How to eat 5 small meals per day and keep calories down?

Question

I've started eating five small meals per day because I've read how beneficial it is. But how are you supposed to eat that much and still keep the calories down? For example so far today I've eaten a bowl of whole wheat cereal, orange juice, granola and yogurt. I'm already over 900 calories and it's not even 1PM yet. How can I possibly loose weight if I'm taking in that many calories?

I ate Bear Naked granola, the plain kind and also fat free yogurt. I guess I just need to eat less cereal in the morning and less granola as well.

Answer 1

The key is SMALL meals. Not the same size meals as if you were eating only 3 a day.

Each meal should be around 300 cals for a total of 1500 for your day. Move that up or down depending on your desire for weightloss, but don't go below 1200 a day.

Watch the cals in your cereal and use skim milk. Orange juice is high in cals so perhaps switch to a juice lower in calories/sugar. Granola is something else that can be high in cals/sugar as well as yogurt. Pay attention and have a piece of fruit instead of the granola (an apple has about 70 cals). Go for the low fat or low cal yogurts that are under 100 cals for a container.

Make smart choices...that's where the success lies. Good luck! ☺

Answer 2

The key is moderation, and being aware of serving sizes. You said you ate cereal, a common mistake is to just fill the whole bowl, but DON'T do that, take out your measuring cups and actually only eat one SERVING [read the labels to see how many calories per serving/how much is one serving], another thing you can do is witch to skim milk//or even better is switching to low fat soy/rice/or almond milk.
For the juice, make sure its 100% natural, but in reality you would be better off with a tall cold glass of water and an orange instead.
Did you get ANY chocolate/sugary granola bar?..make sure it's a healthy one next time.
And for the yogurt, don't eat any fat filled yogurt.. eat a fat free plain one.

p.s. you still haven't mes up.
You say you are at 900 calories at 1pm,

at 3:30
eat a healthy snack [a fruit serving AND a cup/serving of veggies] -about 100 calories.

then eat dinner
you still have 300-500 calories to eat!

Your doing good, don't give up!



Good luck!

Answer 3

Sometimes, it is helpful to keep food journals with calorie amounts and what you ate. And not necessarily just to keep yourself on track. But say you are trying to lose weight and after awhile doing the good eating behavior, you notice you aren't getting results or you feel sluggish. You can go back and look at weeks where you wrote down that you feel energized or where you had good weight loss, and try and draw patterns between which foods react with you in which ways. Some people are going to realize that sweet potatoes are their golden goose to health, some people might find that asparagus has a similar effect. You might realize that dairy doesn't make you feel energized as energized, or that more water makes you feel more energized. Just for the sake of it, I'd get a general tally of calorie amounts. Those little buggers can sneak themselve in a lot of places (especially look out for calories in liquids like the gatorade and any juice you drink). I realized that when I drank a tall glass of apple juice in the morning and 2 pieces of honey oat toast without butter. I thought I was being healthy, drinking a glass of juice and just eating some toast, but it turns out that my meager breakfast was actually totalling up to about 400-500 calories. And when I was trying to stick to 1500 cals per day, and still eating 6 meals per day, and I'd already blown a third of my calorie allowance when I hadn't even been awake for an hour yet, I got a little bummed lol. So, you may be eating a lot of healthy stuff, but you may be eating more of it than you thought. Don't be obsessed though, that can get out of hand. It is pretty hard to get a correct calorie amount in fruits, so don't beat yourself up trying to find the correct amounts. I didn't really get from your question whether you were trying to lose weight, or just get healthier, but once you get a general idea of how much you're eating, do a web search to find out your basal metabolic rate (how many calories your body weighs just breathing, pumping blood, etc daily), as well as how many calories you burn in exercise daily. From there, it's pretty simple. If you're eating more calories that your body burns, you could be gaining weight, if you eat and burn about the same, your weight will stay the same, and obviously if you eat less than you burn, you'll lose weight. The average person really should NOT consume LESS than 1200 calories per day unless instructed by a doctor. Eating less could cause your metabolism to slow down, etc, etc, I'm sure you know the rest. Best of luck! ohh, and I almost forgot...Please eat more protein. Eat some chicken, fish, etc. SOMETHING. You're not going to want to eat 3 strips of bacon, a bunch of fruit, 100 calorie packs, granola, and gatorade for the rest of your life.

Answer 4

eat healthier types of those foods. for example special k cereal 1 cup is only 110 calories, an orange is about 70, light n fit yogurt is 40 calories per 4 ounces, and im sure you could find a healthier granola for your yogurt or just get a healthy alternative.

Answer 5

eat less of what your having, for example less granola, low fat yogurt, no orange juice but water, with your cereal no sugar and skim/soy milk (or 1%), eat more fruit or carrots or celery use more calories to digest then they have in them

Answer 6

make each meal smaller, like if each meal is 300 cals. thats only 1500 cals a day...which is very little. you could probably bump each up to 400 cals... that would be 2000 cals. Or mix it up, like for example. make breakfast 400 cals, then a snack 2-4 hrs later 300 cals, then lunch 400 cals, snack 300 cals, dinner 400 cals, and a light snack 200 cals! Drink alot of water, 4-5 bottles a day to keep you filled. try chewing gum too!

Answer 7

Well you have to what the sugars and you need to watch the carbohydrates too. Don't eat a lot of potato's because of the carbs and fruits have a lot of sugars. I'm diabetic and basically that how I control my blood glucose with 6 small meals a day.

Answer 8

its more what your eating than how often. first stop counting calories. only eat when hungry, take to your doctor about healthy dieting and eating