The power of food goes beyond just keeping us satisfied and full, regularly eating proper meals throughout the day is something our body needs! When someone is overweight or has been ill for long periods of time then your body loses the ability to function at its highest efficiency, eating small regular meals through the day helps your body to recover and repair that ‘damage’ your body has endured.

When people think of weight loss 9/10 times no one turns to food, people generally ‘shrink’ their food with the mindset of it will ‘shrink my body’. Unfortunately most of us don’t eat enough food throughout the day. When you are consistently not eating enough food your body enters a phase where we are ‘storing fat’ not burning fat. This phase involves something know as the “Thrifty Genes”. Thrifty Genes tell our body to store fat wherever possible in periods of famine, food scarcity or when the body is preparing for periods of fasting. These Thrifty Genes tell our body to store fat as ‘back up fuel’. Eating regular meals throughout the day helps to eliminate and ward off these ‘Thrifty Genes’ and ramp up our metabolism.

I would like to re-introduce your guys to the hormone ‘Leptin’. I have spoken about this hormone in previous blogs. Leptin is the hormone which helps to tell your body when you are full. When your hormones are unbalanced, this can compromise your body’s ability to recognize you are full and keep in a constant hungry state, instead. When you are not eating regularly this can slow down your metabolism and effect your appetite. The best way to reignite your metabolism and appetite is to slowly reintroduce small meals into your system.

To think that food is the enemy when it comes to weight loss is the exact opposite. Our body needs food to function! Eating regularly helps your body repair and recover, and refueling your body adequately helps your body to functions correctly. We need to eat. If you are not consistently maintaining an adequate amount of fuel in your system then your body is going to be playing catch up and instead of ideally losing weight your body is going to store body fat to use in moments of food scarcity and famine.

• Coach Emilia