Sunshine in April

A current trend in eating and weight management is intermittent fasting, which means you eat during a specific window, then fast, or not eat, for stretches of time. Most follow a daily approach only eating during a 6 or 8 hour window, which means you fast for the other 16 to 18 hours. I found another variation on this with what is called a 5:2 approach, eating normally for five days of the week, then fasting by only eating one meal on the other two days.

Intermittent fasting seems to be rather popular and works well for some. For me? No. My spouse would not like me if I did either of these programs. I’m not sure I’d like myself. Hangry April is not a pleasant person to be around! Heck, I already fast for around 10 hours every night and that is plenty for me.

What do I do instead? I do the opposite and eat 5-6 times a day. Forget the 3 meals of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I get to eat breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, dinner, and maybe another snack for a 6^th meal! For someone who loves to eat, this is the best. I used to joke I only work out so I can eat more. Well, maybe there’s some truth to that and now, eating 5, sometimes 6, times a day, I get to eat more. WINNING!  

Eating frequently is about when to eat and what to eat, which for me meant making habit changes. I tried this approach years before but didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t understand it meant eating smaller meals. OOPS – got that one wrong. I was so ingrained with the 3 meals a day and eating ‘regular’ meals, which in America means bigger portion sizes, that I didn’t learn enough about what smaller meals and the importance of protein meant.

For this carb loving woman, eating more protein took intentional work! Who knew that heavy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, corn, and pancakes spike blood sugar? RUDE! Not only do they do that, but they overload the pancreas’ production of insulin. Extra rude! I knew this on some level as my family is prone to Type 2 diabetes and I was overdoing the carb intake. So much sugar was overtaxing my body (brain), and I was sleepy much of the time. Too many carbs at breakfast or lunch and I couldn’t’ keep my eyes open. Too many carbs in the evening and I wasn’t getting quality sleep.

If I couldn’t have my favorite foods or eat what I thought were real meals, how was I going to make this change?! I was ready so that was a good start. I gave it another try with more information on how to make it work. This time around, I had help. I did a program that helped retrain my habits of when to eat that also taught me what to eat. I’m sure my coach was frustrated with me many times because I was slow on the educational portion and reading what she sent to me. My bad! But I eventually did work through the material.

I’m not sure who benefitted more, but my spouse loves this type of eating plan. Why is he important? Because he is on the receiving end of Hangry April. Hangry April either shuts down due to lack of fuel or she lashes out like a tiger protecting her cubs. He was also on the receiving end of overeating carb crappy company April, who was tired and cranky much of the time. Eating 5 to 6 times a day April is more pleasant to be around.

So, how does this work for me?

Within an hour of when I get up, I have a protein shake in my coffee for breakfast. Just a little something around 100 calories to jumpstart my brain and fuel my body. Then I set a timer so I don’t have to think about when to eat next. Thank you EatWise app creators for helping me with this process. Everybody knows when my timer goes off, it’s time to eat. This app sets up 5 to 6 eating times a day separated by 2-3 hours. The idea is to give your body at least 2 hours to digest a small meal before eating again, but not go over 3 hours because your metabolism starts to slow. I set my timers for 2 hours and 45 minutes, which gives me a 15-minute window to seek out my next meal.

My brunch, 2^nd meal, is usually a small mix of protein, veggies, and healthy fat. It may be breakfast food or leftovers from dinner. The veggies and dinner leftovers were an adjustment. Releasing my previously limited idea of what qualified as breakfast foods freed me up for more options and I love it. Eggs, cauliflower rice and cheese are great, but so is last night’s chicken and asparagus.

My lunch, 3^rd meal, may be another small meal or a light snack, depending on the day and hunger levels. Hunger levels often depend on the previous day’s activities and active days require more fuel. With any meal, I sometimes add a complex carb (brown rice, whole wheat toast, beans), but find I still react to too many carbs, so I keep those portions smaller. A snack could be a small handful of nuts, a cheese stick (OMG, I do love cheese), cut up veggies with a dip, hard-boiled egg, or anything with a mix of protein and/or healthy fat.

By snack time, or my 4^th meal, I’m ready for dinner, but these ridiculous people in my house tell me I’ve already joined the senior club of early dinner specials. I’m not mad about that! However, for the sake of family, I try to eat a small snack here, but sometimes I just want dinner. Again, it may depend on how active I’ve been and how much fuel my body needs at this point in the day. If I could get them on board, we’d definitely have dinner around 4 or 5!

We’ll call the 5^th meal dinner since it is sometimes a regular or snack size dinner with the family or it could be another light snack.

If you haven’t caught on, having some level of protein and healthy fat with each meal helps slow digestion and lasts longer than my previous carb loaded meals. That was another piece of the puzzle I was missing before and why this type of eating plan can be great for blood sugar, metabolism, not getting hangry, and not overeating. But all of that we will revisit another day.

For now, I’ll end with a few tricks:

• Always have snacks on hand stashed in your purse, car, pantry, office drawer…
• Don’t forget to set your timer at each meal. I have no affiliation with EatWise and there are other apps with similar features.
• Use a 9-inch plate to keep the meal small.
• Limit simple sugars most of the time.
• Drink at least 64 ounces of water to help stay hydrated (which is sometimes confused as hunger)
• Planning meals ahead helps, but I’m not always best at that.