Man, when we bite into the food we love, we just can’t stop eating it some times.  We want more and more because it takes soooo good.  Then, suddenly, we start to feel super full, bloated, heavy, sluggish; enter a ‘food-coma.’  And THAT is not good for your metabolism and dieting!

Calorie Dumps

This is when we just dump a ton of calories into our system causing our metabolism to hit a brick wall and slow down to try and process all that got dumped.

You need to reduce the amount of calories you are eating at one sitting.  300-400 calories per meal is optimal.  You may think that, that is not enough but this is where the increase in the total number of small meals comes into play.  You want and NEED to make sure you are getting the necessary amount of calories per day.  Of course this calorie range depends greatly on your activity level, which is by determining your Calorie Deficit is critical.

Having a Calorie Deficit CAN be a good thing, but having a LARGE deficit for a LONG period of time could trigger your body to go into starvation mode and turn everything into fat.

If you determine that you want no more than a 350 Calorie Deficit, than the amount of calories it would take to reach that is necessary! If you fail to reach that, you would have a larger deficit and risk fat storage.

Its easy, count a weeks worth of calories and use a Fitbit/smart watch to count how many calories your burn daily.  Then, subtract how many calories you took in from how many calories were burned.  You want a deficit, but not too big of a deficit.  Studies have shown a long term large calorie deficit causes your body to freak out and store everything you eat into fat.

Portion Control

We want our metabolism to be effective and efficient.  The longer it works, the more calories we use, burn, and not store.

To do this, you need to eat palm to fist size meals every couple hours.  This way your body is not overloaded with a calorie dump, but is still having to constantly work to digest.  And because the meals are smaller, all the nutrients are constantly being used.  Which combined, drives up your metabolism.  That’s a good thing.

The palm to fist size is the portion that you want for an entire meal.  This smaller than normal portion will empower your body to burn and use it better; it will speed up your metabolism and ultimately use and melt body fat.

Meal Prep

This is when Meal Prepping is key.  This way you can ensure that no matter how busy you are, you will have the right amount of calories per day.

My Rules for Portion Control and effective Dieting:

1. Eat palm/fist size meals.
2. Eat 5 to 6 meals daily.
3. Eat every couple hours.
4. Eat enough calories not to have a large deficit.

Sources:

1. https://www.webmd.com/diet/control-portion-size
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5359369/