Are you still stuck in the three-meals-a-day mindset? You’re not alone. Many people get hung up on the misconception that eating anything beyond their allotted three meals per day constitutes a failure of dietary willpower. But while it’s true that eating empty-calorie snack foods between meals is no recipe for health, limiting yourself to the traditional breakfast-lunch-dinner feeding format may not be doing you any favors, either.
So try this: Forget between-meal snacking. Forget three squares a day. Your new recipe for healthy eating: Six is better than three.
It sounds like a contradiction, but with a focus on diversity and proper portion size, eating six mini meals instead of three large meals each day will add variety to your diet and can help you feel fuller and be healthier overall.
Ditch the Word “Snack”
Your first step in eating six diverse meals is to kick the word “snack” out of your vocabulary. It often conjures up images of low-nutrition or high-fat items such as chips, pretzels, or ice cream. These types of snacks won’t help you lose weight or make your diet any more diverse.
Your second step is to focus on size. Doubling your number of meals shouldn’t double the food you eat each day. Instead, your three big meals become six mini meals. You should continue to take in roughly the same number of calories each day, assuming you are not currently overeating.
Finally, make each mini meal an opportunity to vary and balance your diet to include the proper amount of protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats as well as important vitamins and minerals.
More Is Less
The health bonuses of eating more meals are varied. Studies show that people who eat more meals tend to eat a greater variety of foods and are more likely to meet their daily nutritional needs.
Eating frequently may also help control your appetite, which in turn could help you control your weight. And by breaking up your three big meals into six smaller meals spaced evenly throughout the day, you may also lower your blood cholesterol and your risk of heart disease.
Don’t Space Out
With three squares a day, meals tend to be too far apart, which allows blood sugar levels to drop down low. When this happens, the urge to reach for unhealthful snacks in order to satisfy cravings can get you into trouble.
Grabbing a quick high-carbohydrate snack may bring your blood sugar level up quickly, but most likely too quickly, after which it could simply crash once again, leaving you searching for your next food fix.
Eating many small meals throughout the day — as long as the meals are balanced — can help stabilize your blood sugar, so you don’t get energy highs and lows.
The key to the mini-meal approach is to pack your meals with enough nutritional punch and fiber to sustain yourself without adding a lot of unnecessary saturated fat and calories.
Choose Foods Your Body Can Use
To keep your blood glucose levels steady throughout the day, focus on foods that will increase blood sugar levels slowly and stably. Try to include a fiber-rich item, a protein-rich item, or a bit of healthy unsaturated fat in every mini-meal in order to sustain your energy over a longer period of time. These kinds of food items digest more slowly and raise blood sugar levels more steadily.
Also, keep your focus on diversity with each mini-meal. While you balance your intake of lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats throughout the day, your goal should be to enjoy a number of different items from each food group.
If your morning meal contained protein-rich dairy, get your protein from another source in the afternoon. Try lean meats such as canned tuna, or vegetable sources such as soymilk, almonds, or red beans. If the fiber-rich carbohydrate in your midday meal was whole-wheat bread, get your next fiber fix from a piece of fruit. Fruits high in fiber include figs, dates, raspberries, raisins, and kiwifruit.
Dynamic Dietary Duos
Your mini-meals will be more diverse if you try to include items from at least two food groups in every meal. Serving at least one fruit or a vegetable in each mini-meal not only ensures variety but also helps you meet your RealAge Optimum of four fruit and five vegetable servings a day. Avoid mini-meals that contain only a single kind of food.
Pairing certain foods can help maximize the benefits of the six-meal lifestyle. Here are a few examples of great pairings:
Healthy Eating Redefined
Eating smaller, more frequent meals is a great way to increase your opportunities to meet nutritional gaps in your daily diet. Mini meals that incorporate whole-grain foods, colorful vegetables and fruit, lean fish or poultry, low-fat dairy, and unsaturated fats not only will help to stabilize your blood sugar levels but also could help reduce your risk of several diseases, from heart disease and hypertension to diabetes and certain cancers. Saying goodbye to snacks and three squares a day never sounded sweeter.
