Eating 6 meals a day...

The traditional nutritional advise to eat three meals per day and avoid "snacking" between meals can actually slow your metabolism and increase bodyfat storage.  Recent research demonstrates that active people who eat only three times per day may be training their bodies to get by on less energy and therefore more readily storing unburned calories as bodyfat.  This coincides with previous findings, which have shown that frequent feedings tend to promote more stable blood-sugar levels, the optimal absorption of foodstuffs, and an increased metabolic rate.  So, for optimal muscle-building and fat burning effects, researchers agree that active individuals require six small, balanced meals throughout the day.  Remember, a meal can be as simple as a portion of cottage cheese mixed with a portion of fruit or yogurt.  Also convenient if you're short on time are the meal replacement shakes, which come in both powder and ready to drink form.  

**I, personally use EAS meal replacement shakes - Chocolate**

Drastically limiting your caloric intake in an effort to lose fat or get "cut" may be almost as destructive to your transformation efforts as it would be to eat sticks of butter for breakfast.  By reducing the amount of calories you consume to an amount less than 8 times your bodyweight, studies show you're actually causing your basal metabolic rate to slow down, which is the lAST thing you want to have happen when you're trying to shed fat.  Furthermore, most of the weight you lose during calorie restriction comes at the expense of lean body mass, not adipose tissue (Keep the fat, burn the muscle!).  Not good.

A much healthier, more effective strategy is to eat smaller meals six times a day.  By feeding your body high-protien, low-fat foods frequently throughout the day, you're avoiding hunger pangs, optimizing the development of muscle, and you're not messing with your metabolic machinery.

So now you know!!!

Excerpts taken from  the Jan/Feb 2001 issue of Muscle Media Magazine