Welcome to the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series. This group of articles will provide you with a basic education in a diet that involves eating healthy food at regular intervals.

The series covers all aspects of getting started eating every three hours based on my personal experiences. Reading the series will allow you to learn from my mistakes and concentrate on jumping in with the knowledge needed to make your transition to this lifestyle a success.

Each article builds upon the previous. I recommend starting at the top and then work your way down.

1. Why You Should Eat Every Three Hours
2. Top Items Needed to Eat Every Three Hours
3. You Must Count Calories if You Want to be Healthy
4. Essential Info to Track in Your Food Log
5. How to Plan Your Daily Meals
6. You’re Going to Eat Often, So Learn to Shop in Bulk
7. Cook Enough Food for Several Days to Save Time
8. How to Assemble Your Daily Meals
9. The Transition to Eating Every Three Hours

New articles may be added to the series over time. If you enjoy the series and would like to learn more about proper nutrition while eating 5 or 6 balanced meals a day, please subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up to receive email updates when new articles are published.

Eat More, Eat Often, Eat Healthy!

This is the ninth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Congratulations! You now know how to get started eating every three hours. As with other things in life, knowing how to eat every three hours and actually doing so are two different things. The following is advice that I can offer based on my own experiences with transitioning to this diet. I trust it can be of use to just about anyone willing to get started.

Think of it as a lifestyle

Most people tend to think of going on a diet as a short-term adjustment to the food they are eating. This is fine if you want only short-term results. If you desire to make long-term physical changes you should approach your diet from a long-term perspective.

Approach eating every three hours as a lifestyle. You know it has become a lifestyle when you can’t picture yourself eating less than 5 or 6 meals a day. Another sign of a successful transition is if you get cranky at the prospect of missing a regularly scheduled meal. If you are consistently skipping meals or making poor food choices, you are not “there” yet.

Start with a short-term goal 

The prospect of viewing this diet as a lifestyle can be daunting for the uninitiated. Considering that, it may be easier to start with a short-term goal. I recommend setting a month long goal in which you eat every three hours consistently for a month. I feel a month is easy to wrap the mind around and is long enough for you to see and feel the results from your new diet.

My personal reason for eating every three hours was to lose weight and stop being drowsy at work. Given the overhead involved in this diet, I decided to give it a solid month of compliance; only then I would decide if the diet was worth it for me to continue. At the end of that month I had lost 12 pounds of fat and I was wired at work. From there it was easy for me to continue. 

Give it time to create a habit

Looking back to when I first started eating 6 meals a day, It was very difficult to stay on schedule with the meals. Prior to this diet I was only eating twice a day. This was a big change and the transition was not as easy as I originally thought.

Making drastic changes in your schedule and existing habits will take some effort on your part. However, you can take comfort in the fact that it will get easier with time once the new good habits start to form. Giving it a good month tryout is necessary to give the habit enough time to properly get established. You must be consistent in your efforts for this to work!

Leo Babauta at ZenHabits.net has a great article on forming habits that can easily be adapted to eating every three hours. Take a look and see if there are some tips that can help you.

Routine, Routine, Routine

Following the advice given in previous articles from the Getting Started Eating Every Three Hours Series will help you establish a routine. Establishing a routine that works for you is essential to successfully transitioning to this new lifestyle.

I am a person that is generally stuck in my ways. I put off starting this diet for months, mainly because I did not want to make adjustments to my schedule. I ended up tossing that schedule out the window and creating a new one that made eating every three hours mandatory. Doing so was one of the best decisions I ever made. 

Be flexible, stuff happens

Life will eventually throw a wrench into the best prepared plans. Work, meetings, traffic, kids or spouse can all cause you to be late for a meal or miss it all together. You will not die when this happens. If you have not yet started eating every three hours it may seem like no big deal, but once your body is tuned to getting fed at regular intervals, it will let you know when feeding time has come and gone. The main indicator will be your mood. Trust me.

Don’t listen to the naysayers

With constant media bombardment of fad diets and so called “common knowledge” regarding nutrition, there is no shortage of people willing to offer diet advice, especially in regard to weight loss. Once your family, friends or coworkers learn that you are eating every three hours there will no doubt be times when you must defend your decision to eat in this manner. I especially enjoy nutritional tips from people with a gut that looks like they swallowed a large tire.

What you should do in these situations is simply explain what you are doing and why. Leave it at that. Some folks will want to learn more about it, which is good. Tell them what you know or direct them to this website. Other folks will think you are being too strict with your diet. Dismiss those people and carry on with your day. Don’t let negativity bring you down.

That concludes this series. I hope you find the information useful to get you started eating every three hours. There is much to learn about proper nutrition, eating healthy, and adapting food to this diet. I look forward to passing on what I have learned to each of you through many upcoming articles.

This is the eighth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Now that you have your meals planned and your food already precooked, it comes time to actually assemble your meals. Typically, this is done in advance so that you don’t have to worry about it when meal time arrives.

Meal assembly is simply the process of grabbing the precooked portions of carbs, protein and fats that you have on your meal plan and preparing them for either eating immediately or taking with you to eat later. Here is how it is done:

Assemble enough meals to last until you get home 

The number of meals that you need to prepare is going to depend on your situation. For me, I cook my first breakfast fresh and then I’ll assemble three meals to take to work. This would be my second breakfast, first and second lunches. If I suspect I’ll be working late at the office for some reason, I’ll assemble a fourth meal to take with me. At home I will assemble my first and second dinners as needed, I may even cook one of them fresh.

On the weekends I typically assemble the meals as needed. If I’m leaving the house for more than a few hours, I’ll assemble a meal and take it with me. I personally find it easier to assemble a few meals in Tupperware dishes in advance, then I only have to pop open the container and eat, thus saving the assembly time. 

If you work in a place that has a dedicated kitchen, you may be able to get away with assembling your meals as needed. The only prerequisite would be to keep your cooked and/or vacuum sealed food in your work fridge.

Assemble meals that can be easily reheated or eaten cold

When taking meals to work, you probably don’t have access to much more than a microwave at the office. As such, those midday meals should not include anything that must be cooked on a stove-top or baked. For example, eggs might not be a good protein choice for work as you would have not way to cook them (unless you already hard boiled them). The meals you are taking with you should comprise of food that you cooked during your bulk cooking session. 

Show as little or as much creativity as you like

There are many ways to assemble a meal. For example, if a meal calls for 4oz of chicken, 3oz of red potato and 1.5 cups of steamed mixed veggies, you have a couple of options for assembly:

You can dice the chicken and potato then toss into a Tupperware bowl  and mix it up with the veggies. That would be the quick and easy bachelor-style method of doing things; which is how I like meals on the run.

Another option is to get one of those Tupperware containers that are like cafeteria plates with compartments for each portion of food, but with a sealable lid. You can have your chicken breast, some potato, and a batch of veggies all laid out like a nice home cooked meal.

What I don’t like about the second option is the larger container that must be packed around. You also will need a knife in addition to your fork to cut up the food when you eat it. This option is better when assembling the meal for immediate eating at home since it makes me feel like I’m having a real, i.e. traditional, dinner.

Some meals may need to be assembled when you eat

While assembling your meals, you will discover that there are some obvious combinations that should not be made until you are ready to eat. Your breakfast may include Grape Nuts and milk. Keep these in separate containers until feeding time. Just be sure your milk goes into a plastic container with locking lid that has a rubber gasket to prevent leaks.

I found that high quality lean turkey is very moist. If your meal calls for a turkey sandwich, keep the turkey away from the bread until you are ready to eat. Bread has a tendency to soak large quantities of turkey-juice. Yuk.

Due to the extra separating, you may have seven Tupperware containers for only three meals. This is perfectly fine.

Double check before leaving the house

What I find frustrating is spending time planning the meals, cooking, preparing and assembling, only to forget a critical portion of food such as a serving of veggies or protien.

So, once I think I’m done assembling my meals I will peek into each Tupperware dish and make sure I added what is on the meal plan. There are always a couple times in the month where I catch a mistake. These errors are more common when dealing with vastly different meal plans from day-to-day.

If your meal plans are stored on the computer, it may be worth while to print out the spreadsheet so you can have it in the kitchen. This helps ensure you get the right foods with the correct portions without having to memorize anything. Once you get the hang of assembling meals, you can skip printing it every day.

Don’t assemble meals more than a day in advance

If you have ample portable plastic containers to do so, you may be tempted to assemble two or three days of meals at once. If your meals are the basic mixed bowls of food as described above, I discourage mixing food to early. Flavors have a tendency to mix together over time, firm veggies become soggy, soft veggies become mush, and chicken becomes rubbery. This is not very appetizing. From my experience, I found these “mixed bowls” tend to do okay for a day; don’t assemble your meals too far in advance!

Enjoy a fresh meal every once in a while

There is not much fun in eating reheated food with every meal. As I mentioned before, I always cook a fresh breakfast that includes oatmeal and an egg-white omelette (among other things). Sometimes I cook one of my dinners fresh so that I can enjoy a nice home cooked three-course meal. 

Once you get into the routine of eating every three hours, you may will  become sick of being in the kitchen and just settle on reheated food. This often happens to me. However, I’m a bachelor and can get away with such things. For those of you that have family at home that is not on the same diet plan, they will very much appreciate when you eat the same dinner as everyone else. Hopefully you won’t me making them eat reheated food every day. ;)

What are your thoughts on assembling your meals in advance? Do you have any tips or advice to simplify the process?

This is the seventh article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Not long after I first started my diet of eating every three hours, I nearly gave up because it seemed most of my time was spent cooking for the next meal. In order to successfully maintain such a diet I needed to look past the next meal and start thinking ahead to the coming days.

When eating every three hours there is always another meal around the corner, so it makes sense to minimize the amount of time spent in the kitchen. Get in the habit of cooking several days worth of food at one time whenever possible.

Choose which day(s) to cook

As with the day you chose to do your bulk shopping, select a day where you will set time aside to cook the food you will be eating during the week. Depending on the type of food and storage options available, you may not be able to cook for the entire week. In those instances you may have to schedule another cooking day mid-week.

I usually do my cooking on Sunday. This is the least busy day in my schedule and it seems logical to stock up on cooked food as close to the work-week as possible.

Come up with a process

To make this chore painless as possible, come up with a cooking process that works well for you. Here is how I go about cooking my chicken:

I then wash the pans and do the same thing for any red meat I have planned for the week; normally I don’t eat much red meat so there is not much to cook.

From there, I move on to vegetables. I usually buy Birds Eye frozen veggies that allow you to steam them right in the bag using the microwave. In my personalized food log, I get three servings of veggies out of each bag. I cook a total of three or four bags. After each bag is done I’ll dump the contents onto a platter, divide into three smaller piles (my portions), then I place each portion into a vacuum seal bag and seal them up.

If I have a whole turkey breast, I’ll slice it up into 4oz portions and vacuum seal those too.

I also eat a lot of fish, but I purchase the salmon precooked and divided into 4oz portions. If I didn’t have that convenience I would take the time to cook my salmon on my designated cooking day.

All of this may seem like a lot of work, and in the beginning it certainly is. Once you get into the routine and develop your own process, this should take no more than 90 minutes. It will save you hours of time during the coming week having this food already prepared.

Do you have any tips-and-tricks to save cooking time?

This is the sixth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

When eating a healthy balanced meal every three hours, you will be consuming a lot of food. Depending on if you’ll be eating five or six meals a day, you are looking between 35 and 42 meals a week. That is a lot of groceries.

Unless you enjoy going to the grocery store every other day, I highly recommend buying your food in bulk whenever possible. When consuming mostly natural foods, this gets a little difficult since most natural food will not stay fresh for long.

Don’t run out of healthy food

You must always have natural carbohydrates and protein in your pantry or fridge at all times. With those items you can assemble some sort of nutritious meal even if the choices are not an appetizing combination.

Running out of the key categories of food provides you a perfect excuse to eat whatever else you have in your pantry. The chips and ice-cream your spouse, child, or room-mate was saving starts to look mighty tasty when you run out of your own food.

Having enough food on-hand also keeps you from wanting to stop by a fast-food joint on the way to or from work because you don’t want to go to the grocery store.

Once you get into the habit of eating every three hours, you will get nervous when food starts to run low. Keep stocked!

Shop on a scheduled day

Back in the days when I was living an unhealthy lifestyle, I went to the grocery store whenever I felt the urge. If I ran out of food, I would order pizza or go out to a restaurant. Many times I would stop by the store to buy only enough food (usually bad food) to last me a couple of days because I did not plan ahead.

You may already be in the habit of shopping on a specific day of the week. If not, you need to pick a day, then get into the habit of buying enough food to last you at least a week. This will save the headaches of always running out of something crucial.

Buy canned or frozen food when possible

You are going to have to strike a balance between cost, time, and taste. Yes, fresh fish tastes better than something that has been cooked, frozen and/or canned. That freshness comes at the price of not only expense, but the time it takes to cook later on. Canned fish, such as tuna, is cheap and convenient. I also buy salmon that has been pre-grilled then flash frozen. Does not taste the greatest, but it does provide variety and convenience.

Fresh veggies are perfectly fine if you can eat them raw on a regular basis, saving you cooking time. I mostly buy frozen vegetables. Not only are they already chopped, but I can get tasty veggie combinations that save me the trouble of putting together myself. Brands such as Birds Eye allow you to steam your veggies right in the bag in less than five minutes. This is a fast and convenient solution to stuffing your fridge full of veggies that may go bad before you can eat them all.

Normally I don’t buy canned vegetables, from what I understand there are preservatives and sugars added to many brands. With the exception of corn, I think canned veggies are absolutely disgusting. Don’t get me started on canned spinach.

Fresh fruit usually works well for me and they last at least a week. Of the fruits that I eat, bananas tend to go bad the quickest, but if I buy them slightly green I’ll be good for the week.

Freeze what you won’t be cooking right away

Usually, it is cheaper to buy your red meats, poultry and fish in larger quantities. This is certainly the way to go if you have freezer space. Keep track of expiration dates and freeze the food that won’t be cooked right away. I don’t freeze meat that much, mainly because I have a small freezer stuffed with frozen veggies.

Those of you fortunate enough to have a large fridge, a second fridge, or a dedicated freezer can benefit from going to the butcher and stocking up on several weeks worth of meat. This should save you money in the long run.

This is the quick bachelors guide to shopping in bulk. I’m sure there are people out there accustomed to shopping for larger families that have many tips and tricks to share in the area of bulk shopping. I’d love to hear your comments!

This is the fifth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Now that you are armed with the knowledge of about how many calories you require and how to keep a food log, it’s now time to plan the meals you will be eating each day.

This step is crucial, and perhaps the most difficult, to your success in eating every three hours. It is very easy to eat too many calories when eating five or six meals a day; as such, you must plan your meals before you start eating. It does not make sense to figure out how many calories you consumed after the fact. Make the decision of what you are going to eat throughout the day in advance.

This post is longer than normal and contains a large amount of information. You will not master it right away. Meal planning takes practice. Before you realize it this will all become second nature.

Make a list of foods

I mentioned this in Essential Info to Track in Your Food Log, and I’ll mention it once again because it is relevant here. Make a spreadsheet with a list of foods that you are going to eat on a regular basis. This is separate from the food log itself.

Having this “master list” of foods will make for quick reference and allow you to cut & paste food entries directly into your food log or journal.

Plan the meals for the entire day

The primary goal of meal planning is to figure out what you’ll be eating for the entire day; that is all five or six meals. The benefit is not only to save time, but allows you to know what meal substitutions you can it make if it becomes necessary. If you decide to go out with your friends to lunch (to eat healthy of course), you should have an idea of how many calories that unplanned meal is replacing. You may find that you still need to eat part of your planned lunch even after eating out in order to get the correct number of calories.

Currently, my afternoon meals (lovingly called lunch’s 1&2) are 480 and 460 calories respectively. However, on Tuesday afternoons I go out to lunch with a friend. We often end up at Applebees which has a Weight Watchers page in their menu. I pick something from this section because the calories, carbs and fats are listed for my convenience. To my surprise many of these items are between 300 and 350 calories. If I were to eat one of these meals with no consideration of calories, I would be shorting myself over 100 calories in a single meal. This will most likely lead to me being tired and drowsy at work. After eating one of these meals, I’d go back to work and eat about 100 calories from one of my lunches. If I did not have my calories for the day planned in advance I would have no idea if I would be low or high on my desired calorie intake.

In summary, plan all of your meals in the food log before you even eat your first breakfast.

Beginners: Worry only about calories, but track macronutrient ratios

When I first started eating every three hours, I went through the trouble of trying to get the calories in range in addition to balancing the macronutrient ratios (carbs, proteins and fats). It is a headache to get your calories just right, only to find that you need 10% more protein.

Too keep things simple, I recommend the beginner only focus on getting the calories on target. If you are shooting for 2000 calories a day, your goal should be between 1950 and 2050. You will rarely be exact so don’t waste time trying.

Spread your calories throughout your five or six meals. This does not have to be exact either. It usually is better to have the larger meals around your most active times. For me this is the morning, so my breakfasts are 200 calories more than my last two meals. What you want to avoid is having a 1000 calorie meal and five 200 calorie meals. Spread out the calories!

Even though you are only aiming for your calorie target, enter the macronutrient information in your food log. This will be necessary for when you make the leap to the more advanced method of meal planning. The transition will be easier if you already know what you have been eating. You may find that very few adjustments are necessary.

Advanced: Worry about the calories and the macronutrient ratios too

To get the most out of the Eat Every Three plan you need to balance your macronutrient ratios. Counting calories alone is not going to cut it. This is especially true if you are training for an event, or desire a specific physical appearance (beach body). The older you are, the more necessary this becomes.

At first glance, the following will seem unnecessarily complicated. Please bear in mind that once you run through a few weeks of meals like this, balancing macronutrients will be a piece of cake. Here we go…

Balancing your macronutrient ratios is simply a matter of splitting your calories between carbs, proteins and fats. You may choose 50% of your calories go to carbs, 30% protein, and 20% fat. This is a good starting point for most people. Since everyone is different, don’t get married to this ratio. Feel free to play around with 10% in any direction. Try a ratio for a week before changing. You may find a specific ratio is definitely wrong (you may feel sick or tired off too few carbs and too much protein). Simply change back to something that is more comfortable.

Nutritional labels on your food will rarely have how many calories of carbs are in each serving. Instead they often show the number of grams. This is a simple conversion: carbs and proteins have 4 calories per gram; fat has 9 calories per gram. So, if a serving of food has 5 grams of carbs, that equals 20 calories of carbs. 2 grams of fat is 18 calories.

For example, a serving of oatmeal (1/2 cup pre-cooked) is 150 calories, 27g carbs, 5g protein, and 3g fat. If you do the math this equates to 108 calories carbs, 20 calories of protein, and 27 calories of fat (oddly enough it adds to 155). The ratio for this serving of oatmeal comes to 72% carbs, 13% protein, and 18% fat (give or take a percentage point or two). As we can see, oatmeal clearly belongs in a carb category.

Unfortunately, oatmeal does not make a very good meal by itself. We’ll need to make an effort to eat more protein because we are shooting for a 50/30/20 ratio. Figure the ratio for some eggs or egg beaters. Toss in an apple and flaxseed oil and see what you get.

Like calories, you will not get exact on the ratios. Your goal should be to have the entire day’s meals balance out to the proper ratios with a +/- 5% on any macronutrient. It is okay to have one meal slightly out of balance on carbs if another is a little heavy in protein. Avoid having an all carb meal then a separate all protein meal. Each meal should combine your carbs, proteins, and fats for maximum benefit.

Before writing this post, I never once “did the math” on oatmeal. This was my first time. My spreadsheet has always done the brainy work for me. Balancing meals is much easier when the task is automated. Even if you do the math by hand, you’ll only have to do it once for each of the meal items on the master food list, and then it is only a matter of balancing the meals.

Portion sizes

Regardless of if you opted to use the beginner or advanced method of tracking your food intake, you may have trouble getting the calories or macronutrient ratios correct. You will soon discover that serving sizes are to blame.

To get the ratios correct, you may have to come up with your own custom serving or portion sizes. Since the oatmeal container says ½ cup pre-cooked is a serving does not mean this is a serving for YOU. Maybe you can do a 1/3 cup and get the desired results… of course this involves additional math.

Experiment with the portion sizes, but avoid getting too crazy. 3.754 ounces of turkey may get the exact protein you need, but 3.5 or 4.0 will get you close enough. Stick with portion sizes that are easily measured.

Make meal planning a habit

Get out of bed, take care of business, get your coffee, and then plan your meals. You may opt to plan your meals before going to bed. Whatever you do, make meal planning part of your routine.

There are weeks I’m lazy and the meals change very little from day to day. I have six unique meals, but they tend to repeat from day to day as long as I don’t run out of anything. Others go through the trouble of coming up with a unique cuisine every day. Do what works for you, just as long as it becomes a habit.

How do you plan your meals differently or have any tips to share?

This is the fourth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

As I mentioned in “You Must Count Calories if You Want to Be Healthy“, keeping a food log is essential to ensuring that you are not eating too few or too many calories each day. This is especially important if you need to lose weight or train for a sport. Having a log aids in keeping your meals properly balanced and your daily calories on track. Knowing what to track in your food log can be a daunting task for the beginner. Today we’ll look at the key information you need to take from nutritional labels and put into your food log.

Start reading nutrition labels… today.

The nutritional labels on food are there for a reason. Don’t put anything into your body unless you can read and understand the label. Even if you end up eating a high calorie, nutrient deficient food, at least you know what you are eating and the consequences it will have on your daily plan.

Start reading the nutritional labels on everything, preferably before you put it into your shopping cart. Temptations are much easier to curb when you are still at the grocery store. You are far more likely to eat a “bad” food if you already paid for it. Nothing should go into your shopping cart unless you have read the nutrition label and decided if that particular food can be put into your Eat Every Three diet plan. Make reading the nutrition labels a habit.

What to track in the log.

In your log, you want to track the “sides” of the meal or main ingredients. Do not only track the combined calories of the entire meal unless you absolutely must. Keep track of the following in the log:

The name of the food would be its own row in your spreadsheet. The other information should be column titles. Armed with this information, you can add up the information from each of the columns to get your grand totals for the meal.

The reasons for tracking the nutrient information in addition to calories will become useful later when we get to meal planning.

Make a spreadsheet, use a notebook, or an online log.

Creating a simple spreadsheet to to log your food and the nutritional content is the most convenient method of tracking your calories and nutrients. If you are not savvy with spreadsheet programs such as Excel, then you can use a notebook to write the information down. Use whatever method that you will consistently utilize. The advantage with Excel is that it can provide an automated way to add columns together, that way everything in your meal will be added up for you.

My log consists of two spreadsheets. I use one sheet to track the meals, the other is a list of the common foods and their nutritional content that I routinely buy and eat. This way, I can cut and paste a line of nutritional content from the food list to my meal plan without having to memorize or reread the labels on the food. This works well for me, but you may find another method that is convenient for you.

There are free online food logs available from a number of places. I personally have not used them, but I know others that have. Each of them have their own food database (which may or may not match up to the food you eating) so you can easily populate your log with the relevant information. I am not sure if they all track the information listed above. Feel free to check them out and see! Try online logs such as:

I do not use online logs because I’m too lazy to take the extra step of logging into an account. However, there is the added advantage of accessing your food log from any computer with Internet access.

Get in the habit.

Habits do not form overnight. I believe there are studies that show a habit takes three weeks to form. Tracking all of the food you eat will be slow and time consuming in the beginning. Before too long, keeping your food log up-to-date will be second nature. If you are serious about achieving personal health goals, keeping a food log is a must.

Do you have a handy method or tricks for keeping a food log updated?

This is the third article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Many people believe the goal of counting calories is to count as few calories as humanly possible in your food. I’m sure there are diet plans out there that advocate this barbaric practice, but not here at EatEveryThree.com. Today you’ll learn that you must count calories not only to avoid eating too much, but also to avoid eating too little.

Have a goal.

If you have physical goals to meet, such as losing fat weight, you must count the calories in everything you put in your mouth at every meal until you reach your goal. This usually involves keeping some sort of log of your foods and portion sizes. Yes, food logs are inconvenient, but we are talking about your health, which should be of concern to you. Weight loss can be achieved without keeping a log, but it will take longer or you may never reach your goal.

Uncontrolled calorie intake will either leave you landing low or high of your required calorie target. Both circumstances will have negative consequences on your physical health and your ability to lose or gain weight.

If you simply want to maintain your weight, you should be at least counting calories in your head to make sure you are in the ballpark of your target calorie range.

Don’t eat too few calories.

People often do not think of this as a problem. One of the reasons you should be counting calories is to ensure that you are eating enough, and often this means eating more healthy food at each of your meals. Keep in mind that many healthy foods are not calorie dense. As a result, you may stuff yourself with healthy food but still be short on your required calories.

If you do not eat enough calories, you may lose fat for a little while. Eventually, your body will stop losing weight as your metabolism slows due to the lack of energy (calories). Reduced metabolism makes losing fat weight difficult.

The only cure for slow metabolism is to eat more healthy calories. It seems backwards to popular opinion, but I promise it works if you have been in calorie deficit for a while. The trick is figuring out how many calories YOU require.

Don’t eat too many calories. 

If your calories are too high, the common side-effect is weight-gain in the form of fat. Regardless of whether you are eating healthy foods or not, you may still be eating too many calories in any given day. Remember, it is possible to eat too much healthy food and gain weight.

Eating more calories than your body requires is not necessarily a bad thing. These excess calories can be put to good use. For example, weight training on a regular schedule will cause some of those excess calories to build muscle, which increases metabolism. The type of foods you eat will also contribute to how well this process works.

Eat the calories YOUR body needs.

There is not a magic number of calories I can tell you to eat. Any diet program that tells you there is a perfect number of calories is lying. I can say a man should eat 2800 calories a day to maintain his weight, but that would probably only be accurate for 1 in 8 men. The number depends greatly on his activity level and body composition (muscle mass and fat). Don’t get caught up in statistics that show calorie averages. As far as I’m concerned, the average American is unhealthy and overweight. You should not want to be average.

There are formulas available to help men and women determine how many calories they require based on body composition and activity. The difficulty with the numbers is that the multiplier for the activity level is subjective. Most of the time, these numbers need adjustment, because they only provide a number of calories as a starting point.

As a starting point, men can look at 2200 and women 1800 for weight maintenance. Expect to adjust these numbers based on your results. If you are eating healthy food that adds up to the target calories (+/- 50), you should know within a week or two if those numbers are too high, or too little based on weight gain or loss. 

The CalorieKing has a basic weight maintenance calorie calculator that I found somewhat accurate. You may need to get a couple of calorie calculations by adjusting the activity profile if you feel you fall between categories.

If you want to lose weight, shave off a few hundred calories. Do not cut calories too much or your metabolism will slow down. Women might want to only shave 100 calories at a time. If you go too low, then you may be literally starving yourself to death. You will still get great results by cutting small amounts of calories.

Check your weight each week, if you are going down then don’t change a thing. If you stayed the same or gone up, adjust accordingly. If you distribute your calories properly throughout the day (eat every three hours), you will have more energy and get better weight loss results than you ever have before.

There are more advanced methods of calorie calculations that I will cover at a future date. For now, get accustomed to counting your calories for every meal. Before long, counting calories will be second nature.

In my next article, I’ll discuss the specifics of tracking your food in a log and planning daily meals.

Do you have any calorie counting tips or tricks to share?

This is the second article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

In the previous article, I talked about the benefits of eating healthy food every three hours. Now we’ll take a look at some of the handy kitchen items needed to ease your passage into a healthy lifestyle. Many of you will already have most of these items, while others with a sparse kitchen may not.

To eat every three hours effectively you must store prepared foods, quickly create meals, and easily transport your meals; all while minimizing your kitchen chores such as dishes. The following are the items I have personally found useful.

Vacuum Sealer

The vacuum sealer is quite possibly the best kitchen invention since the refrigerator. Not only is this product good for storing raw foods, it is great for storing cooked foods; which is how I recommend using the product.

When preparing yourself five or six meals a day, you must cook food in advance. This is especially true during the work-week. The vacuum sealer provides the means to cook your food in advance (more on that in another article) and safely store the meals for the coming week. 

Vacuum sealers come in a variety of models. I personally have experience with the FoodSaver V2040, and highly recommend it since it has put up with months of abuse in my busy kitchen. There are many other vacuum sealers on the market and some are less expensive than the FoodSaver. There are models from Rival, Oliso, Toastess, and Kenmore®. I cannot personally recommend those products because I have not used them, but they may work fine. Keep in mind that you get what you pay for!

Kitchen Scale

In order to eat healthy, you must face the fact that you will be counting calories, among other things. With some foods, calories will only be given for a specific weight regardless of how much food is provided in the package. This is where a good kitchen scale is essential.

When shopping for a kitchen scale, make sure you get something that is digital. Avoid products that use spring-loading to determine weight as they are always inaccurate. For me, the most useful kitchen scales offer display read-outs in either ounces or grams. Some nutrition labels offer portions in grams, and others in ounces. Having a kitchen scale that can display both saves some conversion headaches.

In my opinion, a kitchen scale is not an optional appliance when you are regulating your diet. Buy one right away!

Plastic Containers

Unless you like to return home every three hours when it comes time to eat again, you will need some method of taking a meal or two with you while out on the go. Plastic containers are the obvious choice when transporting food.

There are many brands of plastic containers available. The best bang-for-your-buck will be a container set that will include different sizes. If there is a specific plastic container not included in the larger set, you can often purchase them separately.

When shopping around, I encourage you to play with the containers in the store. Do the lids seal on properly to the container without easily popping off? Can you squeeze the container a little and have the lid not come off? Can you hold it upside down? It really is a buzz-kill to have a meal container pop open in the car or in your bag.

Some brands have locking lids. These are great, but they are also more expensive. Having one or two of these is good for the times when you need to take a liquid with you, such as milk or soft items like applesauce. The locking containers with a rubber seal are required to keep liquids in their container. Put fluids in any non-locking type container and there will be leaks.

Make sure your containers are microwave and dishwasher safe. Not all of my meals need to be heated up, but it is very nice to toss the container in a microwave and eat directly from the plastic dish. Classy!

Feed Bag

When going to work or running errands around town, you may have to take up to three meals with you. Depending on how you separate food in your plastic containers, you may have eight or nine containers coming along for the ride.

Find or buy a “feed bag” dedicated to the job of transporting your food containers. I use a cheap backpack, but any type of bag with handles will work fine. Some people like to use leftover plastic sacks from the grocery store. However, a bag with multiple pockets is nice because you can carry extra stuff like plastic utensils, napkins, toothbrush, and mints. Always having these extras with your containers avoids you eating like a dog from your plastic dish in public places.

Miscellaneous 

There are several miscellaneous items necessary to eat every three hours that are useful.

You should be stocked up on plastic forks, spoons, and paper plates. Eating five or six times a day will leave you constantly washing dishes. Make use of the disposable alternatives. Save the pretty plates for guests.

I find that most food will not spoil during the day if sealed in a plastic container. If you are paranoid about such things or carrying something that you must keep cold, cold-packs may be necessary. Simply keep a couple of these in your freezer and toss one into your feed bag on your way out the door to keep your food cool. Good for the summer months!

I will discuss bulk cooking in a later article, but having more than one frying pan allows you to cook large quantities of food at once when preparing for the coming week. Not a requirement, but having an extra large pan does save cooking time.

I’m sure there are items I left out, but this list comprehensive enough to get anyone started eating healthy food. What else do you think would be handy for the Eat Every Three diet?

This is the first article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that will outline how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet…

There are many reasons why you should eat every three hours. It does not matter if your personal goals are to lose weight, tone, maintain or gain weight; eating every three hours is beneficial to both men and women from all walks of life.

This concept of eating every three hours is not new. There are multiple “diet” programs on the market today that utilize the technique. Many of these merely insert a snack between the customary breakfast, lunch and dinner. Other plans advocate grazing throughout the day. 

What I promote here at EatEveryThree.com is that all meals throughout the day are equally important and are generally the same size (with minor exceptions). None of this nonsense about eating a carrot and yogurt for a mid-afternoon meal.

Now don’t go off thinking that you can eat whatever you want every three hours. I’m talking good ol’ fashioned natural food. I can hear the groans already. No need to worry, there is always room for your favorite foods; you will just have incorporate your junk into a eating plan where the primary goal is living a long and healthy life. I’ll discuss it further later in the series.

Reasons you should eat every three hours:

Never be hungry again.

I believe most people avoid eating healthy foods because doing so is commonly associated with being hungry. I know of many people, including myself at one time, that started eating healthy only to discover that suffering through starvation pains is not worth the benefits that a healthy diet may provide.

Eating every three hours allows you to consume the healthy calories your body requires. And guess what? You will not be starving!

For now, just understand that men should be eating six meals and women should be eating five when consuming healthy food. In a future article, I will provide the details about how eating only three healthy meals a day (or less) will leave you starving and demonstrate how five or six meals is ideal.

Have peak energy throughout the day.

There are many factors that influence individual metabolism. Generally speaking, your metabolism will be highest while processing food during the digestion process. When your body has finished digesting food, your metabolism will slow.

Without getting too technical, the reason behind this metabolic effect is that food = energy, or more accurately calories = energy. Calories is the fuel your body needs to function. If your body is not processing calories, you will be in an energy deficit.

The normal person can digest a healthy meal in 2.5 to 3 hours. After that, the calories will be gone and your metabolism will slow. It makes sense to feed yourself again to keep the metabolism up!

There is more to calories than simply eating them. If that held true, you could eat HoHo’s and burgers for your calories and be just fine. The type of food you eat will also contribute to the level of energy that you have throughout the day. If you eat a burger and fries for lunch, the high levels of saturated fat will cause your metabolism to slow (there is more to it than that). Have you ever wondered why you are always drowsy at work in the afternoons?

Rarely become ill.

Be honest. How many healthy people do you know that get sick on a regular basis? When I say healthy, I don’t mean just skinny. Skinny people can be unhealthy. You know a fit and healthy person when you see one. I’m willing to bet most of you will struggle to name one person. Then ask yourself how many unhealthy people are sick. More than likely, you can name several people that are ill at regular intervals.

Before I found proper nutrition, I did not consider myself a sickly person. However, I did seem to fall ill twice a year. My illnesses were like clockwork. Once I started eating healthy, and every three hours, my scheduled illnesses became a thing of the past. People around me routinely fall ill, yet I do not. In the past I would have always picked up some virus that someone passed on. Now I believe my immune system is bolstered in such a way that it can easily destroy commonly transmitted germs.

There are always exceptions, I know eventually I will get knocked out by a flu because some bozo coughed in my face. Keep in mind I’m talking about the light flu’s, colds, and so on that cause you to call in sick two or three (or more) times per year. Kiss them goodbye with a healthy eating plan!

Easily achieve your fitness goals.

The beauty of eating five or six meals a day is the method works for any level of physical fitness (or lack thereof) and for just about any type of physical training. Want to lose weight? Stay the same? Gain muscle? Tone up a little? No problem! 

All you have to do is eat every three hours. Five meals for women; six for men.

The biggest adjusting you’ll need to make (based on your physical goals) is the number of calories you’ll eat in a day. When the calories are spread out across so many meals, the calorie difference per meal between losing and maintaining weight is quite small.

You may also need to adjust the macro-nutrient ratios (carbs, proteins, fats) depending on your goals. Don’t let that extra layer of meal administration, or the word “macro-nutrient”, scare you off; these ratios are easy to figure out and maintain once you know how….and I will teach you.

Get to stuff your face every three hours.

Eating every three hours is much more fun than eating three skimpy meals a day, or worse, eating only once a day. If you are like me, then you like to eat. Some people find a great deal of joy in eating. This type of “diet” requires you to stuff your face every three hours.  How can you complain about that?

Now you know the basics of why you should eat every three hours. The rest of the series will focus on the details and implementing a plan that will allow you to eat five or six meals a day.

Do you have a good reason why you should not, or cannot, eat every three hours? I would love to hear it!