Does eating little and often really help lose weight?

Many weight loss experts have stated that eating regularly helps burn off more energy within the body. This is due to the extra energy costs involved with digestion and absorption. In fact, as much as 10% of the energy within each meal can be lost through these processes, meaning there's less that can be stored in the fat cells.

However, there is a downside to eating regularly.
Every time we eat our blood sugar levels rise. This means we have more carbs available for fuel. Carbohydrates are our body's preferrred energy source and thus will use up carbs more readily than stored fat. Keeping this in mind, the more carbs available, the less chance the body gets to burn up further amounts of fat. So if eating frequently is good for weight loss, then how are we supposed to get rid of the stored fat?

Obviously, the answer is in the number of calories used, to those ingested. It's ok to eat regularly as long as the number of total calories consumed each day is less than we burn off. In this case our body has no choice but to tap into energy reserves in the fat cells. The trouble for many dieters is that if they need to eat only 1800 calories per day in order to lose weight, then it would be ingedibly hard to eat 6 or 7 times during the day without going over this small calorie intake.

When we are hungry our body is telling us that blood sugar is low. Thus if carbs in the blood is low, then this is one of the best times for our body to tap into fat burning mode. This doesn't happen for long because many of us don't like hunger pains so we relieve them by eating. This means there isn't much time for burning the fat!

Maybe there needs to be a happy medium, it may be best to eat at least 3 times per day, but I also believe it's important for a dieter to push through the hunger phase, not to starve oneself, but to get used to feeling hungry for up to an hour before actually eating any food.

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