jehovasfitness, im not going to get embroiled in an internet debate with you. if you want to eat several meals per day, go right ahead.
until you can come up with a valid reason why eating the same amount of food spread over 6-8 meals/day is ANY DIFFERENT than over 3-4 meals, I’m done with this thread.
OP: i hope you got the answer you were looking for. try to keep in mind people love making things more complex than they need to be. K.I.S.S.
I personally eat 6 meals a day (works better for me)…if 3 meals a day work better for you then great…not everyone is the same…best thing would be to experiment and find what you feel is best for you.
From John Berardi,
“According to research from Georgia State University, people who eat every 2 to 3 hours (versus eating only two or three meals each day) have better blood sugar levels, fewer stress and muscle-breakdown hormones, more muscle-building hormones, less blood cholesterol, and most important for you, less body fat and higher metabolic rates.”
I know you don’t believe in hormones, JMoU, but there ya go. Top endocrinologist (know what one of those is?) Schwarzbein does not allow her patients to skip meals and recommends they eat at least five times. The reason is because it changes calorie partitioning, another thing you probably don’t believe in. You avoid spiking your hormones.
FYI, an increase in hunger is concomitant with a release of stress, whether you think it does or not… and this does change calorie distribution.
People here love making things more complicated than they need to be because THAT’S WHAT T-Nation IS FOR. It says right at the top, “Unapologetic Muscle Building Elitists.” I don’t understand why you come here to disagree with all of the things that are written. Let people have honest discussions without throwing unfounded recommendations to people that go against much of what is written on the site. People like you are the reason the T-Cell was created in the first place…
[quote]ksommer wrote:
From John Berardi,
“According to research from Georgia State University, people who eat every 2 to 3 hours (versus eating only two or three meals each day) have better blood sugar levels, fewer stress and muscle-breakdown hormones, more muscle-building hormones, less blood cholesterol, and most important for you, less body fat and higher metabolic rates.”
I know you don’t believe in hormones, JMoU, but there ya go. Top endocrinologist (know what one of those is?) Schwarzbein does not allow her patients to skip meals and recommends they eat at least five times. The reason is because it changes calorie partitioning, another thing you probably don’t believe in. You avoid spiking your hormones.
FYI, an increase in hunger is concomitant with a release of stress, whether you think it does or not… and this does change calorie distribution.
People here love making things more complicated than they need to be because THAT’S WHAT T-Nation IS FOR. It says right at the top, “Unapologetic Muscle Building Elitists.” I don’t understand why you come here to disagree with all of the things that are written. Let people have honest discussions without throwing unfounded recommendations to people that go against much of what is written on the site. People like you are the reason the T-Cell was created in the first place… [/quote]
it’s not that i “don’t believe in hormones”, it’s that i believe the body is a smarter than you give it credit for, and going 4 hours or more between meals won’t cause your body to go into panic mode and shed all its muscle, as you seem to believe.
furthermore, while I respect JB (and have been a customer of his in the past) he is not the end-all-be-all of nutrition information. in fact, he has said some pretty goofy things in the past (the old P+C, P+F meal combo thing, which in all fairness to JB, he has distanced himself from recently)
in addition to that, there is competing research showing that calorie partitioning is improved by following an intermittent fasting protocol where subjects typically eat only 2-3 meals per day, focused around training (for more on this you can go to www.leangains.com, website of Martin Berkhan) take a look at the sucess he’s had with clients.
finally, who says you’ll be hungry eating 3 meals per day? if you eat larger meals you’ll be fuller for longer. do you not understand that? I’ve eaten VERY large breakfasts before and not been even the least bit hungry until 8:00-9:00 that night. this is because the food from breakfast is still digesting and keeping me in a “fed state” the whole day.
the more logical explanation is not that feelings of hunger caused an increase in catabolic hormones, it’s that NOT EATING ENOUGH caused BOTH the feelings of hunger AND the increase in catabolic hormones (breaking down tissue to cover the deficit). please try not to cause correlation for causality, as so many people often do.
finally, I enjoyed T-Nation a lot more when it was “Bodybuildings Think Tank” instead of “Unapologetic Muscle Building Elitists” (wtf does that even mean, we don’t apologize for being totally dogmatic and ignorant of science? sure seems like it…)
it was a late breakfast (around 10:30, technically brunch) at the universities cafeteria, meaning all you can eat. lots of good shit there, stuffed myself to the gills. my metabolism isn’t slow, i assure you.
[quote]joshjuk wrote:
JMoUCF87 wrote:
ksommer wrote:
From John Berardi,
“According to research from Georgia State University, people who eat every 2 to 3 hours (versus eating only two or three meals each day) have better blood sugar levels, fewer stress and muscle-breakdown hormones, more muscle-building hormones, less blood cholesterol, and most important for you, less body fat and higher metabolic rates.”
I know you don’t believe in hormones, JMoU, but there ya go. Top endocrinologist (know what one of those is?) Schwarzbein does not allow her patients to skip meals and recommends they eat at least five times. The reason is because it changes calorie partitioning, another thing you probably don’t believe in. You avoid spiking your hormones.
FYI, an increase in hunger is concomitant with a release of stress, whether you think it does or not… and this does change calorie distribution.
People here love making things more complicated than they need to be because THAT’S WHAT T-Nation IS FOR. It says right at the top, “Unapologetic Muscle Building Elitists.” I don’t understand why you come here to disagree with all of the things that are written.
Let people have honest discussions without throwing unfounded recommendations to people that go against much of what is written on the site. People like you are the reason the T-Cell was created in the first place…
it’s not that i “don’t believe in hormones”, it’s that i believe the body is a smarter than you give it credit for, and going 4 hours or more between meals won’t cause your body to go into panic mode and shed all its muscle, as you seem to believe.
furthermore, while I respect JB (and have been a customer of his in the past) he is not the end-all-be-all of nutrition information. in fact, he has said some pretty goofy things in the past (the old P+C, P+F meal combo thing, which in all fairness to JB, he has distanced himself from recently)
in addition to that, there is competing research showing that calorie partitioning is improved by following an intermittent fasting protocol where subjects typically eat only 2-3 meals per day, focused around training (for more on this you can go to www.leangains.com, website of Martin Berkhan) take a look at the sucess he’s had with clients.
finally, who says you’ll be hungry eating 3 meals per day? if you eat larger meals you’ll be fuller for longer. do you not understand that? I’ve eaten VERY large breakfasts before and not been even the least bit hungry until 8:00-9:00 that night. this is because the food from breakfast is still digesting and keeping me in a “fed state” the whole day.
the more logical explanation is not that feelings of hunger caused an increase in catabolic hormones, it’s that NOT EATING ENOUGH caused BOTH the feelings of hunger AND the increase in catabolic hormones (breaking down tissue to cover the deficit). please try not to cause correlation for causality, as so many people often do.
finally, I enjoyed T-Nation a lot more when it was “Bodybuildings Think Tank” instead of “Unapologetic Muscle Building Elitists” (wtf does that even mean, we don’t apologize for being totally dogmatic and ignorant of science? sure seems like it…)
Damn, if you eat a big breakfast and you aren’t hungry until 8 P.M. at night you have one slow metabolism. Try training harder. Trust me if you kill yourself in the gym OP you are going to want to eat more often.
Your body will force you to. You should be eating a couple of meals just around your training (assuming your busting your ass).The big boys eat a lot of times a day, the average sized and little people don’t. Your choice I guess.[/quote]
So you are saying that he isn’t hungry because he doesn’t train hard. Hmm…
[quote]hexx wrote:
So you are saying that he isn’t hungry because he doesn’t train hard. Hmm…
[/quote]
he isn’t hungry often because he’s conditioned his body to be used to it. start eating every 3 hrs for 1-2 months and when you approach that 3 hr mark you’ll be getting hungry.
Actually, I would argue that you are the one ignoring science. Most of the articles published here have a scientific basis, and coincidentally, most of them also recommend more meals more often.
JM, you just gave the example of eating a huge breakfast and not being hungry for the rest of the day, with this meal being eaten at a school cafeteria. Let’s look at why this is a perfect example of supporting OUR argument:
There is no way you could consume adequate amounts of NUTRIENT-DENSE calories. Keep in mind that micronutrients are nutrients in addition to protein, carbohydrate, and fat. How much of that big breakfast were fruits and vegetables?
We know that nutrient-dense foods also happen to be the most satiating. Quality proteins, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables, and lastly whole grains rank highly in terms of satiety, and you will find a multitude studies backing this one up.
Take, for example, my typical three first meals of the day:
8 oz bison, 2 cups broccoli, 1/4 onion, cooked in pasture butter
1 scoop of whey protein, 1 scoop of casein protein, cup of baby carrots, almond butter and milled flaxseed
and then a repeat of meal #1, substituting cauliflower for the broccoli, mushrooms for the onion, and olive oil for the butter.
I challenge you, if you are a man of similar size to me, to eat that in one sitting. FYI, that is well over a pound of vegetables AND meat, somewhere in the range of 50g’s of fat, and around 15-20g of fiber depending on the amount of flax in the shake.
Keep in mind that I am currently just in a maintenance state, so I only have carbohydrates around my training session. If I were to be gaining lean mass, add roughly 6 pieces of ezekiel bread, a banana, an apple, and also 2/3 cup of quinoa to the above.
Or, I could take your approach and eat breaded chicken in orange sauce, drink hormone-laced milk, and have a big plate of mashed potatoes, finished off by a bowl of ice-cream. Since I am not using steroids or an extreme ectomorph, I need to focus on high quality food to get high quality results.
I actually wrote an article based on the general idea of this topic.
Here is the link:
davidfrankovic.blogspot.com/2008/11/
three-meals-day-might-not-be-right-way.html
Tell me what you guys think of my work. Thanks a lot.
In no particular order, but a few summarized reasons to eat 5-8 smaller meals per day…
There are myriad more reasons to budget meals throughout the day, but these are the few that came off the top of my head.
listen, there is nothing WRONG with eating many small meals throughout the day, if that is what you like or that’s what is easy for you. I myself currently eat 5x per day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, + 2 shakes)
however, I do this b/c it fits around my schedule, not because it offers some magical fat burning / muscle building benefits over eating 3x per day.
other times of my life (such as when i was working door-to-door over summer) i ate 2 large meals at night. As long as i’m still getting the same amount / quality of food, there is no difference.
honestly, if you want to do the eat every 2 hours thing, go ahead. but dont bullshit me by saying that eating that often offers any real advantage beyond eating a little less often.
if you want to be “that guy” who carries around grilled chicken breast in a tupperware container, and sets his watch to go off every 2 hours to remind himself to eat, great. I choose to be a little less neurotic about my food.
[quote]JMoUCF87 wrote:
listen, there is nothing WRONG with eating many small meals throughout the day, if that is what you like or that’s what is easy for you. I myself currently eat 5x per day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, + 2 shakes)
however, I do this b/c it fits around my schedule, not because it offers some magical fat burning / muscle building benefits over eating 3x per day.
other times of my life (such as when i was working door-to-door over summer) i ate 2 large meals at night. As long as i’m still getting the same amount / quality of food, there is no difference.
honestly, if you want to do the eat every 2 hours thing, go ahead. but dont bullshit me by saying that eating that often offers any real advantage beyond eating a little less often.
if you want to be “that guy” who carries around grilled chicken breast in a tupperware container, and sets his watch to go off every 2 hours to remind himself to eat, great. I choose to be a little less neurotic about my food.[/quote]
I find it odd that you did not respond to my argument about micronutrients and their absorption. The point I was making is that there is little chance the quality would be the same in 2 meals vs 6. If I am mistaken and you can infact eat over a pound of meat, vegetables, and half a loaf of bread with fruit and oatmeal (these are the unsweetened, less processed kinds just for confirmation) then I will eat my words.
And just to go a bit further, diabetics and other people with blood sugar problems are often advised by their general practitioners to eat smaller meals more frequently, because it improves blood sugar handling. That is one very real advantage that are not even considering. I find it likely by your arguments that you have never had problems with your weight or health. There may be people here who have otherwise; since we know that eating smaller meals improves things in these circumstances, it’s a safe bet it would improve things for all of us.
If you are largely insulin sensitive, then the exaggerated insulin response of starving yourself all day then gorging would likely prove anabolic, but this might not be the case for everyone. I’d go as far to argue it’s not the case for the majority.
I’d also like to point out that you are confusing determination, committed attitudes, and thoughtful planning for being neurotic. It is rather simple to prepare any meals I will need when I am out at breakfast each day. It would also be simple to prepare them on the weekend ahead of time.
Keep in mind that I have two jobs and am a full-time student, much like yourself, and I’ve been doing this for more than a year. I would find it odd NOT having my food ready.
[quote]ksommer wrote:
I find it odd that you did not respond to my argument about micronutrients and their absorption.[/quote]
Actually I did, when I wrote: “As long as i’m still getting the SAME AMOUNT / QUALITY of food, there is no difference.”
[quote]ksommer wrote:
The point I was making is that there is little chance the quality would be the same in 2 meals vs 6.[/quote]
little chance? not if you’re tracking your intake (which you should be)
[quote]ksommer wrote:
If I am mistaken and you can infact eat over a pound of meat, vegetables, and half a loaf of bread with fruit and oatmeal (these are the unsweetened, less processed kinds just for confirmation) then I will eat my words.[/quote]
I can indeed. that’s not really unheard of, especially if you cook 'em right. I enjoy eating a lot. downing a 1,500 calorie meal is a lot more pleasurable than teasing my hunger with little 500 calorie “snacks” ever few hours.
[quote]ksommer wrote:
And just to go a bit further, diabetics and other people with blood sugar problems are often advised by their general practitioners to eat smaller meals more frequently, because it improves blood sugar handling. That is one very real advantage that are not even considering. I find it likely by your arguments that you have never had problems with your weight or health. There may be people here who have otherwise; since we know that eating smaller meals improves things in these circumstances, it’s a safe bet it would improve things for all of us.
[/quote]
that’s not always a great assumption. sedentary diabetics share little in common with (presumably) lean, weight training, athletes.
[quote]ksommer wrote:
If you are largely insulin sensitive, then the exaggerated insulin response of starving yourself all day then gorging would likely prove anabolic, but this might not be the case for everyone.[/quote]
no arguments here.
[quote]ksommer wrote:
I’d also like to point out that you are confusing determination, committed attitudes, and thoughtful planning for being neurotic. It is rather simple to prepare any meals I will need when I am out at breakfast each day. It would also be simple to prepare them on the weekend ahead of time.[/quote]
there’s commitment, then there’s being OCD. i think it’s safe to say that many people here have crossed over to the latter. while it is simple to prepair all the meals you’re gonna eat at breakfast, it’s even simpler to cook up meals when it’s most convenient to YOU. personally, id rather spend my weekeneds relaxing and having fun, not cooking 50 chicken breasts and packing them all into little plastic boxes.
1 lb (~ 500 grams) of veggies
1 lb (~ 500 grams) of meat
50 grams of fat
20 grams of fiber
you call that a big meal ? i have the same one twice a day (excluding breakfast and PWO) but it has ~ 100 grams of fat each and if anything it’s the only way i can feel satisfied at a BW of 225
6 meals are better than 3, but 6 meals doesn’t necessarily offer any benefits over 4.
This is where JMO is making his point where he says it’s all about calories. If you’re at maintenance levels or less, take your pick: 4, 5, or 6. Doesn’t matter.
If you’re in a caloric surplus, it’s probably better to eat more total meals than larger meals, all other things (namely, calories) being equal.
The biggest issues here are not leptin, but rather insulin management. When insulin is very high, as it would be for many hours following a large meal, you are more likely to store bodyfat.
JMO, don’t confuse this as determination/causation. It’s just probabilistic thinking. Remember, people are looking to optimize (read: relative), they’re not looking for ultimate truths here.
IMO 3 meals is just not enough. That’s an average of 8 hours between meals.
[quote]redgladiator wrote:
IMO 3 meals is just not enough. That’s an average of 8 hours between meals.[/quote]
ummm…you didn’t do well in math class did you?
[quote]JMoUCF87 wrote:
redgladiator wrote:
IMO 3 meals is just not enough. That’s an average of 8 hours between meals.
ummm…you didn’t do well in math class did you?[/quote]
I believe it is quite obvious that he included sleeping hours in his mathematical calculations.
whats the point of using 24 hours when people typically only eat within a 12 hour window? I suppose if you wanted to use 24/3 you would end up with 8, but what of value does that bring to the debate at hand?
the issue is whether eating ever 2-3 hours (~6 meals per day) offers any advantage over 4-5 hours (3 meals per day).
I think most everyone (besides perhaps ksommer) can agree that those extra couple hours between meals won’t make any difference.
[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
gi2eg wrote:
Leanest and most muscular natural dude at my gym eats 3x per day.
Just sayin’.
Do what works for you and don’t get caught up.
and your point? there are always those that defy convention yet show great results.[/quote]
I was eating six meals a day this summer but wasn’t gaining hardly any weight. I kept calories similar, but went to three meals a day and the weight gain sped up considerably.
There was also a study done about this. The link doesn’t work anymore, but here is a thread about it. If I remember correctly, they kept the calories the same but changed the amount of meals. The ones who ate 3 meals a day put on more mass. Yes, more fat, but also more muscle. I understand that you can get a study to “prove” things that actually aren’t true, but I’m basing my belief in this on personal experience.
strengthmill.net/forum/showthread.php?t=
2367&highlight=three+meals+better+than