Five Meals per Day Toward Leanness...

chrisnocturne

Hi, all. I'm not so much trying to drop weight as to see better muscle definition from working out. My trainer recommended 1500 calories in the form of five 300-calorie meals per day, high on protein, low on fat/refined sugars, watching carbs (but not cutting them altogether, because the energy is good for working out). Quite a balancing act, but it seems to be working, and some weight loss has occurred as well. My question is this: If you do something similar, do you have circumscribed times for the five meals? Does it help you to keep it as close to the same time each day with each one? Thanks for any advice you might have on this sort of regimen.

senecarr

Meal timing is personal preference and possibly based on activity for someone doing athletic training. It is irrelevant in terms of causing muscle definition or weight loss.

If you're looking to have more visible muscles the only way to do that is to lower your body fat percentage. This can happen by either raising the lean mass by gaining muscle (hard to do, and doing some with any speed involve increasing body fat anyway) or by lowering body fat, which involves losing weight.

psuLemon

There is no need to eat 5x a day. It's all what does best for you. I do better with 3 large meals. Actually, most of what your trainer said is old school thinking.

Protein should be set up based on your lean body mass (all thinks not fat). Typically, during a cut/weight loss, you should be aiming for .8g to 1g per lb of lbm or .6 to .8g per lb of weight. Most recommendations for fats is around .35g to .6g of fat per lb of lean body mass. And the carbs is what falls out.

Depending on what your workout program and stats, will determine your calorie goals and your results.

caroldavison332

I'm a type 2 diabetic and I fast Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights from 1600-0800 to facilitate burning fat. From what I read it sounds like you are doing the opposite.

Chargunshow

I eat 5 or 6 times a day...small meals/snacks. I aim for every 2 1/2 to 3 hours but I'll eat when I'm hungry if it's before. Even though I'd like to lose a few pounds, I'm happy if I am maintaining. I work out (CrossFit) up to 5 times a week and I have found that eating more has definitely helped my performance in my workouts. Beast mode.

psuLemon

caroldavison332 wrote: »

I'm a type 2 diabetic and I fast Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights from 1600-0800 to facilitate burning fat. From what I read it sounds like you are doing the opposite.

The fasting benefits are highly over hyped. If your calories and macros are the same, it wouldn't matter if you eating 2x a day or 8x a day, weight loss will be equal. Most people fail to consider that TEF will be equal regardless of how often you eat. Big meals will take longer to digest vs small meals, but equally over an extended period of time. And your body will still cycle between lipogenesis and lipolysis.

AnvilHead

Nothing wrong with eating five 300-calorie meals per day if it works for you in terms of satiety/adherence or workout performance, but there's nothing magical about it which will create increased fat loss or muscle gains over any other meal frequency/scheduling. Meal timing is irrelevant for about 99% of people - the exceptions being extreme endurance athletes and the very, very lean seeking to become even leaner (e.g., bodybuilders in pre-contest prep) who need every micro-percentage of assistance they can eke out.

Wetcoaster