After one of my last posts about 5 to 6 small meals a day, I got several emails asking, can’t I just cut calories?  Here is what I’ve come to understand why just cutting calories doesn’t work.  If you normally take in 2500 to 3500 calories daily and cut it to 1000 to 1250, that will work at first, but won’t last.  It will actually come back to hurt you.  By doing that, you are triggering the body’s starvation mode.  It is part of the body’s mechanism to adapt to its surroundings.  It sees food as now scarce, and slows down the metabolism to store as much as it can.  Since you are depriving yourself, you also eventually begin to crave the favorite foods you are missing.  Finally, when everything crashes, you are back to eating 3500 calories daily, but with a much slower metabolism than before and have set yourself up to gain more weight than you lost.  By going with around 300 - 400 calories 5 to 6 times a day, your body does not see a lack of food, but an abundance of food, therefore does not feel the need to store.  Your metabolism keeps burning.  Don’t forget, exercise is still important, even if it is going for a walk.  Till next time, The Average Joe.

I’ve tried a lot of diets.  Low fat, low carb, counting calories, you name, I’ve probably tried it.  The problem with those is that they don’t work for the long term.  I did the low carb diet just before it became the craze and carbs became evil to everyone.  It worked.  I lost a good deal of weight.  I started at 300 pounds and got down to about 225.  Great!  The only problem was it wasn’t sustainable.  Just as I was starting to feel real good, my knees weren’t hurting and I had to buy a whole new wardrobe, I started to slip up and my weight slowly started to inch up.  There are two problems with Diets that I see: 1) They are not sustainable, and 2) People think they just have to do them for a short period of time and then can go back to eating the way they were.  That is why diets fail.  A few years back I became acquainted with one of the personal trainers at my local gym.  Through conversations with him I came to the understanding of what I like to call a Meal Plan.  It’s a way of eating and structuring meals so that you lose or maintain body weight, but also feel satiated.  By feeling satiated you don’t have any cravings and don’t feel deprived so the thoughts of “when I get off this thing…” don’t pop in your head.  For me, eating 5 - 6 small meals a day works best.  Now, I know you are going to say that seems like a lot, but remember I said small.  Portion control is key.  No more than 300 calories per meal.  Next time I’ll go into how to find foods that are easy and taste good, but also fit easily into a Meal Plan.  Thanks for reading, The Average Joe