There’s a laundry list of ways to shoot yourself in the foot, when you want to lose weight. Don’t follow any of these traditional recommendations. None of them work. Most of them actually cause weight gain. (1) Don’t eat before you get hungry. Eating before you get hungry does not prevent over-eating later in the day. It just adds more calories and slows down your weight loss. (2) Don’t eat 4-6 mini-meals a day. There’s no science that suggests you are better off with frequent small feedings. Frequent small feedings trigger hunger, and turn into large feedings, that take your calories to stupid. (3) Skip meals like crazy. Conventional wisdom says that it’s bad to skip meals. Nonsense. Every meal you skip is more calories you are not eating. If you don’t skip meals, you are slowing down your weight loss.