Eating A Little Often To Lose Weight - Does It Work?

Eating a little often, or having five, six or seven small meals a day has been a dietary method of weight loss for some time now. The thinking being that if we eat more often we will keep our metabolism working all the time and help eat away all that excess fat.

Is it just another fad diet?

Anyone who has tried this method will probably already have given up or are still trying in vein to make it work. Those who tried it for some prolonged period of time will no-doubt testify that it simply makes no difference and in some cases may have put on weight.

If you think about it and eating often really worked, then chewing gum all day would have a dramatic effect on weight loss, after all, chewing gum does everything that eating does to keep your metabolism going, and it clearly has no beneficial effect on losing weight.

We now have evidence to support that eating often does not work. There has been a study involving 179 (Australian) obese men and women who were all on the same healthy, weight-loss diet and with the same kilojoule intake, but with differing eating patterns. One group ate three times a day, while the other added in three extra snacks to try to keep metabolism boosted throughout the day and speed up fat-burning.

But results showed no difference in changes in weight, waist measurement, body fatness or blood sugar levels between the groups.

"There seems to be little benefit to changing how often or how regularly you eat if you're trying to lose weight," said lead researcher Michelle Palmer, a dietitian at the University of Newcastle. "We found it's not when you eat that matters, but what and how much you eat."

Losing weight always comes down to eating healthy nutritional food and exercise in combination.

I've written about this before, and I am still of the opinion that correct exercise combined with equally correct nutrition is the only long term method of sustaining proper weight and fitness. Here is a Superfast Fitness Program that explains fitness and nutrition and how to lose weight and tone up at the same time in the fastest way possible.