Love starting a new debate!
That counts as 5 to me.
I love all this and agree. My thoughts around multiple meals come down a lot to simplicity/ practicality for most folks I’ve seen. Basically if I’m not super hungry, I won’t overeat, etc. If you find a path that works better for you, that will obviously be better.
I agree with you on too many as well. Maybe more bro science, but I think it’s real science, I’m also a fan of timing carbs around training and bedtime.
2 meals just became way more practical for me. And I love eating a huge helping of beef, egg yolks and Cholula
In the Marines I carried a cold steak in my pocket to eat throughout the day.
I would add an additional premise. For bodybuilding competitions 6 meals per day to keep fat storage (due to insulin spike when there is sufficient glycogen in the muscles) at a minimum is important. Also, the continuous protein supply is more critical in a calorie deficit.
If you are satisfied with your body composition less meals per day are okay providing you are getting sufficient nutrients each day.
Now im toying with getting preacher bench.
I’d think multiple meals equaling multiple insulin responses would make it harder to get lean, no? Thoughts
The Golden era steak and eggs twice a day was very successful.
Straying a bit from broscience here into real science.
From what I’ve read, even the largest protein meals will leave you without any amino acids in the bloodstream 6-8 hours later, so if you want to limit muscle breakdown, you need that continuous drip of protein.
What I haven’t yet made sense of is what to do on the maintenance/gaining side. It seems like you’d also really benefit from that continuous protein supply too.
Maybe something like a small shake immediately on waking to prevent catabolism as the body ramps up for the day. Then something like 3 solid meals interspersed with 3 shakes. Continuous protein supply but “pulsed” carbs and fats. Insulin spikes rather than constantly elevated.
Amino acids actually pool so in essentially your body stores them
Im wary of mixing carbs / fats… dose dependent to agree but still. And certain amino acids are insulinogenic, as well
You must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. I just wanted to assure that I was not fighting the hormone insulin that stores some nutrients as fat (for later use as fuel.)
We looked at that as there are no insulin “spikes” with frequent no sugar meals. Sure my blood sugar is running slightly elevated above the valley of low blood sugar that happens after long periods of no calories or the crash after a sugar high (that actually causes an insulin spike when nutrients are added.)
Because blood sugar is sufficient from frequent meals that your body doesn’t ever go into starvation mode not “knowing” when you are going to eat again, it doesn’t need to spike insulin in order that some of the calories can be stored as fat. The meals after longer periods of not eating cause a much higher insulin spike, than the slightly raised insulin from frequent meals. (it is important that these frequent meals have no simple sugars and usually best to start with the nutrients that are mostly protein and fat and add in the complex carbohydrates later in the meal.)
Now the rules change after an intense workout that depletes glycogen stores. Here some good carbohydrates are great for spiking your insulin to drive more nutrients (plus creatine) into the muscle cells.
The bro-science was frequent protein meals with the removal of all simple carbohydrates. That bro-science that was around since at least the 1970’s was the unbeknownst application of “insulin management” when the scientific community was totally ignorant it existed without medical intervention.
I believe that when trying to add muscle mass, the more continuous the protein the better the likelihood of it happening. I took the “over engineered” approach. That is if I want a boiler drum to function with 2500psig steam and water in it, I am going to over-design it a 50% over the operating pressure, or 3750psig. That is I would also eat 6 protein meals a day even if I weren’t trying to get cut. Why not cover all the bases. What if the actual theoretical science is inaccurate in the field? Who suffers? The scientific community will merely publish a further finding as new information comes along. And they will unapologetically stand on the new science.
Did you include complex carbs with all of these?
One carb bolus is probably a much better idea when cutting. The frequency being the “poison.”
This is maybe a bit bro-sciency but I also think there’s validity to it:
I believe that if I continue to force my body to do muscle ups, high box jumps, and sprints, my body will resist adding much useless fat without even worrying too much about other aspects of my training and nutrition.
Apart from a short time trying very low carbohydrates after seeing what Joe Means looked like in the 1976 Mr America, I always took complex carbohydrates with my protein meals. I found that very low carbohydrates left my muscles too stringy for my liking, not to mention being just too weak. I like lifting heavy weight.
I can only speak from my experiences. I competed in bodybuilding for three decades starting in 1970, at the rate of about three contests per year. I began to get better at getting in contest shape and achieved a competitive look by 1977 winning two contests. I used the same method of 6 meals per day that included protein and complex carbohydrates. All I can say is that I was satisfied with my ability to get into contest shape. You need to also consider that cardio was not added to my contest conditioning until I began competing in the Master’s division in 1989.
I am just the odd one here. By 1980 I was too beat up to do pullups, sprints, or jumps.
If it works for you it works … thanks for sharing your experience
Perhaps against the spirit of bro science, I think I know how this works
We generally agree that, for an exercise to stimulate growth, it needs to elicit some type of challenge. For muscular growth, we need to maximally stress the ability for the muscle fibre to contract against resistance (i.e. reach failure).
When you start a new, unfamiliar exercise, the improvements on that lift for the first 3-6 weeks are purely coordinative/technical, and thus they do not maximally stress muscle fibres, and thus do not stimulate improvements in strength and size.
So, to ensure you bring muscle fibres to failure, you need to be skilled (or experienced) in the exercise you perform. However, we also know that the repeated bouts effect will cause stagnation over time.
The work around, which I think we’d all agree on, is to vary training every 4-12 weeks, with the following concessions:
or maybe I’m overthinking it, and this is all just mental masturbation
You can totally change your training and not involve any unfamiliar exercises. Maybe it is the number of sets and reps, the speed of the eccentric rep, the volume change, the intensity change, order of exercises, etc.
There is much interest in 5-3-1 training. What is “unique” with 5-3-1 is that it is a system and not so much a single training program. If you think about it some, you see it is three weeks of progressive training (one program) followed by a week of a “working rest” (another program). It might be splitting hairs a bit, but 5-3-1 has a planned training program change for the fourth week.
That was my point: