The following meal schedule is only a guide line, feel free to modify it to suit your biocycle. Adjust your meals to fit your schedule, but make sure you finish your first meal within half an hour or a maximum of one hour of waking.

Say you wake-up by 0600 hrs, then:

Adjust to suit your sleep-wake cycle. (See – ‘Need for Sleep and How Much?’).

Note:

• It is preferable that you do not drink tea, especially hot tea, on an empty stomach, especially in the morning as the Tannins in it may affect your stomach lining, trigger an insulin surge and thus affect your metabolic rate. You may have decoctions of spices and herbs as Tea if you need to. Tea with meals reduces the absorption of non-heme iron from the plants and iron supplements in food, animal sources are not affected. However, it is advisable to take tea between meals, say an hour after a meal, but not immediately after a meal as the high acidic content makes it difficult to digest proteins. Consuming snacks rich in vitamin ‘C’ helps in neutralizing the effects of tannins in the tea on iron absorption. Milk, though it attaches to the tannins in the tea, has little influence on the inhibitory effect of tannins.
• To ensure that you are able to have your high protein, even if light breakfast, on time it is recommended that you either prepare the breakfast the night before and micro-wave it and eat in the morning, or you can have 2 boiled eggs with some boiled vegetables, or a 30 gm cold protein shake, within the time and have little more to eat an hour or two later. In such a case, avoid tiffin. This will reset your resting metabolic rate to about 20 percent higher and thus encourage weight loss.Research shows that dieting, if not done properly, causes your body to assume you getting into a food scarcity state and hence cause your resting metabolism to slow down and become more efficient at scavenging as much energy as it can from the lesser quantity of food you eat. Unfortunately your metabolic rate does not rise again even when you regain your weight. You now face the double whammy of the improper diet causing weight gain and also the lower resting metabolic rate extracting more calories from the food and causing even more weight gain.

Snacks:

Eating more often can help you lose weight. When you eat large meals with many hours in between, your metabolism slows down between meals. Having a small meal or snack every 3 to 4 hours keeps your metabolism up, so you burn more calories over the course of a day. Several studies have also shown that people who snack regularly eat less at mealtime. However, snacking should not be used as an excuse for over eating. Snack smart.

Since it is best that your body is feeling hungry when you eat, there should really be no need for too much snacks. Eating in between allows your body to use the fuel from such snacks instead of burning its fat stores. If you are hungry, you are not eating enough protein and legumes at each meal. So eat more. Vegetarians should expect to eat 2-3 times as much volume as those eating other calorie denser foods.

If all else fails and you must have a snack, go for a few carrot or cucumber sticks. Do not binge. If still hungry, eat an additional meal. A handful of nuts (between 5 to 20 nuts depending on size)

or seeds (about 2 full tablespoons) or sprouts (half a cup), or piece of dark chocolate (over 70 percent cocoa), an avocado or even half cup of low carb fruits such as berries, each of which can make such a meal and overcome the compulsion. (See – ‘Seeds, Nuts, Sprouts, Spirulina and Moringa’). More will only increase calorie intake. As a rule avoid the temptation of snacks which call for portion limitation.

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