Why is 6 Meals a Day Better?

Nutrition
147

[quote]JMoUCF87 wrote:
ajweins wrote:
JMoUCF87 wrote:
redgladiator wrote:
Clearly not. I think I made it quite clear that I need to eat more frequently than 3 meals a day.

and this entire 6 page thread has made it clear that don’t NEED to eat more frequently.

although you’re free to do so if that’s what you wish.

It’s all about what you’re more comfortable with. As a matter of fact, T-Nation contributer Leigh Peele wrote a blog entry about this:

read this and let me know what you think (anyone)

I read the article and think it is “ok” advice for the general population. However, for those serious about getting big and strong it seems impossible to me that three meals would do. Even if you consumed the same amount of food in those three meals, I think you would get better results from 6 meals due to a more stable hormonal response throughout the day.

Also, I do not find Leigh Peele to be as good of a source for nutritional information as the likes of guys like Berardi or CT (who I think you recommended that we not blindly follow earlier in the thread). I have not heard of Leigh Peele getting any guys huge, however, CT and Berardi have lots of real world success with their methods.

I cannot think of very many popular author who do not recommend eating at least 5 times a day. CT, Berardi, Ferruggia, Justin Harris, Poliquin, all of these guys have had success and some of them have very different views on what foods to eat and types of training. However, all of these guys recommend eating more frequently than 3 times a day.

I know that blindly following authors is not something we should do, but you brought up Leigh Peele, and views like hers are few and far between in the goal of gaining muscle.

who said everyone’s goal is to get “big and huge”? furthermore, who said that you should LIMIT yourself to only three meals. have I not made myself clear enough? if you WANT to eat more, OR you have trouble getting enough calories in on breakfast lunch and dinner then go ahead and eat more often, there’s nothing WRONG with that.

but it isn’t NECESSARY for every individual or every goal. need 4,500 calories just to gain half a pound a week? then you better be putting away the food every chance you get (and I’m not talking chicken breast and sweet potatoes either)

on the other hand, if you have a demanding job, don’t need to eat a ton of calories for your goal, or simply don’t want the hassle of planning your life around your next meal then feel free to eat less frequently and don’t worry about the “Catabolic Boogeyman” stealing all your precious muscle. it ain’t gonna happen.[/quote]

Then I agree with you and we are on the same page. I just forget sometimes that even in a bodybuilding forum, not everyone wants to be as big as they can. And I know you are not saying that three meals is better and that 6, just that they are the same if the food is the same. I disagree and think 6 is better, simply because of the hormonal response of eating such a gigantic meal, but that is mainly an issue only for those trying to look like a bodybuilder.

148

Not that it is necessarily going to add anything to the discussion, but I wanted to clear up my view on this.

When I was advocating three meals, I was speaking of three solidish meals + light snacks as compared to six solid meals. In other words, I think the best approach is to have three meals a day, a couple of light snacks (e.g., skim milk and a protein bar), and your workout nutrition. Granted some people might consider the snacks and workout nutrition as meals, but I don’t. Hence, they are snacks. The counter to my approach is to have 6 smallish solid meals a day and your workout nutrition. This approach is optimal in my opinion for a lot of reasons. One being that it constantly takes a way resources for digestion, and two, it goes against thousands of years of evolution.

I realize now that a lot of people might think that what I consider to be three meals a day is actually 6 or so.

And for JMoUCF87, “Do whatever works for you.” Does that make you happy?

149

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150

[quote]McG78 wrote:
Not that it is necessarily going to add anything to the discussion, but I wanted to clear up my view on this.

When I was advocating three meals, I was speaking of three solidish meals + light snacks as compared to six solid meals. In other words, I think the best approach is to have three meals a day, a couple of light snacks (e.g., skim milk and a protein bar), and your workout nutrition. Granted some people might consider the snacks and workout nutrition as meals, but I don’t.

Hence, they are snacks. The counter to my approach is to have 6 smallish solid meals a day and your workout nutrition. This approach is optimal in my opinion for a lot of reasons. One being that it constantly takes a way resources for digestion, and two, it goes against thousands of years of evolution.

I realize now that a lot of people might think that what I consider to be three meals a day is actually 6 or so.

And for JMoUCF87, “Do whatever works for you.” Does that make you happy?[/quote]

that’s completely different then. you are still having more frequent feedings thru the day. meals, snacks, etc. call it what you will, but it’s basically what many are arguing here

151

[quote]McG78 wrote:
And for JMoUCF87, “Do whatever works for you.” Does that make you happy?[/quote]

my mood is unaffected my internet debates, so nothing you can say will make me “happy” (or unhappy, for that matter)

however, I will say that “do what works for you” is the most useless, stupid, unhelpful, and overused 5 words on these forums and it would be wonderful if it could somehow be banned from use.

how exactly does telling someone to “do what works for them” help them?

don’t you think that if they knew what “works for them” they wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place?

it’s funny I never see any authors or contributers use that phrase. it’s only the people who don’t know what they’re talking about, but want to feel like they contributed something useful who use it.

this isn’t a personal attack on you McG78, just an honest observation.

152

[quote]JMoUCF87 wrote:
McG78 wrote:
And for JMoUCF87, “Do whatever works for you.” Does that make you happy?

my mood is unaffected my internet debates, so nothing you can say will make me “happy” (or unhappy, for that matter)

however, I will say that “do what works for you” is the most useless, stupid, unhelpful, and overused 5 words on these forums and it would be wonderful if it could somehow be banned from use.

how exactly does telling someone to “do what works for them” help them?

don’t you think that if they knew what “works for them” they wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place?

it’s funny I never see any authors or contributers use that phrase. it’s only the people who don’t know what they’re talking about, but want to feel like they contributed something useful who use it.

this isn’t a personal attack on you McG78, just an honest observation.[/quote]

I guess the sarcasm in my “Do what works for you” comment, was lost on you.

153

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
McG78 wrote:
Not that it is necessarily going to add anything to the discussion, but I wanted to clear up my view on this.

When I was advocating three meals, I was speaking of three solidish meals + light snacks as compared to six solid meals. In other words, I think the best approach is to have three meals a day, a couple of light snacks (e.g., skim milk and a protein bar), and your workout nutrition. Granted some people might consider the snacks and workout nutrition as meals, but I don’t.

Hence, they are snacks. The counter to my approach is to have 6 smallish solid meals a day and your workout nutrition. This approach is optimal in my opinion for a lot of reasons. One being that it constantly takes a way resources for digestion, and two, it goes against thousands of years of evolution.

I realize now that a lot of people might think that what I consider to be three meals a day is actually 6 or so.

And for JMoUCF87, “Do whatever works for you.” Does that make you happy?

that’s completely different then. you are still having more frequent feedings thru the day. meals, snacks, etc. call it what you will, but it’s basically what many are arguing here[/quote]

Sorry for the confusion. My reading of the question was a little slanted because I had just had a long discussion with a tool (typical trainer at my gym) about how he told his clients to take their daily calories and divide it by 6. That is the amount of calories per meal.

For example, a 3000 calorie diet would break down to six 500 calorie meals. This in my opinion is dumb because it doesn’t take into account that a large part of your calories should be consumed around your workout/most active parts of your day. You don’t need to down a 500 calorie meal right before bed (you probably need to down a protein shake or cottage cheese, however).

155

Great thread. Opened my eyes to a different way of thinking.

I’ve not been doing this very long, but when I started I ate 6x a day and counted all my calories. After a month of doing that, I kind of gauged what my body required and just ate whenever I wanted to.

I still eat a big breakfast, still stick to my targeted carbs diet and still consume a peri/PWO shake, but I’m less anal than I was in the beginning about getting my six meals and making sure I was eating a 20% surplus. I would panic if I was at work and had to go somewhere and I didn’t eat for 3 hours or more.

But now some days I eat 4 times, some days I eat 7 times, just depends on my work schedule and so on. It’s good that there have been different points raised in this thread which stand up to logical scrutiny. Thanks for all the info provided.

156

[quote]McG78 wrote:
I guess the sarcasm in my “Do what works for you” comment, was lost on you.[/quote]

indeed it was lost on me. sarcasm doesn’t translate well via text.

In either case, i’m left wondering whether you’re trying to be a dick or just joking, as sarcasm can go both ways.

i’ll assume you’re joking and let it go i guess :-/

157

Holy FUCKING shit dude, GET A FUCKING LIFE. You’re annoying as fuck in EVERY SINGLE POST YOU MAKE. No one fucking likes you, and the fact that you’ve spent SEVEN PAGES replying to EVERY POST you’ve been implicated in is mindblowing.

I’ve never seen anything like it; I have never seen your level of commitment to being a complete jackoff. How is it humanly possible to continue an argument for SO FUCKING LONG? About food! You’re an absolute joke.

158

[quote]cgeezy wrote:
Holy FUCKING shit dude, GET A FUCKING LIFE. You’re annoying as fuck in EVERY SINGLE POST YOU MAKE. No one fucking likes you, and the fact that you’ve spent SEVEN PAGES replying to EVERY POST you’ve been implicated in is mindblowing.

I’ve never seen anything like it; I have never seen your level of commitment to being a complete jackoff. How is it humanly possible to continue an argument for SO FUCKING LONG? About food! You’re an absolute joke.[/quote]

yawn are you done yet?

159

[quote]cgeezy wrote:
Holy FUCKING shit dude, GET A FUCKING LIFE. You’re annoying as fuck in EVERY SINGLE POST YOU MAKE. No one fucking likes you, and the fact that you’ve spent SEVEN PAGES replying to EVERY POST you’ve been implicated in is mindblowing.

I’ve never seen anything like it; I have never seen your level of commitment to being a complete jackoff. How is it humanly possible to continue an argument for SO FUCKING LONG? About food! You’re an absolute joke.[/quote]

WOW that’s a bit harsh.

160

[quote]Malevolence wrote:
I’ve read conflicting information regarding many meals versus fewer meals. I have come away with the conclusion that, neither matters if your macro breakdown and total calories are insufficient, and that the biggest reason to eat 6+ times a day is because it physically enables you to ingest more food.
[/quote]

There was an old article archived somewhere that interviewed prisoners with hulk bodies. The convicts have 3 meals everyday (due to prison rules) and workout hard.

161

I suppose since someone resurrected this thread, I’ll go ahead and post an article by David Barr that challenges the notion that you must eat something every 3 hours.

pay special attention to the part about large meals & digestion time.

162

[quote]zhixiong wrote:
Malevolence wrote:
I’ve read conflicting information regarding many meals versus fewer meals. I have come away with the conclusion that, neither matters if your macro breakdown and total calories are insufficient, and that the biggest reason to eat 6+ times a day is because it physically enables you to ingest more food.

There was an old article archived somewhere that interviewed prisoners with hulk bodies. The convicts have 3 meals everyday (due to prison rules) and workout hard.
[/quote]

163

Here is where some of the major breakdown on this thread has come from. MOST people who come to a bodybuilding forum, are in some way shape or form looking to increase thier muscle mass and or decrease their bodyfat. Be it for health or looks reason, these are a lot of peoples goals here. Eating More often is better than eating less often. There is little to argue about here. For the better insulin/blood sugar response alone this argument is not debatable. HOW many meals is less and how many meals is more? I think this is entirely individual.

On a heavy workout day I may consume 8,000 calories spread over 7 meals, on a non-workout day I may consume 5,000 calories spread over 4 meals. I mean there is something to not getting your body set into a robotic pattern. That being said I haven’t really ever remembered, or maybe a better word is “inferred” from any article that eating 6 meals a day was some magic number that was gonna make me swole!!! I use reading comprehension and logic, So when an author says shoot for a meal every 2-3 hours for around 6 meals a day, I understand that if I need 7, I’ll eat 7 and if I only need 5, 4 or Gasp, 3 on a given day, thats what i’ll do.

2 more things I’ll say, OP if you understood this concept from the beginning then you basically started this thread to bait some people into arguing with you. With your combative style, you made it an either 3 OR 6 thread, heck even the title suggests you were specifically comparing 6 meals to 3 (which you gave as the alternative in your first post). I’ll just say, if I had to pick, eat 6 meals a day for the rest of my life, or eat 3 meals a day for the rest of my life, I’ll take 6 anyday.

I have more control there and could build a mass building phase or a fat burning phase more easily. More flexibility is better. So if you had started a post where you wanted to discuss the merits of eating 3 meals some days, 4 meals some days, 5 or 6 meals some days, you should have titled the thread differently and started off with a different initial question.

You started attacking people calling them “bros” if they followed a 6 meal per day program. Even though I find it highly improbable that any human being on the planet sticks to a 6 meals per day program religiously. I’d bet most people who try for 6 meals a day succeed 80-90% of the time. So right there, there is built in variation. Also I bet they don’t hit the exact caloric and macronutrient profiles every meal of every day, so there is more adaption the body has to use to fuel it’s growth.

Bottom line is you are accusing people of being robotic, yet no one is claiming to be robotic, they are just saying, eating more than 3 meals a day is optimal. You really can’t try to make a controversial post and then get defensive when people get a little worked up.

V

164

First off I want to commend JMoUCF87 and McG78 for stating your cases in the face of what seems like a major blowback (I skipped a few pages, maybe I missed some assholery).

I’ve been on T-Nation for 7 years now and one thing that’s has never changed is that there is always a vocal set of people that make it their mission to stand up for the “conventional wisdom” here and present their opinions as indisputable fact, and it’s always nice to see someone (excluding trolls) that will, right or wrong, go against the grain.

I’ve tried many of the diets and routines posted by the authors and they’ve been hit or miss, not necessarily because they are right or wrong but because there is a huge delta in the way my body responds to stimuli vs yours.

One of the first times I really followed a diet from this site hardcore was a 6x/day, P+C/P+F Berardi scheme from back in the day. Worked fantastic for me. But then the next summer I ate 4x/day and tossed the P+C/P+F scheme and guess what…nice and cut for the summer.

YMMV. Eating many (6-8x) times a day is a great tool, but to state definitively that eating 6x a day is “optimal” and will always yield significantly different results from someone eating 4x is ridiculous. There’s someone in this thread that’s 5’10" 180lbs stating emphatically that there’s “no way” someone can eat 3x and train hard enough…give me a break. 5’10" 180lbs is not an above average physique, so any more from you about how we’re not “hardcore enough” because you strive for “above average results” is laughable, to say the least.

I’m out of shape at the moment, but I’ll gladly go on a well thought out diet eating 3-4x / day and share my pictures with anyone that’s willing to share back. Most of the people on here arguing strongly for established dogma have not been able to turn said dogma into an impressive physique.

165

I like this article: The Real World (of Physique Research) - Part 1

Very first up is a review of some research presented at a conference about hourly calorie surpluses over daily surpluses. With the hourly model producing better results. Shown in athletic populations with a desire for performance improvement. What is your life outside of the gym, active? not active?

Sure there may be competing research. But you have to consider the populations they were studied in and the needs of those populations.We could get into methodology, statistics, or population sampling. (Fucking reliability and validity). But its way to much for an informal forum discussion.

We can consider that only a percentage of the protein you consume is absorbed due to the short pass rate through the small intestine, Protein size, digestive enzyme concentrations, and acidity of the stomach (affects enzyme activity). In this case higher frequency eating would result in an improvement of absorption as there is less substrate for your enzymes to work on. This would also reduce that gassiness that people get after protein shakes.

We could argue that the amount of varying minerals and vitamins compete for absorption by active transport pathways. Hence small amounts at a time are superior for a greater mineral & antioxidant status.

Its been shown that higher caloric surpluses create situations where the body would choose to oxidize the amino acids instead of using them for other processes. Therefore, smaller surpluses may be handled better from utilization standpoint. Instead of being burnt off. After all, smaller feedings result in smaller amounts of amino acids in the blood at any time. Isn’t this why we spread our fish oils out over the day instead of taking them all at once?

More chance that my liver can do any of the myriad of things it does to food or supplements that i consume then in other situations. For example, fructose. Sure fructose in and of itself is not a bad thing. But i bet my liver is a lot less likely to turn it into fat if i cut the dose into smaller doses and spread it over the day.

ooh! ooh! Can we consider the kinetics/pharmacokinetic properties of all the wonderful things in our foods and their relation to health?

I personally like to think that by eating 6 meals (or more) a day i can pass more volume of food through my body during the day then eating only 3 times a day. This allows me more opportunities to eat better foods. More vegetables, and fruit. This allows me to get more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. More chances to affect things like my body’s alkalinity

166

[quote]Beatnik wrote:
I like this article: The Real World (of Physique Research) - Part 1

Very first up is a review of some research presented at a conference about hourly calorie surpluses over daily surpluses. With the hourly model producing better results. Shown in athletic populations with a desire for performance improvement. What is your life outside of the gym, active? not active?

Sure there may be competing research. But you have to consider the populations they were studied in and the needs of those populations.We could get into methodology, statistics, or population sampling. (Fucking reliability and validity). But its way to much for an informal forum discussion.

We can consider that only a percentage of the protein you consume is absorbed due to the short pass rate through the small intestine, Protein size, digestive enzyme concentrations, and acidity of the stomach (affects enzyme activity).

In this case higher frequency eating would result in an improvement of absorption as there is less substrate for your enzymes to work on. This would also reduce that gassiness that people get after protein shakes.

We could argue that the amount of varying minerals and vitamins compete for absorption by active transport pathways. Hence small amounts at a time are superior for a greater mineral & antioxidant status.

Its been shown that higher caloric surpluses create situations where the body would choose to oxidize the amino acids instead of using them for other processes. Therefore, smaller surpluses may be handled better from utilization standpoint.

Instead of being burnt off. After all, smaller feedings result in smaller amounts of amino acids in the blood at any time. Isn’t this why we spread our fish oils out over the day instead of taking them all at once?

More chance that my liver can do any of the myriad of things it does to food or supplements that i consume then in other situations. For example, fructose. Sure fructose in and of itself is not a bad thing. But i bet my liver is a lot less likely to turn it into fat if i cut the dose into smaller doses and spread it over the day.

ooh! ooh! Can we consider the kinetics/pharmacokinetic properties of all the wonderful things in our foods and their relation to health?

I personally like to think that by eating 6 meals (or more) a day i can pass more volume of food through my body during the day then eating only 3 times a day. This allows me more opportunities to eat better foods.

More vegetables, and fruit. This allows me to get more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. More chances to affect things like my body’s alkalinity

[/quote]

Well thought out and explained here. You’ll probably be called a BRO or something though. You know, for not thinking about anything for yourself and just following CT and JB’s every word.

V

167

http://www.theiflife.com/2008/11/05/eating-more-meals-does-not-speed-up-your-metabolism/