I’ve been turning my food logs in to my trainer and she told me… I need to eat more.

WHAT?

Not necessarily more calories. Just more times in the day. Three times a day is evidently not enough. I should be splitting my meals up into 5, 300 calorie sittings, not eating more than 500 calories in a meal. This keeps your metabolism raised throughout the day instead of rising and dropping.

Yes, I’m aware that there are other nutrition facts to consider other than calories. I know I need to look at carbs, fat, sodium all that good stuff, but calories is a standard number so we’ll go with that.

I went on to tell her of my dilemma of eating out. The portions are too ridiculously large and I don’t want my friends to give me a hard time about not eating enough.

She let me in on a trick. “As soon as you’re done eating half your meal, ask for a box. Don’t wait. Get the box and pack it up; that way you won’t be picking at it while you’re waiting for all your friends to finish.”

Genius. I will be making the to-go box my new best friend. Even if I’m going somewhere after dinner, surely there will be someone on the street that would benefit from my half a meal than just throwing it in the garbage. Or I’ll just consistently go out to eat with my friend Joe who eats everything that everyone doesn’t.

While it seemed like an obvious thing to do, things like eating five meals a day and eating half your meal don’t seem as obvious until you have a record of all your food intake in front of your face laid out in front of you and you can see day-to-day choices that can be improved by cutting back or spreading meals out.

Eating five meals has been really helpful. I always thought that feeling hungry on a diet was just part of the struggle, but it doesn’t have to be. Since I’ve been eating 5 smaller meals, I’ve been eating less food, never stay hungry. It’s kind of funny how that works. It makes all the difference. You can still eat all the yummy food you want for the most part, just space it out so that your metabolism can handle it better.