Cavemen Didn't Eat Three Meals

Most people in the modern era follow the same eating pattern. Wake up. Eat Breakfast. Go to work. Eat lunch during break time. Work more, then go home. Eat dinner. Go to sleep. This pattern is repeated over and over. The compartmentalizing of eating into meals to be eaten at certain times is an invention of society. It is convenient for structuring work days and social events, but it is not the best for maintaining health.

When you eat a big meal, particularly one of our modern fat and processed sugar laden ones, your blood sugar spikes, then plummets. Within two to three hours, you begin to feel hungry, fatigued, irritable, and shaky. Your body is telling you that you need to eat again. Since the next meal time has not arrived, you reach for a snack. Most of the time, what is available is some form of processed crap. You scarf this down, leading to another sugar spike and crash. This is good for the people who make the processed crap, but not for your waistline.

Cavemen ate very differently. They wouldn't wait for a meal time to eat. They would eat whenever they could. If they came upon a food source, and they were hungry, they ate it. Since they had no way to store the food, and could only keep as much as they could carry, and still outrun or evade a predator who wanted to eat them, cavemen would eat very frequently. I suggest eating six or seven small amounts of food daily, never getting completely stuffed, and never getting too hungry.

I emulate the cavemen in this respect. I eat small amounts of food at frequent intervals during the day. In our modern world, this requires some planning. I carry a cooler with me to work, filled with multiple fruits, vegetables, and other whole food snacks. Whenever I begin to feel hungry, I pull out one of my snacks, and eat it.

This strategy has several advantages. First, you avoid the spike and crash cycle of conventional eating. Second, since you are planning to eat frequently, you have healthy snacks handy, rather than reaching for twinkies or cookies. Finally, you never get really hungry, so you are never tempted to overeat. Eat frequently like a caveman and you will avoid overeating, the afternoon crash, and wanting to club your co-workers on the head due to hunger induced irritability!