10 small meals better than 5 medium meals?

[Naer]

with the largest meal right after movement

this a good approach? would like to drop my bf% somewhat

 

[Ancalagon44]

Not enough information to make a recommendation.

The number and frequency of meals matters only for building muscle. The more often you eat protein, the more you stimulate muscles to grow. As for weight loss, eating more smaller meals is actually harmful for weight loss.

The conventional wisdom was that eating and digesting food takes up energy, so if you eat more often, your digestive system is running more often, and you burn more energy. The term for this is the thermic effect of food. Problem is that this is completely untrue. The energy required to digest food is the same, regardless of whether you take it in all at once, or in smaller intervals. Makes no difference to weight loss.

As for it being harmful, the problem with eating many smaller meals is that your insulin levels are elevated throughout the entire day. This causes insulin resistance, which is a primary component driving your weight gain. Insulin resistance is why you can eat the exact same thing year after year and get a little bit fatter every year.

If you have bigger breaks between meals, your body spends a longer time with lower insulin levels, which lowers your insulin resistance. This helps with weight loss.

 

[Naer]

ok, thanks for clearing that up, any others want to confirm what poster #2 said?

so should i be eating 3-4 medium meals?

 

[Ketchup]

Lately I have been eating one small meal (fruits mainly for this one) and one decent meal (whatever my wife cooks) a day. Some days just the one decent meal. I almost never snack unless I am up really late. And I am losing weight. Not a lot, but going down little by little. I was up around 180 and now I am between 170 and 172. My target is 160 (I am between 5'8" and 5'9"), so I have a little ways to go, but not in a huge rush.

FWIW, I never had a problem with eating to often, my problem was eating the right kinds of foods (spent too long eating fast food), and eating too much at one sitting. Lowering my intake of carbonated beverages but replacing with water seems to have helped a good bit as well (not just weight loss, but energy too).

I am not saying that this is what you should do, but what worked for me. I think that Ancalagon44's is very sound. I can only think of a very few situations where 10 meals a day would be a good idea.

 

[bluepumpkin]

20 smallest meals much better then 10 small meals

 

[CalebRockeT]

I gravitate towards something close to what bluepumpkin suggests. I try to keep an even split of calories ingested, keeping macros in mind, every hour that I'm awake. So, if I'm getting 8 hours of sleep, I'll eat ~16 times a day. It's helped me be more productive at work, since I never have that overly full feeling that makes you want to kill yourself. Good luck!

 

[Kaido]

As for it being harmful, the problem with eating many smaller meals is that your insulin levels are elevated throughout the entire day. This causes insulin resistance, which is a primary component driving your weight gain. Insulin resistance is why you can eat the exact same thing year after year and get a little bit fatter every year.

If you have bigger breaks between meals, your body spends a longer time with lower insulin levels, which lowers your insulin resistance. This helps with weight loss.

fwiw, I lost a good 50 or 60 pounds eating an average of 6 meals a day.

 

[Kaido]

so should i be eating 3-4 medium meals?

Doesn't really matter. If you want to get serious about it, read up on IIFYM. Figure out what your daily calories should be. Figure out how many protein grams, carbs, and fats you should be eating every day. From there, it's up to you. Eat one meal a day, eat ten meals a day.

Or forget about the numbers & just eat clean for the majority of your meals. It's a lot more difficult to get fat when you're eating plain chicken, broccoli, etc. What it boils down to is, what are you willing to do? Are you willing to count numbers? Or would you rather change what you eat? Eating clean is nice because you don't have to track grams, but tracking grams is nice because you get to eat donuts. Or if you'd rather eat whatever you want all the time, just exercise for hours a day. Lots of avenues to lowering your bodyfat!

 

[elitejp]

Exactly. Its not complicated, although im pretty sure kaido isnt exactly recommending only eat 1 large meal a day as he was just trying to make a point. My advice is eat clean and add a lot more veggies in your diet while lowering other carb sources. Unless bulking keeping healthy fats(along with all fats) low as well will also help lower bf.

 

[z1ggy]

Read. The. Fat. Loss. Sticky.

Jesus.