Three meals a day gives your body the appropriate amount of time to digest food and helps avoid health problems. After eating a large meal like Thanksgiving dinner the body tends to bloat, causing a nauseating feeling that immediately makes you sleepy. By breaking one large healthy meal into three smaller meals you will feel more energized throughout the day instead of sleepy and sluggish.
Breakfast
A healthy breakfast is necessary for refueling the body. Your body has just gone 6 or more hours without food and has digested any food taken in the day before. It's not good to start your car with the gas tank empty, so treat your body the same. You can function on an empty stomach; however, you will not function at 100 percent.
Lunch
Lunch is necessary to maintain energy. You use the majority of your energy between breakfast and dinner, making it necessary to consume some sort of lunch. This meal should contain carbohydrates, as well as fiber or protein. The carbohydrates supply the body with energy, while fiber or protein keeps you full until your next meal.
Unhealthy foods such as fast foods are not only packed with fat and grease, but they also wreak havoc on your body. Large meals high in salt, sugar or fat can cause high blood pressure or high cholesterol almost immediately and lead to excessive weight gain.
Putting the wrong kind of gas in your car will damage your engine and lead to other issues. Think of food and your body the same way.
Dinner
A healthy dinner is extremely important as this is your last meal of the day. This meal is responsible for what goes on in your digestive tract, as well as how your body repairs itself. For this meal, load up on dark greens and vegetables so the enzymes contained in these foods can clean out excess waste in your intestines. Protein is equally important during this meal to repair muscles, tissues and organs that have been stressed out through the day.
Too much sugar and fat in your dinner could cause the body to store this fat overnight causing weight gain, blood pressure to rise or insulin resistance.
Not eating dinner at all can cause irritability and problems sleeping. A good nights rest is necessary for the body to fully recuperate for the next day.
Eat Three or More
The minimum amount of healthy meals you should eat throughout the day is three. Reason being, the body functions 24 hours a day. Eating all your servings of fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, and fats for the entire day in one sitting would wreak havoc on your body and organs. The body needs time to digest nutrients and distribute them to the appropriate body part or organ.
It is also appropriate to eat more than three meals; however, these meals are considered "mini meals." A mini meal is a smaller portioned meal consisting of the same food groups you would eat in a regular meal. Eating five or six mini meals would be equivalent to three regular meals.
Overall Importance
Eating throughout the day allows nutrients to digest gradually, providing you more energy for longer periods of time. Consuming large amounts of food in one or two sittings takes more time and energy to digest, and can lead to many health issues such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, or excessive weight gain.
Member Comments