3 meals vs. 6 meals

[pintoca]

Joe,

I have seen (plenty of times in a relatively short amount of time) your mentioning of the fact that there are studies that demonstrate the fact there is really no point in eating 6 meals against 3 meals.

I'd like to see a couple of those studies, so could you please post a couple of links?

I'd be the first one willing to try this one out, since there is no denying that eating 3 meals is FAR more convenient than eating 6.

I normally eat 5 solid meals plus a PWO shake... I wonder what the effect would be of having 2 solid meals and a PWO shake.

Have their taken their premise to the extreme and compared the effect of having one single meal (comprising all your cals) per day? I personally think this is the point where the argument would not be valid anymore (then again, I have to read the reports though), since there was a max recommendation per meal of some 800 cals.

 

[riverrock]

Problem with 3 meals is that its impossible to get your required protein and calorie intake. Better to split it, so your a bit more hungry each time. Most people need some weight gainer and shakes (1 of each per day) to hit their total.

Also, read a study that you need to "reset" your metabolism every 3 hours or your body goes into starvation mode. That makes alot of sence

 

[pintoca]

I'm talking in the context of a cutting diet where you take some easy 2000 cals/day... it owuld not be too difficult to engineer, say, 2 meals of 800 cals each with everything you need inside and complement with the PWO shake.

Let's assume that its possible to have all the cals/nutrients required in those meals

 

[Stryc-9]

I believe that the practice of consuming smaller, more frequent meals can be classified under the category: Can't Hurt, Might Help

In my own experience, I don't believe that meal-timing/amounts makes a very drastic difference in the grand scheme of things. Personally, I have gone for extended periods (i.e., years) while travelling abroad where it was simply not feasible to eat on a rigid schedule. As long as I kept on top of total daily calories, ate clean, and hit the gym - my physique didn't change much.

So if it's a matter of convenience, or you're simply unable to eat 6 times a day - as long as you're consuming your total required calories for the day (in line with whatever goals you have set) and you're dedicated to exercise - whether you eat 3 or 6 times a day is not going to be the determining factor in your success.

 

[Joe Stenson]

pintoca, one of the "experts" I most respect in the field of bodybuilding nutrition is Lyle McDonald (creator of the UD2 and PSMF diets that I personally would argue are "the best" out there). He has his own board, bodyrecomposition.com, and to save time (as I'm at work) I'm going to use a bunch of quotes from him to get my point across.

Here are the reasons why people claim 6 meals is better, followed by why this is not true (and no I'm not saying, nor would I ever say, that 3 meals is better...merely that it makes no difference). So, in no particular order:

1) You can only utilize a certain amount of nutrients in a certain duration of time.
I'm not sure where this myth began, but I don't believe it's ever been proved or disproved. The only "evidence" out there is that which I cited in the other thread about our ancestors possibly not eating for days, then having a massive feast (when they found something to eat), and repeating the process indefinitely. There's also another group of people worth looking at, and this is mentioned in something I will quote shortly: prisoners.

As for a greater chance of fat storage if you can't properly utilize all of the calories, here's something to think about. Let's say you DO store more fat after consuming a larger meal. Well, what do you burn in between meals? Answer: stored calories. So, while the person eating less meals/day may store less calories/meal as fat, he is also spending less time per day using stored fuel. So, the net effect is zero difference.

2) Eating more meals keeps your metabolism humming all day.
"First and foremost, human metabolism doesn't slow on a meal to meal basis. In rats/mice, probably. In humans, no way.
Second, the usual argument has to do with the thermic effect of food, every time you eat, metabolic rate goes up a bit. And this is true. But if you look at the net TEF over a given day, whether you bump it a little 6X/day or a lot 3X/day, the end result is the same." -Lyle McDonald

3) You must eat every 2-4 hours to maintain a positive nitrogen balance.
Again, I'll let Lyle handle this one:
"Nitrogen balance is an attempt to measure changes in the body's nitrogen content (proteins contain some proportion of nitrogen). So they measure nitrogen going into the body, which is food. Then they attempt to measure nitrogen going out. This includes fecal losses, urinary losses, losses in sweat, skin loss, breath loss and I even saw one study that collected women's tampons to measure nitrogen in the blood (I highlighted that quote). In most cases, some estimations are made for a lot of these because they are a hassle to measure directly (serious studies will sew people into suits to collect sweat and skin so it can be measured). Unfortunately, these estimates are probably wrong when you put exercise into the mix.

The difference is presumed to indicate how much the body's nitrogen status is changing. So, in premise, if you're in positive nitrogen balance, you're storing protein; negative nitrogen balance, losing it.

The problem is that, as a method, it's basically not very accurate. This is one of the primary criticisms of the work of Lemon and Tarnopolsky (i.e. by Phillips and Millward): if you take the nitrogen balance estimations at face value, the lifters in those studies should have gained kilos and kilos of muscle mass. But they didn't. Conclusion: nitrogen balance vastly overestimates things and isn't a good measure. As well, there's no way to know where the nitrogen is going anyhow.

Protein synthesis is an attempt to be a bit more accurate/specific. Usually a radioactive tracer is used like leucine (presents problems due to metabolism w/in the muscle) or phenylalanine (much less difficult) and you measure uptake. This can be done at the whole body level or for a specific tissue. The problem with measurements of whole body protein synthesis is that, once again, you don't know what tissue the protein is being synthesized in. Could be muscle (we hope), frequently it's changes in liver proteins and such. It's more accurate to measure direct muscular uptake but more expensive and invasive.

So, back to the original question: does eating more frequently impact on nitrogen balance or protein synthesis. There's one study that chronically gets trotted out on meal frequency and ntirogen balance: it's a Russian study done in rats. The problem: rat metabolism is way faster than ours; extrapolation is problematic. Other than the afforementioned boxer study (where 2 vs.6 meals led to a more negative nitrogen balance, and note my other problems with that study above: liquid protein, 2 vs. 6 is an extreme difference and I suspect far different than 3 vs. 6 would have been), I don't recall seeing anything comparing meal frequencies given an identical amount of protein. I assume if it was out there and it was positive, the protein powder ads would cite it constantly (note: if anybody has seen such a paper, send the reference my way).

Now, eating stimulates protein synthesis, both whole body and muscular. In muscle specifically, the key plaers are the BCAA's, especailly leucine. Note that the quantitative effect on muscle protein synthesis is quite tiny in the big scheme of things. One researcher (Tipton? Aaronf will correct me here) has done some back of the hand calculations suggesting that anything over 40 grams of amino acids may max out muscular protein synthesis. As I recall, he was going from an infusion study. I think this is an important point to make because infusing aminos all at once is way different than eating.

The issue as I see it is that the digestion of protein in humans is fairly slow. A large meal of a solid protein may still be releasing amino acids into the bloodstream at the 5-8 hour mark. It's hard for me to see how the assertino that you MUST eat protein every 3 hours or you will fall into the pit of catabolism can possibly hold true. Basically, larger meals release the nutrients into the system over a much longer time frame than smaller meals. I have trouble seeing how 3 meals of 80 grams of protein is going to be massively different than 6 of 40 grams of protein.

So even if Tipton's 40 gram thing turns out to be correct, it's not as if eating 80 grams of protein in a meal means that 80 grams of protein all hit your bloodstream all at once. You'd expect a spike of nutrients, at which point this would feedback on gastric emptying and keep the rest of the meal in the gut, followed by a more steady release.

Do I think it hurts? Of course not. Do I think it makes all of the difference in the world? Not so much. To steal an arguably bad example from that website someone trotted out a few weeks back: look at prisoners in jail, lifting their brains out and getting fed what the jail feeds them. They get HUGE. Somehow I doubt they are eating 30-40 grams of protein 6X/day to do so."

4) Studies have been done showing more meals equates to less LBM lost during a diet.
Again:
"Ok, one goofy ass study on boxers found more LBM loss on an extreme diet comparing 2 vs. 6 meals/day. Study had many problems IMO. Not the least of which was too little protein in general, and using liquid protein (faster digestion). Not to mention that 2 vs. 6 is a different situation, IMO than 3 vs. 6.

Usually when studies find a difference between meal frequency, it's because meal frequency ends up affecting caloric intake.

So early studies suggested that adding snacks to 3 meals/day made you fatter. But people were adding calories to their daily total and probably snacking on junk food.

Later studies found that splitting your calories into more meals made people eat less, so they lost weight.

The counfound in both sets of studies: meal frequency ended up impacting total caloric intake and it was the change in caloric intake that caused the results. When you control calories, within a realistic range of meals (3+), differences would appear to be insignificant (there's a good British Journal of Nutrition review out there on the topic)."

As for studies that would appear more practical:
"The studies done to date, using identical caloric intake and varying meal frequencies generally find little to no difference in anything."

He does note that one might make an argument for increased partitioning effects around training time, which might lead to slight differences in body composition if a greater % of one's daily calories were consumed at this time.

You see, what people fail to realize (and is the point I keep stressing) is that when broken down to it's most basic level, dieting comes down to calories. Food choices and meal frequency are generally quite moot, given a few basic requirements are met (adequate protein, mostly coming from whole food sources, EFA's, and equal calories across all conditions).

And finally, pintoca mentioned taking this to the extreme and consuming only a single meal/day. If it all comes down to calories why wouldn't this approach be just as good? Well, it's explained above. Protein synthesis and nitrogen balance aren't as important as most people (typically supplement companies looking to push their powders) would have you believe. That being said, aminos are only released into the bloodstream for so long. Going 24 hours between meals would surely not be adequate in this respect.

 

[gymratforlife]

pintoca, one of the "experts" I most respect in the field of bodybuilding nutrition is Lyle McDonald (creator of the UD2 and PSMF diets that I personally would argue are "the best" out there). He has his own board, bodyrecomposition.com, and to save time (as I'm at work) I'm going to use a bunch of quotes from him to get my point across.

Here are the reasons why people claim 6 meals is better, followed by why this is not true (and no I'm not saying, nor would I ever say, that 3 meals is better...merely that it makes no difference). So, in no particular order:

1) You can only utilize a certain amount of nutrients in a certain duration of time.
I'm not sure where this myth began, but I don't believe it's ever been proved or disproved. The only "evidence" out there is that which I cited in the other thread about our ancestors possibly not eating for days, then having a massive feast (when they found something to eat), and repeating the process indefinitely. There's also another group of people worth looking at, and this is mentioned in something I will quote shortly: prisoners.

As for a greater chance of fat storage if you can't properly utilize all of the calories, here's something to think about. Let's say you DO store more fat after consuming a larger meal. Well, what do you burn in between meals? Answer: stored calories. So, while the person eating less meals/day may store less calories/meal as fat, he is also spending less time per day using stored fuel. So, the net effect is zero difference.

2) Eating more meals keeps your metabolism humming all day.
"First and foremost, human metabolism doesn't slow on a meal to meal basis. In rats/mice, probably. In humans, no way.
Second, the usual argument has to do with the thermic effect of food, every time you eat, metabolic rate goes up a bit. And this is true. But if you look at the net TEF over a given day, whether you bump it a little 6X/day or a lot 3X/day, the end result is the same." -Lyle McDonald

3) You must eat every 2-4 hours to maintain a positive nitrogen balance.
Again, I'll let Lyle handle this one:
"Nitrogen balance is an attempt to measure changes in the body's nitrogen content (proteins contain some proportion of nitrogen). So they measure nitrogen going into the body, which is food. Then they attempt to measure nitrogen going out. This includes fecal losses, urinary losses, losses in sweat, skin loss, breath loss and I even saw one study that collected women's tampons to measure nitrogen in the blood (I highlighted that quote). In most cases, some estimations are made for a lot of these because they are a hassle to measure directly (serious studies will sew people into suits to collect sweat and skin so it can be measured). Unfortunately, these estimates are probably wrong when you put exercise into the mix.

The difference is presumed to indicate how much the body's nitrogen status is changing. So, in premise, if you're in positive nitrogen balance, you're storing protein; negative nitrogen balance, losing it.

The problem is that, as a method, it's basically not very accurate. This is one of the primary criticisms of the work of Lemon and Tarnopolsky (i.e. by Phillips and Millward): if you take the nitrogen balance estimations at face value, the lifters in those studies should have gained kilos and kilos of muscle mass. But they didn't. Conclusion: nitrogen balance vastly overestimates things and isn't a good measure. As well, there's no way to know where the nitrogen is going anyhow.

Protein synthesis is an attempt to be a bit more accurate/specific. Usually a radioactive tracer is used like leucine (presents problems due to metabolism w/in the muscle) or phenylalanine (much less difficult) and you measure uptake. This can be done at the whole body level or for a specific tissue. The problem with measurements of whole body protein synthesis is that, once again, you don't know what tissue the protein is being synthesized in. Could be muscle (we hope), frequently it's changes in liver proteins and such. It's more accurate to measure direct muscular uptake but more expensive and invasive.

So, back to the original question: does eating more frequently impact on nitrogen balance or protein synthesis. There's one study that chronically gets trotted out on meal frequency and ntirogen balance: it's a Russian study done in rats. The problem: rat metabolism is way faster than ours; extrapolation is problematic. Other than the afforementioned boxer study (where 2 vs.6 meals led to a more negative nitrogen balance, and note my other problems with that study above: liquid protein, 2 vs. 6 is an extreme difference and I suspect far different than 3 vs. 6 would have been), I don't recall seeing anything comparing meal frequencies given an identical amount of protein. I assume if it was out there and it was positive, the protein powder ads would cite it constantly (note: if anybody has seen such a paper, send the reference my way).

Now, eating stimulates protein synthesis, both whole body and muscular. In muscle specifically, the key plaers are the BCAA's, especailly leucine. Note that the quantitative effect on muscle protein synthesis is quite tiny in the big scheme of things. One researcher (Tipton? Aaronf will correct me here) has done some back of the hand calculations suggesting that anything over 40 grams of amino acids may max out muscular protein synthesis. As I recall, he was going from an infusion study. I think this is an important point to make because infusing aminos all at once is way different than eating.

The issue as I see it is that the digestion of protein in humans is fairly slow. A large meal of a solid protein may still be releasing amino acids into the bloodstream at the 5-8 hour mark. It's hard for me to see how the assertino that you MUST eat protein every 3 hours or you will fall into the pit of catabolism can possibly hold true. Basically, larger meals release the nutrients into the system over a much longer time frame than smaller meals. I have trouble seeing how 3 meals of 80 grams of protein is going to be massively different than 6 of 40 grams of protein.

So even if Tipton's 40 gram thing turns out to be correct, it's not as if eating 80 grams of protein in a meal means that 80 grams of protein all hit your bloodstream all at once. You'd expect a spike of nutrients, at which point this would feedback on gastric emptying and keep the rest of the meal in the gut, followed by a more steady release.

Do I think it hurts? Of course not. Do I think it makes all of the difference in the world? Not so much. To steal an arguably bad example from that website someone trotted out a few weeks back: look at prisoners in jail, lifting their brains out and getting fed what the jail feeds them. They get HUGE. Somehow I doubt they are eating 30-40 grams of protein 6X/day to do so."

4) Studies have been done showing more meals equates to less LBM lost during a diet.
Again:
"Ok, one goofy ass study on boxers found more LBM loss on an extreme diet comparing 2 vs. 6 meals/day. Study had many problems IMO. Not the least of which was too little protein in general, and using liquid protein (faster digestion). Not to mention that 2 vs. 6 is a different situation, IMO than 3 vs. 6.

Usually when studies find a difference between meal frequency, it's because meal frequency ends up affecting caloric intake.

So early studies suggested that adding snacks to 3 meals/day made you fatter. But people were adding calories to their daily total and probably snacking on junk food.

Later studies found that splitting your calories into more meals made people eat less, so they lost weight.

The counfound in both sets of studies: meal frequency ended up impacting total caloric intake and it was the change in caloric intake that caused the results. When you control calories, within a realistic range of meals (3+), differences would appear to be insignificant (there's a good British Journal of Nutrition review out there on the topic)."

As for studies that would appear more practical:
"The studies done to date, using identical caloric intake and varying meal frequencies generally find little to no difference in anything."

He does note that one might make an argument for increased partitioning effects around training time, which might lead to slight differences in body composition if a greater % of one's daily calories were consumed at this time.

You see, what people fail to realize (and is the point I keep stressing) is that when broken down to it's most basic level, dieting comes down to calories. Food choices and meal frequency are generally quite moot, given a few basic requirements are met (adequate protein, mostly coming from whole food sources, EFA's, and equal calories across all conditions).

And finally, pintoca mentioned taking this to the extreme and consuming only a single meal/day. If it all comes down to calories why wouldn't this approach be just as good? Well, it's explained above. Protein synthesis and nitrogen balance aren't as important as most people (typically supplement companies looking to push their powders) would have you believe. That being said, aminos are only released into the bloodstream for so long. Going 24 hours between meals would surely not be adequate in this respect.

Nice info right there bro K to you.

 

[PatBateman3]

Problem with 3 meals is that its impossible to get your required protein and calorie intake. Better to split it, so your a bit more hungry each time. Most people need some weight gainer and shakes (1 of each per day) to hit their total.

Also, read a study that you need to "reset" your metabolism every 3 hours or your body goes into starvation mode. That makes alot of sence

This would be my only concern, and maybe Joe or someone else could address it. Is it possible for the body to absorb more than around 60g protein per meal. There has been talk in the past on elite that there does in fact exist a ceiling as to how much protein the body can absorb at one time. I know the post talks to this point a bit, but can someone explain to me why it would be feasible to, for example, use all of the protein in one meal if I had a 50g shake and 2 chicken breasts????


ALSO----> Someone should sticky this.

 

[Judo Tom]

IMO it wont matter 6vs3 meals until your bf% is 6-8 then all the little tricks will help you get lower.. until then idont thinkyou will know..

cutting for this tournament at times i was only eating 1 real meal a day then some veggies here and there.. THATS IT NO shakes or anything pre or post workout..

it made me feel kinda crappy / light headed at times but the weight dropped like crazy and i continued to get STRONGER

there were easily times i was at a 2k deficit in one day. and i really dont think i burned much muscle the first few weeks.

once i get really low is when i actually eat better or else i can watch my muscles get eaten but while i have fat and train hard i really dont burn much muscle..

most of my training partners notice the same thing.. that you can almost starve while your fat and not burn muscle but once you are real low thats when it gets burned up..

your not gonna read stuff like that cause trainers want to make money and generally they have to set themselves apart or make things seem more complicated then they are so you feel you need them.

again i think 6 is better then 3 just that if you only eat 3 (With same cals) you probably wont notice much of a dif..

 

[Joe Stenson]

This would be my only concern, and maybe Joe or someone else could address it. Is it possible for the body to absorb more than around 60g protein per meal. There has been talk in the past on elite that there does in fact exist a ceiling as to how much protein the body can absorb at one time. I know the post talks to this point a bit, but can someone explain to me why it would be feasible to, for example, use all of the protein in one meal if I had a 50g shake and 2 chicken breasts????

I think it's more a case of innocent until proven guilty than anything else. As far as I'm aware, no limit has actually been found, and if there is one I would imagine it's affected by a plethora of factors. Like I said above, the only "evidence" we have so far is anecdotal, and that's never going to prove anything.

Turn the question around. Why WOULDN'T it be feasible to use all of the protein in one meal if you had a 50g shake and 2 chicken breasts? I think either way it's just as valid.

The key is this. Nowhere did I claim that 3 meals was better than 6. I just explained why the generally accepted theory that 6 is better doesn't really hold any water when broken down into its most basic components. All this is demonstrating is that it's personal preference, mainly dealing with appetite control as I've stated in other threads (less meals = more time to get hungry between meals, but perhaps a larger feeling of satiety after consuming more calories in those meals). If people want to be anal 99% of the time and worry about nitrogen balance and think that's going to be the difference between their current physique and Ronnie Coleman's that's fine. The point of this was to show that one need not stress over missing a meal.

ALSO----> Someone should sticky this.

I second that.

IMO it wont matter 6vs3 meals until your bf% is 6-8 then all the little tricks will help you get lower.. until then idont thinkyou will know..

cutting for this tournament at times i was only eating 1 real meal a day then some veggies here and there.. THATS IT NO shakes or anything pre or post workout..

it made me feel kinda crappy / light headed at times but the weight dropped like crazy and i continued to get STRONGER

there were easily times i was at a 2k deficit in one day. and i really dont think i burned much muscle the first few weeks.

once i get really low is when i actually eat better or else i can watch my muscles get eaten but while i have fat and train hard i really dont burn much muscle..

most of my training partners notice the same thing.. that you can almost starve while your fat and not burn muscle but once you are real low thats when it gets burned up..

your not gonna read stuff like that cause trainers want to make money and generally they have to set themselves apart or make things seem more complicated then they are so you feel you need them.

again i think 6 is better then 3 just that if you only eat 3 (With same cals) you probably wont notice much of a dif..

Definitely agree that the fatter you are, the easier it is to lose fat while sparing muscle. There's a HUGE difference trying to get from 20% to 15%, as compared from 12% to 7% or something...it's night and day.

Just wanting some clarification on your first statement. Are you suggesting that eating 6 meals instead of 3 is one of bodybuilding's "little tricks", or vice versa? I assume the former, and part of me wants to agree with you while the other is skeptical. I actually always say the same thing, that if you want to start worrying about nutrient timing and all of that crap that goes beyond cals in = cals out, wait until you're single digits. The only thing is, why does everything I mentioned above all of a sudden disappear as one's bodyfat gets lower? I don't see how any of those explanations change when we start talking about 6% vs. 10% vs. 15%. Interesting stuff to think about though.

 

[Judo Tom]

i think (know for me) that i do get SLIGHTLY better results eating 6 meals vs 3

but i normally work out 7-12x a week. I watch my weight and bf% like a freak due to weight classes. I have been training for years and really know my body.. so i am able to see the small changes..

like the more meals i eat i can have more carbs but still loose weight easier.. but its not much at all..

but an author / trainer will write pages and pages detailing all the HUGE advantages but in all honesty MOST people will not see much of a difference IMO

but if it helps motivate you, keep you focused, keeps you training and keeps you from missing workouts then go for it.. but then if thats the case.. whats bringing the results the extra meals or all the other benefits..