurants or supermarkets, and sitting every day, which means metabolisms are slow and require a relatively low amount of calories. In other words, the more meals eaten each day the better, as long as the total calorie needs of the individual are not exceeded.

So if you need 2000 calories a day, 10 meals a day would mean each was 200 calories.

Now this might not be practical for you if you work and have a boss who wouldn't be too happy if you stopped every 90 minutes to eat, so instead try aiming for 5 meals a day. This would mean about 300 calories about every 3 hours, assuming you require 2000 calories a day.

Now at this point you might be wondering what the eating habits of a couple of hundred thousand years ago has to do with right now, when our bodies change, adapt, and evolve all the time. Well yes they do, but very, very slowly.

It can take up to 100,000 years for this to happen, but it's only about 10,000 years ago that we began to change from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to something more like the one we have now. That means our bodies, and our brains, are still expecting several small meals throughout an active day, not one great big meal at the end of a day spent sitting at a desk.

By making this one change to your diet, by grazing up to your required calorie needs, you'll find that you'll have more energy, a better mood, AND a happier body.