Is Grazing A Good Idea?

A number of years ago, grazing was touted as the best way to lose weight.

Eat small portions throughout the day and this prevents you from getting hungry and overeating and “keeps your metabolism up.”

The problem with this is that eating food all day long also keeps your insulin up and under the right conditions, the presences of insulin causes your body to store calories as FAT.

When you eat food, your blood sugar (glucose) rises. Your gut and brain respond by pumping out insulin to bring that glucose back down and  move it from the blood into cells to be used as energy immediately or into storage as glycogen in the muscle and liver cells.

When you graze, you are constantly adding food into your body without giving enough time for it to be used as energy and your insulin doesn’t get a chance to stop pumping.

For example, if you eat food at noon, your blood sugar goes up and then insulin also goes up.

Then you eat more food at 1:00 p.m.  Your blood sugar goes up and your insulin goes up again.

There hasn’t been enough time or activity for all of your blood glucose to be used as immediate energy. The excess  gets stored in muscle and liver, like I mentioned earlier.

However, now your muscle cells  and liver cells are full (blood sugar is stored here in the form of glycogen) and there is NO MORE ROOM in these cells and all that food that you ate at 1:00 gets converted stored as FAT!

Sooo…grazing keeps your glucose up and therefore your insulin is also elevated. When this happens and your muscle cells and liver cells are full of glycogen (the stored form of blood sugar) this combo is a recipe for FAT STORAGE.

You’ll have better fat loss if you leave at least 3-4 hours between meals.

Let me know if you have any questions. 

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