Eating every three hours can be a hectic venture to the recently initiated. As a result, it’s not difficult for people to find excuses to jump off the bandwagon before the diet can become habit. Coming up with excuses to try something new is not uncommon. People seem to want something for nothing. In reality, you can’t achieve results for free. You must put forth some effort.

Many of the problems with this diet revolve around scheduling and eating. The excuses for these problems are easy to resolve. Let’s take a look at the most common excuses I have come across in my travels.

I Don’t Need to Eat Every Three Hours

If you have energy throughout the day, you are never hungry between meals, you are comfortable with your weight, and then maybe you are right. You don’t need to eat every three hours. However, if you are like most people maybe you should rethink your position. There are many reasons to begin eating every three hours.

I Don’t Have the Time

Really? You don’t have 10-15 minutes? You are in the habit of taking your time in order to feel full and/or enjoy the experience of eating. That makes sense if don’t eat for another five or six hours. It does not take long to eat a meal when properly motivated. You don’t want it to take your time. You don’t want to waste much time when eating every three hours, or you will be doing nothing but eating.

I’m sure you can find 10-15 minutes to eat a quick meal. Take a break. In the time you would have spent chatting to a friend or smoking a cancer-stick you could have eaten a small meal.

If you really don’t have a little time, you may have larger problems with your schedule. Consider managing your time differently. The internet is full of great time management tools. Steve Pavlina also provides information on time management systems that are easy to implement.

Look at it this way; you are not spending more time eating when eating every three hours. You are just taking your original 30 minute meals and cutting them in half so they are less than 15 minutes. So there. No excuses.

My Work is Too Busy

This is a common excuse, and probably the most valid. In my opinion, a busy job only makes it difficult, but not impossible, to eat at specific times on your planned schedule. There is room for flexibility when eating every three hours. I understand there will always be days when time cannot be made to eat a quick meal. On the other hand, you must make time for something as important as your health and achieving your goals.

If you take a smoke break at work, ”I’m too busy” is not a valid excuse. Eating your meal is far more productive than destroying your lungs.

Take a shorter lunch break. This may not be applicable to all jobs. You don’t need an hour lunch break. Shorten it up and take 15 minutes earlier in the day and another 15 later in the day. You are still only taking an hour off but spreading it out. That also is a good reason to justify eating extra meals to your boss.

If you are actively thinking about when to eat your next meal when work is busy, I’m sure that you can find the time on most days. Most jobs allow for small breaks or lulls in the schedule.

I Can’t Eat That Much

Perhaps, but I have some good tips to help with this problem.

I’m Not Hungry

If you’re not hungry, that is a good thing. Why go through the misery of being hungry? It’s a dreadful feeling. Why not eat and prevent hunger before it happens?

If you feel like you are still full from eating the previous meal, you might fall in the “I Cannot Eat That Much” category.

I Don’t Have a Microwave at Work

Bummer. Then you need to create meals that don’t require a microwave. There’s nothing wrong with a cold lunch.

My Family Will Not Eat Every Three Hours

Family can be tough. When your spouse or significant other does not eat every three hours it can be very difficult to maintain the schedule. If you have a job, then half (or more) of your meals will be eaten away from your family, so it should not be such a big deal. Your family will appreciate if you can schedule one of your meals to coincide with a family meal.

As with anything else in life, you will not be successful in any endeavor without the support of your spouse, and perhaps the rest of your family. You need to talk with them about your goals and the reasons behind your diet plan. Ask for Demand their support.

I Can’t Afford to Eat Every Three Hours

Eating natural and healthy food can be expensive, but it does not have to be that way. There are ways to limit your grocery expenses when on a diet such as ours.

There you have it. Remember, it takes time to form the habit. Difficulties that you may run into when starting a new diet will go away with a little common sense, effort and time. Just give the diet, and you, a chance to succeed. You will not regret eating healthy.

What excuses do you have (or use to have) to avoid eating every three hours?

Many health guru’s will tell you that you can have all of your favorite foods in moderation, and you don’t have to count calories. Maybe you orderd something healthy at dinner only to have a friend or family member say you could have something else (unhealthy) if you only eat in moderation.

Give me a break. If your health goals involve losing weight, you have to count calories if you want consistent results. Living in the land of “moderation” will only make you fatter. Let me explain why eating in moderation does not work.

A Little Adds Up

Let us say you are going to have your favorite foods in moderation. Which is the same thing as reasonable portions every one in a while. Consider the following:

Each one of the above on their own is no big deal. Could you look through that list and say you only have one of those a month? In a week?

More than likely you eat all of those things every week or month. You are eating reasonable portions of your favorite foods every once in a while. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, in a months time you would have eaten 8 slices of pizza, 8 beers, 4 fast food hamburgers, 4 donuts, 4 bowls of popcorn, 1 slice of office cake, and a big plate of pasta. Does it still sound like your life of moderation is a healthy lifestyle?

Believe it or not, that scenario is conservative. If you take a close look at your diet and you may find yourself eating far more than you realize under the disguise of “moderation”. I’m willing to bet you are combining some of those items in a single meal.

What Moderation Really Means

While I have painted a grim picture of moderation, it only represents how most people view food when eating in moderation. What moderation should represent to you is eating ONE favorite food every once in a while (once a week).

This can be flexible depending on your goals. If you are losing weight, “once in a while” should mean once a week to you. If you are active, healthy, and maintaining your weight, you can get a way with a reasonable portion of your favorite food couple times a week.

Still Need to Count the Calories

If you choose to eat your favorite foods every once in a while, you still need to count the calories and keep track of it in your food log. Staying under your target calories for the day will limit the impact a large calorie meal will have on your results.

Don’t forget if you eat more calories than your body can use over the next few hours, it will get stored as fat. This is why it’s important to limit your portion sizes of your favorite foods.

My advice is to eat your favorite foods while tracking the calories. This may help limit the amount you will eat and keep you on track towards the goals of your diet. “Moderation” without keeping track of what you are eating will only make you fatter.

What do you think?

Most clear thinking people understand they don’t know everything and are open to learning something new. There is always more we can learn about weight loss. Despite that, there is some knowledge that people hold on to as gospel. Many try to be open to a new way of thinking, but tend to revert back to their original way of doing things. Today, we will take a closer look at how culture views dieting and eating. If you have trouble losing weight or simply want to learn something new about nutrition, read on!

As the great Yoda would say:

You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned

Much of what we learn from our parents, school, or watching the television, seems to entrench itself into our cultures and become “fact”. In reality, much of what we know is just learned habits. Habits can be broken so that new and better habits can be put into their place. All we have to do is realize the popular methods may not be the best way and be open to relearning what we think we know.

Eat Less to Lose Weight – WRONG

Eating less is widely accepted as a way to lose weight. While generally true, eating less to lose weight is NOT a fact. Many overweight or obese people don’t eat more calories than healthier people. They simply eat their calories at the wrong time(s) of the day, or perhaps eat more calories than their daily activity requires (which is not necessarily a large number of calories). For these folks, eating less may actually slow their metabolism further which will eventually lead to them needing even fewer calories to maintain their current weight. This cycle of lowering calories to lose weight cannot continue; from there weight gain is really the only option.

Eat More and You Will Gain Weight – WRONG

You can gain weight if you eat too much or too often. It’s NOT a fact. There are plenty of people in the world that can eat more calories and not gain weight because they are active. Eating unprocessed foods with a low calorie density will allow a person to consume much more throughout the day without gaining weight.

Many people realize that activity determines if they can eat more and “get away with it”. Those same people might exercise a great deal and complain about their performance not improving. Most of the time they are not getting enough calories to fuel their body so they can take their exercise to the next level. But when someone suggests eating more calories, they refuse because they don’t want to gain weight. It’s a programmed response that has become habit, even if they acknowledge that eating more food can be beneficial, they won’t be able to do it.

Everyone Should Eat X Calories – WRONG

There are an endless number of diets pushed on late night infommericals that will tell you how many calories to eat in a day. Every nutrition label on every item of food in the grocery store states “… based on a 2000 calorie diet” which leads many to believe this is the proper number of calories to eat. This is NOT a fact.

No two people are the same. Each person has their own special calorie needs. If there is a diet program that tells you the ideal number of calories to eat, they are likely wrong and the diet will fail. Sure, there are diets that say eat 800 calories a day, such as the ridiculous cookie diet, then you will lose weight. These diets are designed to get you quick results so they can sell more units. You will almost always gain the weight back after your metabolism slows down in response to the extremely low calories.

You must determine your own calorie needs in order to be successful in your health and fitness efforts.

You Have to Eat “Rabbit Food” to Lost Weight - WRONG

While eating more vegetables is a good idea and part of a balanced eating plan, they only make up a small portion of the calories you need. Foods that most rabbits would avoid are necessary on any good diet plan. While you will lose weight eating only vegetables, the extreme low calories will trash your metabolism to the point where eating just about anything will cause you to gain weight.

Being Fat (or Skinny) is in my Genes – PROBABLY NOT

While there are people that are predisposed to a certain body type, it does not mean you are genetically doomed to being fat. Only a very small number of people have genetic issues that cause them to be overweight, most likely the result of regulation issues with their hormones. Most everyone else is the result of following the poor eating habits of your family and friends.

You’ll get better results in your health if you stop blaming your genes for your failures.

Six Meals a Day is Better Suited for Athletes – WRONG

Anyone that has heard of the Olympics has also heard of Michael Phelps. This guy, as well as many athletes, must eat an extreme amount of calories due to their high levels of activity. Eating many meals a day works for athletes only because they can’t eat all of their calories in just a few meals.

You don’t have to be a world-class athlete to eat five or six meals a day. You only need to scale back the calories. You can benefit from feeding your body the correct amount of calories to fuel your activity throughout the day, just like an athlete.

Diet Soda is Good For Me – WRONG

Diet soda’s are the go-to drink for anyone who wants to cut down on their calories. These drinks taste good and are often with zero calories, which make it easy to incorporate into a diet plan. But…

There are numerous studies in regard to the health related issues associated with diet soft drinks. There are statistics that show those who drink diet sodas are almost certain to become obese. There are numerous factors that contribute to this, but diet soda does not help. If you consume ANY diet drinks during the day, you have a 36.5% chance of becoming obese. If you drink two cans a day, you chances of becoming obese jumps up to a staggering 57.1%.

If you care in the least bit about your health, drop the diet soda.

Eating a Natural Balanced Meal Every Three Hours Will Increase My Energy Levels and Allow Me to Eat More Food is Exactly What I Need to Achieve My Health and Fitness Goals - TRUE!

Yes, this is a shameless plug, but it is true.  

Three meals a day is programmed into our limbic brain. After decades of eating on the schedule I am suddenly asking you to double the number of times you eat in a day. No matter how much sense it makes on the surface, when it comes time to eat, you will have a difficult time convincing yourself you need to eat a second breakfast, second lunch and perhaps second dinner.

Resist the bad habits and focus on the reasons you should start eating every three hours.

It’s All About Forming New Habits

Making lifestyle changes in order to improve your health is all about breaking old habits and forming new ones to replace them. Steve Pavlina runs a personal development blog and wrote an article titled 30 Days to Success that describes forming new habits in just a month. On one of my favorite blogs, Zenhabits.net, there is an article that offers advice in regard to forming new habits.

There are many myths regarding dieting and nutrition that we regard as fact, but in the end is not true. Do you have any diet myths or habit forming tips you would like to share?

Have you ever heard a family member or friend talk about starting a new diet and eating only “healthy” food such as salads, fruits, and, non-fat yogurt only to find a short while later they are unable to keep on the diet plan because they feel as if they are starving? Perhaps you have experienced this yourself?

It’s generally considered common knowledge that we must cut calories in order to lose weight. It’s also common knowledge that salads, fruits, and non-fat yogurts have less calories than pizza, hamburgers, and ice cream. So, if we want to lose weight it makes sense that we replace the high-calorie foods with low calorie alternatives. However…

If you eat three healthy meals a day you will only succeed in starving yourself.

While we may lose weight by doing this, it’s difficult to maintain a diet that consists of three low calorie meals over the long-term. Many of us will tend to binge on one of our daily meals, or perhaps the starvation pains kick-in after a couple weeks. Even though some weight loss has occurred, the weight will often return once the old eating habits take over. This is the diet roller-coaster.

If you can relate, take comfort in knowing that your chances of succeeding with such a diet is extremely small. In fact, had you kept it up for a long time you may have caused yourself some additional health problems. Failure is almost unavoidable since your body has mechanisms in place to prevent you from starving.

The weight loss results from eating in this manner are not worth the pain and mental distress that comes with borderline starvation. I’m not sure about you, but I’d rather be fat and happy than thin and miserable by eating in this manner. Life is far too short. The simple fact of the matter is there are not enough calories in three meals of healthy food to keep your body functioning as it should.

Unless you recently won a hotdog eating championship and/or have an unnaturally large stomach, it’s unrealistic to eat your required number of calories each day by only eating three healthy meals. This is where eating every three hours enters the picture.

Eating five or six healthy meals a day enables you to lose weight while practically stuffing yourself.

Generally speaking, good natural health foods are lower in calories than their processed counterparts. 300 calories of healthy food is very filling compared to the 300 calories of a hamburger (small part of a whole burger) which will leave you hungry for more.

As I already mentioned, the 300 calorie healthy meal won’t cut it when three meals will only total 900 calories. You won’t last long like that, especially men. However, try eating 300 calories every few hours and you’ll be getting 1500 to 1800 calories a day depending on if you go with five or six meals.  As long as these calorie numbers are less than the calories needed to maintain your current weight, you will lose weight while eating every three hours!  See, no need to starve yourself!

Would you rather eat three healthy meals and starve, or eat healthy meals every three hours and still lose weight?

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 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?

While out to dinner with family or friends have you ever ordered a chicken caesar salad (or any healthy meal) only to have someone yell out “Are you on a diet or something?”.

Maybe you had a fat-burger for lunch and you feel like something light for dinner. Perhaps you are trying to lose weight. The practical reasons for your meal choice does not matter to society. If you eat healthy, then you must be on some diet and people feel the urge to pick at those perceived to be “on a diet”.

This behavior is the result of society giving special meaning to to the word “diet”. I use the word often here at EatEveryThree.com and feel the need to clarify the usage.

Let us analyze the word. I turned to the online edition of Merriam-Webster to provide a definition to “diet”:

a: food and drink regularly provided or consumed b: habitual nourishment c: the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason d: a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight <going on a diet> 

As you can see, there are four definitions there. Judging by the first three it’s safe to say that every living organism is on some sort of diet. Some nourishment must be consumed in order to survive. Most people generally eat the same types of foods week-to-week. This means everybody is “on a diet”.

The last definition was probably inserted due to how society views the word. The irritating part to me is the “eating and drinking sparingly“. It does not have much relation to the other definitions. It also implies that when you are not eating sparingly that one’s weight will increase. It’s simply not always true.

For future reference, my use of the word on EatEveryThree.com will be in relation to the a, b, and c definitions. I believe people should be on a habitual diet of balanced natural foods that are consistently consumed every three hours. There is no diet to be “on”, as that translates to some day being “off” from healthy eating.

I could be making a big deal out of nothing. Perhaps I’m more bothered by the negative connotations associated with eating in order to lose weight. It was not long ago when overweight people were embarrassed to order unhealthy food. These days it seems people are embarrassed to order healthy meals and are sometimes criticized for doing so.

What are your thoughts? Am I getting carried away over nothing?