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!