Eating Mode

Takeaways

• Weight loss is a marathon rather than sprint
• The idea of eating many small meals throughout the day is very popular
• The scheme of fasting and feeding is more simple and flexible

The idea of eating many small meals throughout the day was pretty popular for a while. It is claimed to speed up your metabolism and as a result, help you burn more fat.

There are mixed studies about the effectiveness of this eating mode, but using my personal experience I would steer you away from a fat loss plan consisting of multiple small meals. I see it as impractical, time-consuming and evidence that this mode works well is questionable. Eating multiple small meals requires a lot of preparation and a lot of running around with multiple food containers that takes away plenty of time.

The concept of intermittent fasting is simple. You pick a certain window of time when you eat, and you don’t eat anything outside this period of time. I used the intermittent fasting extensively and it proved to be the much more effective method than multiple small meals. Both options did help me lose weight, but intermittent fasting was the easiest and the most convenient way.

There are multiple patterns to chose from such as 16/8, 20/4, etc. The larger number is the number of hours you don’t eat. The smaller number is your feeding window, hours you do eat. I tried many of those, but I found out the most effective is not eating for at least 17 hours, more is better but 17 is enough. My feeding window is highly flexible, however. I might eat all my food within 2 hours or start eating at 6 pm, throughout the evening, to have breakfast and lunch next day and then get back into the fasting window and do not have any meal for 17+ more hours.

I found this scheme of fasting and feeding more flexible which allows you to play around with your feeding depending on how you feel and what is going on in your life. However, remember that if you stopped losing weight with your current pattern of fasting and feeding, you are probably eating too much in the given window. You will have to adjust it and cut the number of calories.

I am currently at the point when I can eyeball my calorie count and get pretty good results. However, I have been doing it for years, so I would recommend you still measure your calories and count it precisely.

With intermittent fasting, you might be able to get away without any counting if your feeding window is short enough for you to no overload yourself with calories. Feel free to try a few weeks of intermittent fasting without counting and without adjustments or with minimal adjustments to your diet. For example, replace regular coke with diet coke and throw away your sweet dessert. If it works, keep doing it and assess your progress every week. If not, you should keep cutting amount of food or pick up food scale to count calories.

After all, counting calories does the same as throwing foods out of your diet entirely, but with the higher precision. If you can’t throw food items out enough to lose weight, you must pick up a food scale and start measuring, no other way around it.

Look at the bigger picture and adjust your plan accordingly.

Weight loss is a marathon rather than sprint, and you will have to play around to find the most optimum method for you.



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