Yes I am taking 3000-3500. I tracked 16 days what I ate it was exactly in this range. big smoothie 1450 kcal - 8 am, dinner 1500-2000 kcal - 6-7:30PM.
My weight goes up, 89 kg before I switched and now 92 within 1.5 month. My pants are getting smaller. So it’s a fat mostly. And I don’t know why it’s happening.
It’s suits me a lot 2 meals, digestive is better…only these gaining fat. BTW thanks for the replies
What kinds of food exactly are you eating?
Were you gaining before, just more slowly?
Yes I was, but slowly and it was like a waves. I started at 82kg and ended up at 88kg during cca 9 months. But I had problem with bloating, sometimes diarrhea,not hungry at all so I reduced it to 2 meals and everything disappeared.
I am vegetarian for 7 years, so basically food is same.
For example Yesterday
Morning - protein 65g, oats 100g, 50g of walnuts, 50g of coconut, 5g of ees, 5g pumpkin oil, 1 banana, 1 apples, dried greens.
Dinner - 4 eggs, 200g red lentil, 500g potatoes, 45g oliv oil, 5g coconut oil, kimchi, bowl of vegetables.
According to my calculations
P-162g
C-303g
F-152g
T=3228
So I think you’re in a pretty significant surplus. It’s not really weird that your rate of weight gain has changed - it’s never totally linear on the way up nor the way down. I don’t think your meal frequency has much (or, really, anything) to do with it. In fact, sometimes as we get a little chubbier, it’s easier to keep getting chubbier.
I’d start dropping some calories, and your fat is relatively high, especially for a vegetarian. If I were you, I’d knock out some of those oils first - they’re probably doing the least for your satiety and it’s an easy spot to get rid of calories. I say all this assuming you don’t want to keep gaining fat at your current rate, which may not be a fair assumption on my part.
Your original question was about whether it’s optimal for muscle gain. There are studies all over the board, and I think this stuff is really difficult to study for a lot of reasons (small samples, hard to control, what variables do you actually measure, how long a timeline is fair, is it relative or absolute, etc.). I have seen a couple that conclude that stimulating muscle protein synthesis 3-5x a day is ideal, and others that find no difference, and at least one that says one feeding daily is better for muscle growth. Don’t ask me to find them because I’m not capable. In any case, I don’t think it’s going to be markedly worse in real life one way or the other. Most of us are doing many many things that aren’t optimal anyway, and what it takes to realize statistical significant in a short-term trial is not the same thing as what you’ll notice in real life. Your protein is high enough and your calories are certainly plenty high enough - on the diet side, those are probably the major things.
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The Areta 2013 study is often referred to. This is where 80g PRO was consumed over 12 hours post-exercise.
Group 1 - 10g every 1.5 hours
Group 2 - 20g every 4 hours
Group 3 - 40g every 6 hours
MPS was highest in Group 2. Therefore, this gave traction to the pervading broscience theory of high frequency feedings every 3 hours with c.30g PRO. Of course, one issue with the studies is that they predominantly use whey protein as the protein source, and few folks will survive on whey alone.
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Thanks! I remember reading a couple opinions that pointed to whey protein being the denominator in studies that show large differences in acute MPS. You’re typically much tighter to the research than I am, so thanks for jumping on!
For the OP, I think, for 99.9% of us, it’s calories and consistency above all else. Your meal frequency should be whatever supports you meeting those two objectives.
Well, I have to credit Brad Schoenfeld for that one as I have his book close at hand!
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