How many people do you know who spend hours at the gym, but complain that they just can’t seem to shed excess fat? I bet a lot of these people have failed to examine their eating habits. Like Craig Ballantyne says, you can’t out-cardio a bad diet. Maybe they eat healthy foods, but do they eat enough and at the right times?
Believe it or not, skipping breakfast could be the number one saboteur of your weight loss program.
Not Hungry? Eat Anyway.
Only 44 percent of Americans eat breakfast, Joe Kita reported in last month’s Reader’s Digest. (And, of those 44% of breakfasters, how many get it at “Mickey D’s”?)
A lot of people skip breakfast and maybe even lunch because they don’t get hungry in the A.M. Then, for that big end-of-day dinner (bad time to chow down, by the way), they devour two plates of food because “they haven’t eaten anything all day.”
It’s a vicious cycle: eat late at night and you won’t be hungry in the morning. Skip breakfast and your metabolism will slow down. Not hungry at lunchtime… and you’ll eat a big dinner.
While it’s important to listen to your body’s hunger cues—and not eat when you don’t feel hungry—you can reprogram your body to be hungry at optimum times. If you eat smaller meals more frequently, you’ll speed up your metabolism. So break the cycle by gradually eating a little more for breakfast each day. Or gradually eat a little less for dinner:
“If you eat less at night, you’ll wake up hungrier and eat a bigger breakfast,” Kita offers. “As a general fat-fighting rule, try to get the bulk of your daily calories at breakfast and lunch.”
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