A lot of people believe that eating more frequently boosts your metabolism. I debunked this in the first year of the Nutrition Diva podcast, which was (can you believe it?) ten years ago. The research that I reviewed back in 2008 for my episode on Metabolism Myths simply didn’t support the notion that you could burn more calories simply by dividing your daily intake into smaller, more frequent meals.
But our understanding of human nutrition is constantly evolving and it’s always worth revisiting those stances in light of newer evidence. In The Abs Diet, author David Zinczenko claims that eating six meals a day will help you reveal that six-pack you’d like to flaunt. (Due to inflation, we now strive for an eight pack, but back then, an abdominal six-pack was considered sufficient.)
“You have to eat more if you want to lose more,” he writes, “[And] there’s science to support the fact that more meals work.” He then describes two specific studies to prove that eating more frequently will help you burn more fat.
What's the Proof for Six Meals a Day?
One of these studies, dating from 2000, involved nationally-ranked, 15-year-old gymnasts and 26-year-old runners, all of whom were female. The study didn’t look at how often the women ate. Instead, it was looking at the difference between calories consumed and calories burned on an hourly basis. And they found that the athletes who replaced the calories they burned more quickly had less body fat than those who waited longer.
Remember: these are world class athletes. Their body fat percentages were all very low to be begin with. So the change in body fat was the difference between “very low” and “very very low.”
What this study really shows is that when you are training at the level of a world class athlete, you don’t want to delay your post-workout recovery meals. I’m really not sure, though, how relevant this is to Zinczenko’s audience.
The other study he cites, from 1996, involved 12 boxers who were put on extremely low calorie diets (just 1200 calories a day) for two weeks. Boxers will often crash diet before events in order to qualify for certain weight classes. In this study, six of the boxers divided their 1200 calories into two meals and the other six ate the same number of calories divided into six meals. Both groups lost a bunch of weight and, not surprisingly, a significant amount of lean muscle. That’s what happens when you lose weight too quickly. But the loss of muscle was a bit less in the group who ate more frequently.
What this study really shows is that when you are crash dieting, you’ll lose less muscle if you eat more frequently. But if your goal is a six pack (or any multiple thereof), you don’t want to be losing muscle. You want to be losing fat. Crash dieting is not recommended. So, again, I’m not sure this study is all that relevant to the claim or the audience.
How Does It Work for Real People?
But these are not the only studies out there to look at the relationship between meal frequency and weight loss or body composition. And some of the other studies I found might be a bit more applicable to you and me, and to most of those who are reading The Abs Diet.
In 2017, researchers analyzed data on more than 50,000 adults. This was data from the Adventist Health Study and involves a population that tends to be healthier than average. But they are not elite athletes. These subjects are also what we call “free living.” That means their meals were not being provided by researchers and they were not living in a research lab. They were living in their homes, working at their jobs, cooking their own food, and so on. Kind of like you and me. The researchers found that the people who ate more than three times a day weighed more than those who ate less frequently.
This isn’t that surprising. Other research has shown that those who eat the most frequently tend to consume the most calories. (Unfortunately, when people embrace this idea of eating six small meals a day, they often overlook the “small” part of the equation.)
We can also find some studies which seem to support the idea that eating more frequently might help with weight loss. For example, eating more frequently has been shown to improve appetite control and this may help people avoid overeating. But this is not the same thing as revving up your fat-burning metabolism. It’s just a way of managing your behavior.
There's a Study to Support Every Conclusion
Here's the thing about nutrition research—especially the kind that involves humans. No matter what question you are asking, there are usually multiple studies with conflicting results. That means that if you start with a certain conviction or point of view, you can almost always find at least one study to back you up. You can stop as soon as you find a study that says what you want it to. Or, you can look at all the studies and see where the consensus lies.
People who ate more than 3 times a day weighed more than those who ate less frequently.
In 2011, the International Society of Sports Nutrition published a position paper in which they reviewed all the relevant research on this question. They agreed that for elite athletes who are on restricted calorie diets, eating more frequently can help preserve muscle mass. However, they also concluded that more frequent meals will not affect body composition in more sedentary populations, and that increasing meal frequency will not help anyone burn more calories.
A few years later, in 2014, Professor Ashima Kant looked at 16 different studies on meal frequency and published her analysis in the journal Advances in Nutrition.
“Frequent eating is associated with higher energy intake, yet beliefs about the possible beneficial effect of higher eating frequency for managing body weight persist,” she writes. “Overall, the [...] findings [...] suggest that beliefs about the role of higher eating frequency in adult weight management are not supported by evidence.”
Will Eating More Frequently Help You Lose Weight?
Over the last ten years (and more), I’ve taken a lot of stances on various aspects of nutrition, informed by the available research. Sometimes, newer research prompts me to change my position. But in this case, I’m sticking with what I said ten years ago.
If eating smaller more frequent meals helps you manage your appetite better and allows you to make better choices, go for it. But eating more frequently—in and of itself—is unlikely to have a measurable effect on your metabolism or abdominal fat. And if you do favor more frequent meals, be careful that eating more frequently doesn’t lead you to eat more than you need.
Questions? Comments? Post them below or on the Nutrition Diva Facebook page.
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