Proper nutrition: how to organize everything correctly

It is quite difficult to surprise the modern average person with a diet, even the most unusual one. This also applies to frequent meals in small portions. At first glance, everything is simple. But, if you are going to try fractional meals for weight loss as an alternative to other diets, you need to seriously study the principles of its proper use.

What does fractional nutrition mean?

You will be surprised, but this system was developed for patients not by nutritionists, but by specialized medical specialists. They had an important goal - to find and implement an effective method of helping people suffering from gastrointestinal diseases, including gastritis and stomach ulcers. Over time, it became clear that proper fractional nutrition is also a preventative measure accessible to everyone, an effective and easy way to lose weight. The essence of the technique: The patient eats often (breaks are two to four hours), but in small portions.

How does the mechanism of a traditional diet work?

Most people typically eat three times a day - in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening, shortly before bed. The breaks between meals in this case are quite long. At this time, the human body produces substances that stimulate the desire to eat. Important! Severe hunger significantly reduces the feeling of fullness with food. The sense of proportion disappears. A negative result is overeating, a significant excess of the amount of food required by a person.

What does fractional meals provide (the menu corresponds to specific requests)?

The new diet does not allow the feeling of hunger to form. The patient, according to experts, eats as much as is necessary for the normal functioning of his body. No less, no more. It should be understood that long breaks between meals favor the storage of fat reserves. With fractional nutrition, the digestive system processes both the food eaten and the stored reserves.

We eat fractionally - how and why

The usual diet contains a maximum of 3 parts - breakfast, lunch and dinner. In the realities of a fast pace of life, their number is reduced to 1-2, but the amount eaten at one time increases significantly. In the morning, a person who wants to lose weight, but is hungry, pounces on food and comes to his senses when everything that was on the table has already been consumed. But the food is digested and by nightfall you want to eat again, so you have to look in the refrigerator and eat before going to bed.

Switching to a different lifestyle means eating 6-8 times a day in minimal portions. In addition, you will not have time to feel hungry, because the interval between meals will be only 2-2.5 hours. The desire to fill your stomach will not have time to form, so not much will be eaten.

The fractional meal menu for each day must be compiled correctly, preferably according to the recommendations of a specialist. In the morning you need to eat carbohydrates, and in the evening - preferably only light proteins.

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Nutritionist's comment:

This approach to eating helps you lose excess weight, speeds up your metabolism and increases your calorie expenditure throughout the day. The basis is the thermogenic effect - when we eat more often, we spend the consumed calories on processing and assimilation of food. If you take frequent portions of energy, much more energy will be spent on their absorption. But it is important to control your condition and be aware of possible disorders in the body due to severe changes. Sometimes, without supervision, a person’s functions of certain organs are inhibited, metabolism or the functioning of the body is disrupted. It is necessary to change the regimen scheme in time or abandon it.

Fractional meals. Where to begin?

Choose the meal option that best suits your lifestyle. There are several such options. They are formed depending on several factors:

1. Physical and intellectual stress.
2. Amount of free time.
3. The needs of a specific person for a certain quantity and quality of products.

Option one

Eat food whenever you feel hungry. Please note that you should not snack on hamburgers or cutlets with white bread, but on fresh fruit. You can just drink a glass of juice. Or enjoy delicious, not buttery cookies. The task of fractional nutrition: to satisfy the hunger that arises only with the amount of food that neutralizes appetite. Products vary depending on your preferences and your doctor's orders. Note. This regimen involves eating every hour. In some cases, even more often. The patient needs to learn to detect the slightest manifestation of hunger and immediately satisfy it without consuming too much food.

Option two

Choose this method if you go to work every day, when you simply don’t have the time or opportunity to snack too often. Meals can be divided into five to six meals:

1. Breakfast,
2. Snack.
3. Dinner.
4. Afternoon snack.
5. Dinner.
6. Light snack (fruit or juice).

On the subject: The benefits and harms of stevia If you do not have serious problems with the gastrointestinal tract, the usual menu can be left without significant changes. If there is a need to stabilize your body weight, you will have to give up some foods (especially sweet and flour products) and limit the amount of food you consume. Important! Regardless of the specific method of fractional nutrition, a mandatory condition should be the daily consumption of one two to two and a half liters of clean water.

How to create a healthy nutrition menu?

The first step towards healthy eating is the menu. After all, it is the list of “allowed” products that will determine the variety of dishes and the system of snacks.

When creating a healthy nutrition menu, nutritionists focus on several key principles:

• Meat in the diet should be combined with vegetables and fruits;
• To function properly, you need to consume approximately 100-150 grams of protein per day;
• If desired, sweets can be included in the diet. But it is important to remember that their consumption should be strictly calculated according to the amount of sugar, and you should not eat desserts in the afternoon;
• Canned and semi-finished products, all kinds of sauces, as well as representatives of fast foods are strictly prohibited;
• The “Food Pyramid” is a great way to systematize nutrition that you can use as a guide.

In addition, when creating a menu, it is important to focus on the time intervals between meals. Depending on their duration, the saturation of dishes with certain elements is determined. But there are also fairly general rules. For example, it is best to have breakfast half an hour after waking up, and have dinner about three hours before bedtime.

Fractional power system. Beneficial effect

The benefits of eating in small portions at short intervals are spoken of by scientists, doctors and patients who use this technique for losing weight (without the need for special physical and psychological stress).
The main argument in favor of fractional nutrition among ordinary people: The system allows, in most cases, not to give up familiar products, not to limit their range too much. You just need to make sure whether they are useful to you personally. Find out the causes of excess weight and ways to quickly lose weight

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But that's not all. For a certain percentage of patients, the ability to lose weight without constantly feeling hungry is an even more significant factor. After all, many effective diets are often not suitable for most people precisely for this reason.

Benefits of fractional meals

Other, no less important arguments in favor should also include:

• Imperceptible adaptation of the body to changes in diet. This happens through a gradual process of reducing calories.
• Stability of positive weight loss results.
• Stopping the deposition of fat mass in problem areas (mainly on the hips and abdomen in women and on the waist and abdomen in men).
• The possibility of using the technique both by healthy people and patients with a large list of pathologies. Fractional meals fit well into the general course of treatment for weight loss or in the presence of one of the chronic diseases. Doctors often recommend this method to people with symptoms of gastritis, colitis and stomach ulcers.
• Decreased blood sugar with frequent meals. A special diet, combined with a regimen of fractional meals, under close medical supervision, serves as an effective means of helping patients suffering from diabetes.
• Normalization of the functions of the digestive system. The body digests and assimilates food in small volumes easier, faster and more efficiently. This is a very flexible power system. It can be easily adapted to suit specific individual needs and daily work routines.
• Improved performance. Drowsiness is one of the characteristic signs of body overload (in our case, due to the need to process large portions of food). With fractional meals, evening consumption of high-calorie foods is excluded. During sleep, the body receives all the opportunities for proper rest.

Important! Small meals (for weight loss) speed up metabolism. This is a necessary condition when implementing any dietary program with a similar goal. Eating more often will help increase the efficiency of your body's metabolic processes.

Portion sizes for fractional meals

Now let's figure out how to correctly distribute the daily calorie intake per day. The meal will consist of three main parts of 400-500 kcal each and 3 light snacks of 200-250 kcal each. Adding everything together you will get a person’s daily requirement. If you want to speed up the process of losing weight, reduce the number of calories proportionally, but not more than 1200, this is a critical figure.

In order to eat properly at home, without resorting to constantly weighing food, you can use the palm principle. A woman's palm can hold approximately 100 gm of food, while a man's palm can hold about 150 gm. If your palm is clenched into a fist, then its size will correspond to 200 gm for women and 250 gm for men.

Interesting fact! Do you know that your stomach is the size of two fists folded together, this is considered a normal size. When we overeat, the stomach stretches and “demands” more food. Fractional meals, thanks to the main rule of small portions, help return the stomach to the correct state.

By comparing serving sizes in this way, you can roughly estimate each meal without resorting to complex calorie calculations, which means switching to a new food system will not cause discomfort. And your gastrointestinal system will be grateful for moderate food consumption, which will have a beneficial effect on the functioning of the entire body.

In addition, you can always resort to special tables on the calorie content of foods.

Fractional meals for weight loss. Competent menu planning

Please note the following requirements. The effectiveness of the system and the healing effect depend on their strict implementation!

Optimizing your diet

On average, five or six meals. The interval is two or three hours.

Batch optimization

Food should fit into a two-hundred-gram glass, but no more!

System stability

The diet must be followed even in the absence of appetite.

Satisfaction of the first meal

The body should receive a good energy charge in the morning. Its strength must be correctly calculated. Get used to eating porridge. They have a lot of healthy carbohydrates.

Hot lunch dishes

They are a mandatory element of fractional nutrition. We recommend including them on your lunch menu. Give preference to light soups and side dishes. On the subject: How to overcome food cravings

Hot dishes for dinner

The most suitable evening meals include various stews, boiled or baked meats, and stewed vegetables.

Low-calorie snacks

For intermediate meals, fruits, vegetables, grain bread, low-fat cottage cheese, muesli (unsweetened), cereal porridge, and natural yoghurt are best suited.

Note. Coffee, candy, chocolate products, nuts and any fatty foods should be excluded from the diet between main meals. These are foods high in calories and also high in fat and sugar.

Daily energy requirement

Calculate your diet so that your body receives all the proteins, fats, vitamins, carbohydrates, and beneficial minerals it needs. It is also important to correctly combine them with each other, taking into account quantitative indicators.

Selection of products for weight loss

The principle is simple - choose foods that contain few calories for fractional meals. Your body must get used to the new, more economical energy consumption.

Correct transition to a fractional power system

Experts recommend starting on weekends. This will make it easier to adjust to an unusual daily routine.

Menu creation

The grocery list should be determined several days in advance (it’s best to do this on Sunday). Calculate the exact number of meals, the time periods between them, and the number of calories you need. It will be easier for you to get used to the new power system without creating unnecessary problems for yourself during the work week. Note. One should not confuse unsystematic eating in different, albeit short, periods of time with fractional meals. It is based solely on strict compliance with a number of conditions and regulations. This is a complete system of competent consumption of energy-rich food in the quantities that your body needs.

Important Exception

Do you feel very hungry between long breaks during your usual routine (breakfast, lunch, dinner)? Then complicating your life activities (especially with a busy work schedule) does not make any practical sense. This system will not suit you even if you are planning to lose weight in a short period of time. The program is designed for long-term use with delayed but stable results.

Physical exercise

They are not required, but recommended. The body should be kept in good tone. If a diet (any diet) is combined with sports, walking, hiking, running and exercise, its effect is greatly enhanced.

Meat dishes and vegetables

A low-fat meat dish is best eaten together with greens and raw vegetables. There should be several times more fiber than meat. Green vegetables have a wonderful property - they take a long time to be processed in the body. With their help, all excess liquid is removed.

Note. Doctors do not recommend consuming some raw vegetables and sweet fruits as snack foods for people who are significantly overweight. Such products are low in calories, however, due to the presence of fruit acids, they can provoke an even greater need for food. You should also remember the role of fructose in storing excess fat. The negative effect of acids in this regard exceeds that of all other types of sugar.

Checking food intake for calorie content

Compliance with the rules of fractional meals for weight loss requires checking the products included in the menu with a special calorie table. This information will help you navigate the choice of high-calorie foods for small lunch or evening portions. Foods containing fewer calories can be eaten in large quantities without harming the body and without fear of gaining excess body weight.

Sweet food

Is it necessary to completely give up sweet foods? Not at all. You can afford to eat every day (but only at one time) candy (but not chocolate) or a few grams of marmalade or marshmallows. An absolute ban on treats is justified only with the urgent recommendation of doctors. An important condition is to never forget about a sense of proportion!

Features of a weight loss meal plan

It is important to understand that the nutrition plan also depends on what goals are being pursued. So, we can highlight a nutrition plan for children, a nutrition plan for various diseases, a nutrition plan for an athlete before a competition and, of course, a nutrition plan for weight loss.

To begin with, we note that weight loss is impossible without proper and balanced nutrition, and the latter never meant subsisting on water and vegetables. Thus, we return to the WHO principles - a varied diet provides the entire spectrum of useful elements to the human body. This rule must be taken into account when creating a menu.

In addition, if you want to lose weight with the right diet, you should adhere to a few more rules:

• You should eat at certain time intervals, then the body will develop a routine;
• Meals should be fractional, the best option is 5 times a day;
• When planning your meals, you can’t go against your lifestyle. Rather, on the contrary, the menu should be adjusted to it.

Thus, we get two diet options, designed for those who get up early and late:

Another feature when creating a menu plan for losing weight is calorie counting. To do this, you need to keep a record of all the foods you eat during the day. And today it’s quite easy to do this because there are a large number of special applications for similar purposes.

"Pitfalls" of fractional nutrition

Some people, having tried one or more diets, report with great disappointment that they were ineffective. As a rule, this happens due to the unsystematic application of the technique and the banal absence of such qualities as strong intention, patience and responsibility. The diet will only “work” if you take it seriously and become a pedant (in a good way).

Why is this so necessary?

Because you will have to prepare a diet on time for long periods of time, scrupulously count calories, and prepare a strictly limited number of servings of food. These factors contribute to the development of a new worldview, where a person takes full responsibility for his future life. Due to the presence in cities of a large number of cafes, restaurants and fast food establishments with unhealthy and fatty foods, there is always the danger of temptations and the possibility of exceeding the required calorie standards. To eliminate this negative factor, you will most likely have to refuse to visit such places and cook all the dishes yourself. Also pay attention to the possibility of dulling of appetite. This sometimes happens after a complete restructuring of the body to a new rhythm of life. Due to the lack of hunger, you risk systematically forgetting about intermediate meals. To prevent this from happening, use a timer or a special reminder after entering it into your smartphone. Important! With frequent consumption of food, a mechanism for the constant release of acid is triggered to process nutritious foods, and this increases the likelihood of developing many dental diseases, including caries. Include in your daily routine the implementation of all necessary preventive measures to ensure the safety of your teeth and gums.

Fractional meals for weight loss. Example menu

The number of dishes, their variety and energy saturation directly depends on the number of meals per day. We present a nutritional plan developed for private specialized clinics in the USA for patients with obesity problems.

Sample table

Fractional meals - weekly menu for weight loss: table

Organization will be simpler and easier to accomplish if prepared and dosed snacks are immediately placed in containers.

It is correct to cook in a double boiler, slow cooker, oven or non-stick frying pan. Each of these methods avoids adding oil. The best among them for dressing and cooking are olive or flaxseed.

It is advisable to sit down at the table at the same time every time. This way, the body will get used to it faster, and it will be easier to create a meal schedule. You can download the application and set notifications for it at the desired time.

Examples and table of fractional meals for the week:

Such fractional meals include recipes for a 7-day menu; no complex cooking or marinating steps are required. You don't need weird or hard-to-find items—just items that you can actually buy at the grocery store in any season.

The presented table is only approximate; all components from it can be swapped according to days of the week or meals, arranged and replaced. It is only important to count BJU per day and not consume difficult-to-digest carbohydrates at night.

Cooking according to pre-calculated and written data, if you make it yourself, is much easier.