How Many Meals Should I eat?
This is question we often ask ourselves and others around us, how many meals should I be eating a day to achieve fat loss?
There have been various studies that say you should eat 6 meals per day this ensure’s your metabolism keeps burning throughout the day. Constantly feeding your body ensure’s it doesn’t go into the dreaded starvation response. This is where your body holds onto fat and starts burning muscle for fuel when you miss meals. So continuously eating all day ensure’s you stay well away from entering this fatal response. This however is not true. If its was when we were cavemen we would have been blobs of fat with no muscle which we know isn’t true. We would have been carrying low levels of body fat and looked muscular.
You should only be eating 2-3 times per day if you eat any more than this your bodies insulin level spike too high. When your insulin is spiked too often you become insulin resistant which will lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. Insulin resistance is a major problem and concern however eating more often throughout the day will not cause this. I and millions of people have eaten more than 3 meals a day whilst remaining low levels of body fat and not turning obese.
Fasting is the only way to see real results, skipping breakfast helps promote fat burn as your body has to use stored fat for energy. When you eat food first thing in the morning especially carbs, your body uses that for fuel rather than stored fat. Skipping breakfast helps you burn the stored fat from the start of the day so that makes it the only weigh to lose body fat right? Wrong, you don’t have to skip breakfast to use stored fat as fuel. Say you burn 2000 calories a day but only eat 1500, the rest of those 500 calories needed for fuel comes from your stored fat.
All these methods are great reasons for weight loss but also poor reasons for weight loss. What I mean by this is, if it suits your lifestyle and preference it will help you with fat loss, but if you chose one that doesn’t suit you it will become too difficult to stick to forcing you to fail.
It doesn’t matter how many meals you eat a day, you can eat 1 or 8 meals. Just be sure you are in a calorie deficit (burning more calories than you consume) and you will lose weight. I have experimented with all these diets at some point I to believed they were the correct and only way. I have now learned otherwise and seen the results as all of them have worked for me they have helped me drop body fat, maintain or increase size. Calories are king, meaning they are the only factor that matters when it comes to weight loss or fat loss.
For me eating 6 meals plus a day was such a pain in the ass, constantly worrying about eating or cooking took over my life. It was an unhealthy and silly to fall victim to believing it was the only way, eating that way isn’t for me.
Intermittent Fasting was something I really enjoyed, in fact I loved it and would definitely do it again. But I found it so hard to eat enough calories from healthy food to maintain or gain weight. I could of ate more “junk food” in the evening to help boost my calories but I don’t always feel like eating highly processed stuff. The reason I loved it so much was I didn’t revolve my life around food and eating, food revolved around my life. It was also very beneficial to not worry about counting calories when losing body fat as it was difficult to over eat in the eating window.
At this moment in time I am eating 3 meals a day and 1 maybe 2 snacks, it just fits my lifestyle right now and makes it easier to stick to. I have my breakfast, lunch, dinner a snack or 2 and that is it.
The reason people don’t believe that eating how you want to is possible for weight loss, because it doesn’t sound sexy or fun. Where as saying you 5-2 or you fast daily or eat 6 meals a day to boost metabolism, that sounds sexy and fun. So people fall into the trap that this is the only way to lose weight, but its so far from their normal eating habits it becomes too difficult to stick to. This often makes people believe they cant lose weight just because they cant eat the way they’ve been taught for fat loss. You can lose weight the way you want to.
We are all looking for long term health and fitness, to always be fit and to always look fit. We don’t want it to last 5 minutes so why chose a short term approach you can’t stick to. Chose the approach you can see your self sticking to for life and the results will come.
Don’t be a quitter be a winner.
If you have any other questions you can contact me through my facebook page The Lemon Frog Fitness Company, my Instagram @lemon_frog_fitness or email louis@lemonfrogfitness.org.