In opposition to many received ideas, I claim (and show) that we can lose weight in a balanced way without sacrificing some of the foods that make life salt. The happiness of the meal provides this vital energy for any diet: pleasure. Eat light in the evening or shift breakfast into a snack, several formulas are possible.
Food pleasure during weight loss is to integrate and revolve around simple elements that have been wrongly banned until now, such as starchy foods, bread, even chocolate or even hamburgers…
3 meals a day, is that right for you?
And in my opinion, the rule of three meals a day, harped on for decades, supposedly anchored in all families, is no longer a model necessarily adapted to our time; in any case that it can be changed within the framework of a controlled weight loss undertaking.
Does this intrigue you, even surprise or shock you? So much the better, the first psychological step to effectively start a diet is therefore taken: losing weight doesn’t have to be just another repetition or reproduction of other trials you have undertaken, at least your appetite for more is titillated!
And since proposing balance does not imply professing boredom, since it is necessary to know how to wisely break irrational taboos, we can follow a healthy diet that doesn’t starve youdiscover new tastes and that it is better to vary your diet to avoid creating nutritional deficiencies or social isolation.
In other words: the diet that I recommend is the one that we start with energy and that we follow and pursue with pleasure.
In fact, the patients who come to my practice almost all say the same thing: they would like to lose weight, but would dream of putting an end to the calorie countingavoid dietary restrictions, do without weighing…
In short, to get rid of the off-putting, obsessive side that this approach implies in their eyes. How to satisfy this desire? How can we provide them with this concrete, practical and stimulating comfort, while guaranteeing them a real curve inversion kilograms and a balanced diet?
The “2 meals, 1 snack” formula
After reflection, a solution linked to the evolution of lifestyles therefore appeared to me. Since it is necessary eat differently to lose weightinstead of cutting back on each meal, isn’t it just as smart to cut out a portion of it, or even cut out an entire meal?
Clearly: move from a food structure with three daily meals to another that I will baptize “two meals and more”. Or, more precisely, “two meals, one snack”.
In formulating this proposal, I am aware that I am touching on one of the pillars of food. But, in this field more than in any other, I also notice that people often react by reflex and take the stereotypes for some scientific facts.
How many of us believe that breakfast is “the main meal of the day” ? This slogan was so bludgeoned that it ended up becoming an unassailable universal truth. If to indulge in three meals a day is inscribed in our culture, it has been profoundly transformed in recent years, with the changes that have occurred in daily life.
It can be seen that more flexible working conditions, the possibility of having access to food anywhere and anytime, and the increase in caloric density of food (partly responsible for weight gain)… shattered old reflexes.
Since we will never reconnect with what some consider to be a golden age of nutrition, when the family sat down at the table, at the same time, for shared and balanced meals skilfully simmered, it is better to integrate this reality and offer something else. Equally balanced but corresponding to the current way of eating.
That other thing is diet “two meals, one snack”. A diet that I have personally tested and which seemed to me to be better suited to modern eating habits, therefore easier and more pleasant for everyone to follow.
Just a snack to eat light in the evening?
The trick? To compensate for the elimination of breakfast, it is useful to introduce a snack that everyone will insert, according to their tastes, into the course of their day. A snack that many people already adopt… but which they add to the breakfast deemed mandatory… which increases the number of calories absorbed. A peak, right?
Saying no to breakfast, I realize it may seem intriguing, even iconoclastic. However, the option is in no way delusional. Better, it is based on serious scientific work and reliable that validate its relevance.
But I’m talking about breakfast, but it could very well be another meal of the day. How many people like eat light in the evening, with what could be considered a snack? A soup and off to bed! You certainly know some.
And at noon? How many people eat a snack on the go more than a real lunch? It’s a story of personal rhythm and choice of food (sometimes also the offer available if you don’t prepare your meal in advance). This choice requires some nutritional knowledge and this knowledge, I share it here but also on Youtube, Facebook, instagram and even TikTok !
You have to find the caloric level that suits you with the foods you like, and eat them when it suits you, without social pressure. Everyone has their own pleasures, everyone has their own pace, taking into account of course the family or other environment. Easy to say ? Not that hard to do!
