Square Meals? What About a Hexagon?

People talk a lot about how to eat a nice, square meal 3 times a day and everything will be alright. I'm all for trying to make your meals beneficial and contain all the groups and whatnot, but I think forcing everything into just 3 times a day leads our bodies to crash and burn at times.

When we eat, most of the energy gets stored and made ready to use at a later time. Whenever you hear the word glycogen, this is what they are talking about. All those carbon chains involved in carbs, fat, and proteins get transformed into glycogen or chains of usable energy. You want these stores to be available throughout the day. A loss of the glycogen makes you feel groggy and tired and leads to naps and headaches. Because of this fact, you want to replace these stores when needed.

The easiest way to keep energy levels up and still be nutritionally sound is to eat more times during the day but less food at each time. It's quite simple. Take your normal day of eating 3 meals and split each up. You can either eat the same things just more spread out or you can learn to eat awesome snacks to take care of the gaps between meals.

The key to making this work is planning ahead. Brown bags at home and snack sized portions are a must. If you eat smaller meals (literally what you normally eat but less of it) work on making the snacks fiberful and nutritionally dense. Options I like for snacks include:

• Banana with peanut butter and skim milk
• Handful of mixed nuts and a glass of 100% fruit juice
• Bowl of cereal
• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• Cut up ANY vegetable and eat it fresh, maybe with some dressing
• A sandwich only using one slice of bread (like cutting it in half, and eat the other half later!)

I feel like I've written about this idea before, but I can't stress how awesome this method is for having day long energy. For athletes this is the best method, and for non/athletes if done correctly with portions, you can lose weight/gain weight as you desire!