Is It Ok to Not Eat 3 Meals per Day?

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Is it okay not to eat three meals?

This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert.

Christina Cornett from Facebook asks, is it.

Okay not to eat three meals?

Hey, it's J.J. and Huh. I'll tell you that in a moment. Stay with me.

Hey JJ Virgin here.

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All right, this three meals myth, and actually it's the three meals and three snacks myth, so it's very interesting. I think there's three things we really need to look at when we're looking at eating or when we're talking about eating. First of all, we gotta talk about, you know, what are you eating? Very first thing I would ever have you do is, number one, increase the quality of your food. Eat better stuff, make better choices, super duper duper important. So that means unprocess your diet. Now, I eat some processed foods because I use my shake mix and my bars. So if you are doing things these are minimally processed or processed to become more nutrient dense. Right? But we're not eating like fast, garbagey stuff, white, you know, white garbage, flour and oils and rancid and all that, you know, because you've been with me. So first thing is to make really good food choices, Improve the quality of your food. Things that are nutrient dense, things that have lots of fiber, basically a low sugar impact diet. Okay? So then start to really work on eating in the right balance. Clean protein, things like wild fish, grass fed beef, grass fed lamb, pastured pork, and then healthy fats, things like avocado and olive oil, raw nuts and seeds, and then fiber from slow low carbs and loads of non starchy vegetables. Little bit of slow low carbs, lots and lots of of non starchy vegetables. This helps balance your blood sugar because ideally then what we want to do is start to eat by the clock, which means first thing we want to do is get rid of the snacks, have breakfast, have lunch, have dinner, and then ideally starting to shorten your eating window so that instead of eating for 12 hours, you stop eating at least three to four hours before bed. Then the next thing you do is start eating breakfast a little later, have brunch, and then ideally you've taken your 12 hour eating window down to 10 hours and then potentially down to eight hours. And you might find that you're having two meals a day or two meals and a little snack. So no, you do not need to eat three meals a day and you definitely don't want to eat three meals and a snack. And really this is where, you know, I'm going to do a big shout out for intermittent fasting because it is so clear that it has some super health benefits and especially for your immune system. It can help your body make white blood cells. So ideally you're drinking a lot of fluids in between your meals. You're letting yourself get a little hungry and not freaked out by that. Again, Dr. Joel Kahn Hunger equals younger, and you're not falling into the urban legends of what they're telling you should do. Do what your body is telling you.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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