Basics of meal frequency - continued

What is the ideal number of meals? 4, 5, 6, 7… 
even more than 7?


I can easily state that 1-2 meals a day is a disaster. If you don't eat at least three times a day, you
are causing severe damage to your metabolism. If you want to get your metabolism back up and
revving, read the following posts very thoroughly and follow the instructions to the letter.

Eat 3 meals a day, properly built with the right nutritious foods, and work out hard and you'll get
somewhat good results. But, you will still only get about half the results that you'd get from six meals
a day. Plus it will take you twice the time to get there. If you have less than “elite” genetics or simply
a naturally slow metabolism, it may require you some serious effort on only three meals. And missing
even a single meal causes damage to your metabolic rate.


Let's say you're eating 4 meals a day, again making proper food choices and combining your foods in
the ideal ratios, that's when you start to see substantial results. But still, you will only get about  60-70%
of the results you'd be able to get by eating six meals a day. And again it will take you longer to get there,
if you do get there.

5 meals a day? Now we’re talking! Five meals/day will give you good and steady results on a weekly basis. If you’re a large, active male, you could still do better by adding the sixth meal.

6 small meals a day is the way to go!! Two simple facts of physiology will tel you why: 

(1) It takes about 3 hours to fully digest each meal 
(2) protein lasts about three hours in your bloodstream. 

If you sleep 8 hours per night (which is recommended), that leaves 16 awake hours in your day.
Six meals over 16 hours equals one meal every 2.7 hours. When going with 5 meals, then your target
is one meal every 3.2 hours. Round it up for simplicity, and that’s where the basic guideline of one
meal every three hours comes from. Five meals a day is recommended and optimal to women and
six meals is ideal for men. The difference comes from men requiring more calories/day than women
(about 600-900 cals).


So, if 5-6 meals a day is good, then you could figure that 7-8 or even 10 must be even better, right?
Well, not exactly. You can experiment with one extra meal and it might work for your results. However,
it takes a minimum 2-2,5 hours to digest a meal, so it doesn't make any sense to eat more than six or
seven times per day. If you did, you would only be piling food on top of undigested food.

The amount you eat isn’t as important as the amount you fully digest. Unless each of your meals was
tiny, there's also the danger that you might eat too many calories for the day. Extremists that they are,
some bodybuilders think that if 5-6 meals a day is good, then 7-8 is even better. Some of them even
set their alarms and get up in the middle of the night to eat!

As in most areas of life, when something is taken to the extreme, there’s always a point of diminishing
returns or even damage. If your goal is to gain muscle mass and you’re that die-hard (dare I say nuts?),
then help yourself out. A light protein meal in the night might prevent some of the muscle loss that occurs naturally at sleep. But there’s the other side to it: uninterrupted sleep is very important too.

But when your number one priority is fat loss, you’re better off not eating late in the evening at all, let
alone in the middle of the night. Get your precious sleep – you’re gonna need it with the training  program
I have in store for you!


Why you might oppose the 5 to 6 meals a day idea
– 
and why you need to GET OVER IT if you want to own 
a fit, fat-free body!


You may know at least one person who doesn't go by this meal frequency rule, might be a friend who
eats no breakfast and two gigantic meals like a pizza for lunch and a hamburger meal for dinner. Despite these two oversized and unhealthy feedings, they never seem to gain fat and they look like they’re in
excellent shape. After seeing such irritating displays of genetic advantage, you might think and say to
yourself that this meal frequency business is a bunch of nonsense.

However, I must warn you; if you don't accept the habit of eating small frequent meals, you may see somewhat good results, but you’ll never be able to reach your maximum genetic potential. If your
metabolism and genetic gifts are geared towards gaining fat easily, you can’t afford to mess around 
with only 3 meals a day. And you definitely can’t skip meals! Pay no attention to your friends 
and just do what it takes for you!


The reason most beginners have a hard time going by the five or six meals concept is because what it suggests, in many cases, is that some people actually eat MORE FOOD than they’ve ever eaten before!
The secret is that the food is simply spread out into smaller portions. This idea might sound bizarre to everything you’ve ever heard about fat loss. As you might remember, I even said so myself in our
previous talk about calories; you need to eat less than you burn in order to lose weight, right?

And that's still true, calories count. But the thing about eating frequently is that IT MAKES YOU BURN MORE CALORIES! 5-6 meals a day accelerates your body’s natural rate of calorie burning (metabolic rate).


Why skipping meals is one of the most crucial errors of fat burning nutrition 
-
and eating more food and lose more fat at the same time, 
how's it possible?


Skipping meals (or too much time between meals) is the cardinal sin of fat loss and muscle-building nutrition. Missing meals will slow down your metabolism. It also causes muscle loss and wakes up your body’s starvation response mechanisms.

Let's imagine you skip your breakfast and you haven’t eaten since 8:00 p.m. the previous evening. You
eat lunch at 12:00 pm. That's when you’ve gone 16 hours without any food. At this point, you are not only
in a highly catabolic (muscle breaking) state, you’re also sending an unmistakable starvation signal to your body.


If skipping meals is the biggest sin of fat burning and muscle building, then skipping breakfast 
is a capital crime suited for the death penalty! And yet “everybody” does it!

One of the most common errors people tend to do when aiming for fat loss is skipping breakfast.
Or eating it late, around 10:00 a.m. or even later. “I don’t have the time” is usually the excuse justifying
this fatal error. Let’s take a closer look at the impact that this lack of planning and discipline may have
on your fat loss efforts:

Suppose you’re in a hurry to get to work in the morning and you get there without eating breakfast.
Your first meal of the day is lunch at 12:00 noon. It’s moderate in size, let’s say 550 calories, consisting
of a tuna pasta salad. Sounds fairly healthy so far. By your dinnertime of 6:00 p.m., you are starving
hungry, and you finish off a large plate of pasta for a total of 850 calories.

Later that night you’re still hungry and find your sweet tooth craving. Some sugar cookies and low fat
milk satisfies your needs – about 300 calories. Then you go right to sleep. Although this is far from
perfect, this menu still doesn’t sound like a total disaster to the average, uniformed person…
But as you might see, IT IS! It’s a nightmare!


Adding up those calories, it totals only 1700 for the entire day. So in theory, at least according to the
calorie calculations we did previously, it seems you should be losing fat – quite rapidly if you’re a male.
So why aren’t you? Answer; It’s because you’re encouraging your body in every possible way to store
fat!
You are in a highly catabolic state by leaving 18 hours between dinner and the next day’s lunch. This
causes muscle loss and metabolic slowdown. Because you’ve only eaten one meal during the beginning
of the day, you’re famished and you overeat at dinner.

Even though you’re in a 24-hour calorie deficit, this causes fat storage anyway because you’ve eaten more than you can handle at one sitting. By starving and stuffing, you’ve also set yourself up for serious cravings
at evening; usually the wrong kinds of foods – like sweets or ice cream!

In the long run, this type of diet is a sure-fire way to slow down your metabolism, break down your
muscles and gain body fat. On the other hand, 2400 calories spread out into five or six small meals of
400 - 480 calories each (about 300-350 calories per meal for women), will increase energy, accelerate muscle growth, and speed up your metabolism without fat storage. Frequent eating can actually allow you to consume up to 50% more calories without storing an ounce of it as fat!