**Smart Snacks for Boosting Metabolism: Break the Energy Slump During Dieting with the "Eat Smaller, More Frequent Meals" Model**
**
Three meals a day are a Chinese custom. However, many people are already very hungry between meals. Generally, we eat breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 12 pm, and dinner at 6 pm. If you don't eat anything between meals, your fasting period is more than 4 hours. According to the body's natural rhythms, when you fast for 2-3 hours, your blood sugar begins to drop, and your body starts to experience various weakness. It reaches its lowest point after 4 hours. At this time, you will feel extremely hungry, tired, weak, and dizzy. To illustrate, our body is like a stove, and food is like firewood. This stove must be kept burning. If the stove goes out, the body has no energy, and we won't have the strength to do anything, let alone speed up metabolism, burn calories, or lose weight. This is what weight loss efforts least want to see. To keep the stove burning, we need to add firewood. How do you add firewood? If you've ever lit a stove, you know there are two ways: one is to pour all the firewood into the stove at once, and the other is to add more firewood first, and then slowly add more as the fire gets smaller. Feeding our bodies, which are like a stove, is the same. If we eat a lot at once, it's like throwing all the firewood into the stove; the firewood will ignite, and you'll immediately feel warm all over.
A worse outcome is that if you eat too many simple sugars or refined starches, such as candy, fruit, white rice, and white flour, the firewood is like gasoline-it burns brightly all at once, but quickly burns out, and the stove almost goes out, requiring you to add more fuel. A slightly better outcome is that if you eat a lot of protein and fiber-rich foods, the firewood burns slowly. But even the best firewood can't burn continuously for four hours. This is like eating a lot in the morning, but getting hungry before noon. If you don't eat anything then, your metabolism slows down, you feel weak, dizzy, and consume less energy. By noon, you're starving, and what you need most is something that provides a quick energy boost-again, white rice, white flour, fruit, and candy. Because you're so hungry, it's hard to control how much you eat. It's not that you lack control, but your brain is also starving and needs a rest. You've thrown another handful of firewood into the stove. And so, a new vicious cycle begins. Although you'll immediately feel less hungry, your mind will feel refreshed, and you'll regain your energy, it won't be long before you start feeling sleepy again, and then your stomach will start to rumble with hunger again. Dinner is still a long way off. If you don't eat anything now, the vicious cycle of feeling hungry again, similar to that at midday, will begin again at dinnertime.
If you calculate your total calorie intake, because starchy foods have a high calorie density, your calorie intake that day wasn't low. In terms of physical symptoms, although you ate more food, your blood sugar fluctuated wildly, peaking and then plummeting. Your stomach felt constantly full and empty, and your mind went from dizzy from overeating to dizzy from hunger. Regarding weight loss, your metabolism wasn't consistently high, so you might not only fail to lose weight but actually gain it. Conversely, if you ate 5-6 times a day, in smaller portions each time, the results would be completely different. If you maintain your usual eating habits-breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 12 pm, and dinner at 6 pm-but now you can have snacks at 10 am, 3 pm, and if you go to bed late, you can have a snack at 8 pm.
When you were little, your mother told you, "Eat a full breakfast, a good lunch, and a light dinner." This is very scientific. Because in the morning, your body's metabolic rate is very high, and you need a lot of calories. So you must eat a full breakfast. However, if you eat only fruit or only starchy foods like rice and noodles in the morning, you'll feel hungry again soon. Therefore, you still need to get a balanced diet in the morning-including protein, fat, and fiber-rich foods. By 10 a.m., you start to feel a little hungry. Although you're not very hungry, although your stomach isn't making any strange noises, and although you can still hold on, "Please have a snack." Your stomach won't last until noon; your blood sugar is already dropping, your metabolic rate is decreasing, and you're burning fewer calories-the stove is getting weaker and weaker. "Don't wait until the fire is completely out before adding firewood, otherwise it will be too late to put out. Add firewood while the fire is still burning brightly; you don't need much firewood, but the fire will quickly become strong again." The same applies to eating. Before you're completely dizzy, not completely hungry, your blood sugar hasn't completely dropped, and your metabolism hasn't completely slowed down, a small snack can completely change your physical condition. Your energy will immediately be abundant again, your metabolism will speed up again, and you'll burn more calories. The best part is that at this time, you've only used a small amount of calories from the snack to deceive your body. When it's time for a meal, you won't be too hungry and will be less likely to overeat. If you calculate the total calories, although you eat more frequently, the total calories remain the same, or even decrease. If you consider physical performance, your blood sugar remains at a stable level, your mind is clear, you're not hungry, and you have more energy to devote to work and study. If you're talking about weight loss, your metabolism remains at a high level; you're constantly burning energy, making it easier to lose weight.