Eating Small Meals A Day – My Second Breakfast Trap

How many meals a day do you eat?  The reason I ask is that I’ve been slipping a bit with my eating habits.

There was a scene in Fellowship Of The Ring where Pippin mourns the fact that Aragorn may not know about “second breakfast.”  Some of my friends at work and I used to joke about having second breakfast.  I started my day with a good-sized breakfast at 6:30, then about 9:30am, we headed back to the snack machine where I would down a 20-ounce soda and a bag of peanut M&M’s.  If I was really hungry, I might go for a Snicker’s bar as well.  For some reason, I’ve always been compelled to drink soda with chocolate.

What Is “Second Breakfast” Anyway?

Turns out there’s some actual history here.  In the Lord of The Rings, Tolkien referenced the fact that growing hobbits need to eat seven meals a day.  I think most Americans chuckled at this thought.  I know I did.  In many parts of the world though, “second breakfast” is quite common.  In the United Kingdom, it’s known as elevenses – a mid-morning snack that usually consists of a biscuit and tea.  This “mini meal” is also referenced in Winnie the Pooh, where he would have a snack of honey and bread.  It’s also common in many Spanish and Polish cultures.

Weight loss experts have been saying for years now that eating frequent “mini meals” provides better regulation of many bodily processes (i.e. blood sugar), so I find it intriguing to learn that this practice has been the norm in many cultures for a long, long time.  It flies in the face of the American tradition of “three square meals a day,” and not just with adults.  Even the daily schedule in schools is not accommodating to grabbing hunger-busting low calories snacks.

You can make a counter-argument from a parenting perspective.  There is evidence to suggest families that have “sit-down” dinners together tend to be closer.  Research also indicates that when families have “sit down” dinners together, the children tend to have better grades.  This has been referenced by religious groups as a simple daily routine to build stronger families.  I do think this is important, although I believe it has more to do with time spent communicating, rather than the act of eating.  Having said that, we do have “sit down” dinners in our household, but I try to keep my portions smaller these days.

What can we learn from hobbits?

Did you notice that the hobbits were small?  It’s rather humorous that the race that loved their alcohol and food with such abandon was the smallest.  Of course, if eating frequent small meals does help control weight better, then I guess it would make sense.  So, how many meals a day should you eat?

I’ve seen suggestions as high as six or even seven small meals a day.  The key phrase here being, of course, small meals.  I prefer to go with the model of five though.  Getting above that makes it difficult to keep the calorie content of each meal low enough to manage my total calorie consumption.  Back when I first started making better food choices, it took me a long time to figure that out that part.  Unfortunately, I’ve started slipping back toward the dark side.  (Sorry about the change in movie metaphors…)  It started rather insidiously.  The first step was allowing myself to have a half a can of soda with my snack.  Then it crept up to three fourths of a can.  Then I added a partial can in the afternoon.  It finally showed up on the scales, and now it’s time to get back with the program.

It’s easy to slip back into bad habits.

Eating Small Meals A Day Does Work

I know several people that eat 5-6 meals each day, but still complain that they can’t lose weight.  The trick, of course, is to keep the calorie content of each meal at an average of 300-500 calories.  Take, for instance, my habits before I started making better choices.  My “snack” totaled up to 500-760 calories.  Having two “snacks” a day could approach 1500-calories.  That’s about 65-75% of what I consume these days.  What a change!

Not only is this type of schedule better for weight loss, but can also assist with managing a whole host of maladies.  Most notable are those that include insulin regulation such as hypoglycemia and diabetes.  There are those who suggest it better regulates metabolism.  Not sure how much I believe that one, but I certainly don’t think it hurts.

As you can see, I tend to go with the “mini meal” model of eating for weight loss.  If you’ve chosen the small meals model for weight loss, what makes up a “snack” for you?  How many meals a day do you have, and most importantly, how well is it working?