Are Your Eating Habits Making You Fat?

Are Your Eating Habits Making You Fat?

Page 1 of 2
Every day, you wake up early for work. You skip breakfast and settle for coffee instead. During lunch, you're overloaded with last-minute tasks, so as soon as you get some free time, you rush to the cafeteria and wolf down a meal. When you come home, you pig out on food fit for three people. Then you crash in front of the television, waiting for the day (and indigestion) to end.

This lifestyle is common for many of us, but did you know there are at least half a dozen fattening habits in the aforementioned routine? It doesn't matter if you're on a low-fat or low-carb diet; if your day is like the one described above, the answer to why you might be getting a spare tire is as simple as poor eating habits.

What bad eating habits, you say? Glad you asked...


Too many of us eat huge meals. Assuming that our bodies will be able to handle a meal three times bigger than usual because we skipped a meal or two is one nasty delusion. Bingeing is possibly the biggest cause of weight gain in America.

The more food your body has to digest at one time, the more food it stores as fat. There is only so much your body can process in one sitting, so whatever it can't digest, it either throws away or stores as fat. Fat is not just something God created to make it harder to pick up girls; it's actually food reserves, so by definition, food gets stored when there is too much of it.

Eating five or six small meals a day is becoming more popular nowadays, and with good reason. Consuming smaller meals more frequently raises the body's thermal effect, which results in a 10% increase in calorie burning. Plus, the body simply doesn't store as much fat.

Starving yourself

After bingeing usually comes starvation. If your last meal of the day is at 6 p.m., your body goes through about 14 hours of starvation before it is fed again. And if you skip breakfast, this period of starvation can stretch out to 18 hours!

Why is starvation bad? Imagine you are in an old Victorian prison, being fed only when the guards remember. What will you do when you actually get a meal? You will save as much as you can in anticipation of the next time the guards forget about you. The body does the exact same thing — if you starve yourself, it will store food as fat the next time you eat.

Between sugar, caffeine and carbs, it's easy to become fat...


Show Comments