meal spacing and your sports watch

okay, we've all got them, right? our watch that acts as time piece, chronometer, timer, alarm clock, global positioning device (ha haa...some of them really do!)

this week i found a new use - diet tool! some research has shown that small meals spaced 3 hours may increase bmr, versus eating 3 big meals a day. my timex has a timer. i have it set for 2 hours. after i finish eating breakfast, i hit 'start' in a couple hours, it goes off, and i know i need to eat something w/in the next hour. even if i'm not really hungry, i eat something - an apple, a slice of crisp bread - something (all meals and snacks are usually between 50-300 calories). then i hit the timer again. by evening i'm not straving, and have energy, but have usually had fewer (but more evenly spaced) calories overall for the day compared to what i was doing before (waiting until i was hungry, and then eating more than i should, and often eating more at the end of the day). i also seem to have fewer afternoon cravings for sweet or salty stuff doing this. again, i just started, so time will tell if it is effective for me w/ training and weight loss, but i thought i would pass it along anyway.

and just to clarify - i'm not eating every 2 hours, but more like 2:30-3:00, since it usually takes me some time to get around to getting something to eat. the timer serves as a warning, versus getting overly hungry and then eating too much, which i am prone to do. i started out with 3 hours, but by the time the timer went off, i was super hungry and i ended up having a bunch of calories left over at the end of the day...setting it for 2 has helped me space things out evenly during the day.