How many times have you reasoned with yourself that if you eat badly one day, you can undo it the following day by simply not eating much?

The main problem with this logic is that drastically restricting calories is both dangerous and counter productive. Starving yourself will leave you feeling fatigued and sick before you ever witness any weight loss. Let’s face it, the body needs food to survive and there is no getting around this.

With today’s busy lifestyle, most people don’t eat often enough. Skipping meals is a frequent occurrence that’s detrimental to any successful weight loss program. The body has two modes, feast and famine. When the body is inconsistently fed, it naturally moves into famine mode where it stores calories as fat, and converts excess carbohydrates into fat.

The feast mode is most effective for weight loss as the body is consistently fed at regular intervals. In this mode, the body does not hold onto excess calories or carbohydrate as fat, because it has a constant fuel source. The body automatically begins to burn excess stored fat because it no longer needs to hold onto it. People who feed their bodies regularly with small, nutritious meals will see results faster.

Your metabolic rate is directly influenced by your eating habits. Your metabolism is comparable to a fire. A slow metabolic rate is comparable to a fire that has burned down to coals. Even if a log is thrown on to the fire, it still takes a long time to burn. A high metabolism is comparable to a raging fire, it doesn’t matter how big or small the log is, it still consumes the wood at an incredibly fast pace. The human body is the exact same way. No fuel, small fire. More fuel, bigger flames. The more frequently you consume food, the faster your body will naturally burn it. In short, the body needs to be fed a minimum of 3 healthy meals daily with 1-2 snacks.

According to the book  Eat More, Weigh Less, by Dean Ornish, MD, who advocates eating a high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian diet to help you lose weight, you can eat as much of the following foods as you would like, whenever you are hungry:

• Beans and legumes
• Fruits — anything from apples to watermelon, from raspberries to pineapples
• Grains
• Vegetables