Why you might need to rethink eating 6 meals per day!

When I am on my period, I eat 5-6 smaller meals, because if I don't, I get too lightheaded. I have lost 34 pounds, and have about 13 to go.

I dislike studies like this, because they don't seem scientific. I'm waiting for one that says "Overweight people drink water, so water causes weight gain"

So, I'm gonna keep on keepin' on, because it works for me.

We had a guest lecturer in a nutrition class whose study wasn't published yet that said the opposite for female Olympic figure skaters. Just yesterday I rewatched the video and was reading thru the notes and slides. I'll post some later.

My name is Dan Benardot.
I'm a professor in the Department of
Nutrition at Georgia State University

let's look at what the science says
about strategies for decreasing body fat.
First, let's think about some realities.
Body weight and body fat are very tightly
regulated.
Recent energy regulation research reveals
that the role of insulin, the hormone
leptin, and the hormone ghrelin are very
important in energy regulation.
Insulin is a long-term regulator of
energy balance, food intake, and fatness,
adiposity.
And, glucose metabolism in adipose tissue
plays a role in leptin concentrations.
Deficits in the production of leptin,
have been shown to increase fatness, or
adiposity in humans.
And the enteric hormone ghrelin acts as
an appetite stimulating hormone and has
been implicated in both short and
long-term appetite, food intake, and body
weight regulation.

blah blah

it's been found that subject who skip
breakfast as adults had significantly
higher waist circumference and body mass
indexes.

blah blah

We're going to look at how energy
imbalances during the day can impact
weight.
The traditional view is that you would
look at the total energy consumed.
That is, the total energy caloric
consumption over 24 hours of a person,
than you'd look at the total energy
expenditure over that same 24 hours for a
person, and look at the ratio of those
two values.
If over the course of the day, 24 hours a
person consume, let's say 2,000 calories
and they burn 2,000 calories, then you
would say they are in perfect energy
balance.

When you look at energy balance, but in a
more microeconomic view instead of the
macroeconomic view of the full 24 hours
in the day.
In fact, when you take a microeconomic
view, you realize that what you're
assessing is one simple transitional
point over the course of a day.
You're not measuring what happens to
energy balance at all over the course of
the day, you're just taking one point in
the day and saying, this point will tell
us everything we need to know about a
person's energy balance.

blah

we've been studying the time that a
person spends in an energy deficit, the
time that a person spends in an energy
balance surplus, how big the energy
surplus is or how big the energy balance
deficit is.
And what we found is that the time spent
in an energy deficit and the magnitude of
that deficit, the time spent in an energy
balance surplus and how big the surplus
is, it's a very big difference in what
the obesity outcomes will be for that
person.

This guy talked for 2.5 hours and was monotone. The information was amazing. He concentrated on athletes but addressed the obesity epidemic and had an interesting study on people in a retirement home. I just wish I was able to attend the office hours and ask questions.

I highly recommend taking online nutrition classes. This one was from Vanderbilt on Coursera.org

edit to fix img

Food for thought.
Thanks for posting this. :flowerforyou:

Currently, I'm eating an average of 4 meals per day but I'm going to try eating 3. I'll just add what I eat at my 4th meal to lunch or dinner and extend the time between my meals.

Much of my need to eat stems from food cues and not actual hunger.