How are we supposed to eat?

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Jayj180894
Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
How are humans in general suppose to eat? Are we grazers? Are we supposed to eat one big meal a day? I've heard 3 meals a day is just a traditional way of eating, that we are "stuck in". I have also heard that grazing or 5-7 small meals a day slows your metabolism down making it harder to lose weight. Also I have heard that fasting is no good for our brain, can increase fatigue, irritability and make us crave bad foods. So how are our bodies supposed to intake food, what are they designed for, how did our ancestors eat.
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  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    I did wonder that as we would of adapted from our habitat. I really just wondered what our bodies are designed for. I did believe that the small meals a day did slow the metabolism down and I'm glad you have put me straight! I just eat as and when I'm hungry to be honest just save enough calories for the evening for a biggish meal so i feel satisfied. Seems to be working :smile:
  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    cmriverside wrote: »
    Humans are adaptable, that's why we're so successful. Well, that and the huge brain.

    Eat what you like, when you like, stay within calories, die anyway.

    Very much like rats :wink:
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,565 Member
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    Humans should eat the amount of food required to maintain our energy balance, and enough variety to satisfy our nutritional needs. Since we are highly adaptable creatures with individual likes and dislikes, what we eat and when we eat is a choice, so we should eat the foods that satisfy us at the times that work for our bodies. Humans are designed to survive in a wide variety of environments; as long as energy balance and nutritional needs are met, the choice is yours.
  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    I ask, "Heard from whom?" Humans are, you may use the word "evolved" and you may use the word "adapted", and they have somewhat different meanings, but we can survive if our need for water is met only every other day while our need for calories is met just once a week or even less. Our bodies will scavenge energy from self-contained stores of fat, scavenge amino acids from breaking down self-contained stores of protein, scavenge minerals from breaking down our own bones, and generally find every last bodily resource to redeploy in supply and service to the brain before finally yielding to death. Anything we eat that keeps us from death is a perfectly good way of experiencing life.

    I watched a programme on weight loss and a celebrity doctor who is highly thought of in the UK was explaining that eating 3 meals a day was a "Victorian" way of eating, to which we need to snap out of. The rest is what I have picked up online from different sources. I do realise that A LOT is very conflicting. So I'm getting a general feel that our bodies aren't designed in any one way for feeding? Just as long as we are meeting our RDA.
  • Whitezombiegirl
    Whitezombiegirl Posts: 1,042 Member
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    Three meals a day is a modern way of eating. At one point it was 5 meals a day if you include elevenses and high tea. It's more of a social construct than anything. My partner is a big muscular guy and works an intense physically demanding job. He has eaten one big meal a day late at night for the last 20 plus years. It works for him.

    I'm no-diabetic hypoglycemic and that would never work for me.

    Do what ever suits you at the time. Mix it up if you want it doesnt really matter.
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,751 Member
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    We are supposed to eat how we do.
  • nowine4me
    nowine4me Posts: 3,985 Member
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    cmriverside wrote: »
    Humans are adaptable, that's why we're so successful. Well, that and the huge brain.

    Eat what you like, when you like, stay within calories, die anyway.
    But at least you won't die getting squashed by a T-Rex.

    Try and bunch of things and find what works for you. Personally, I like to spread my calories over 5 meals, pretty much equally. But it took 2 years of trial and error to figure that out.
  • vikinglander
    vikinglander Posts: 1,547 Member
    edited October 2017
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    I would like to recommend to OP and to anyone weighing in or simply reading this thread, a book titled "Sapiens" by professor Yuval Noah Harari. You might enjoy it...

    No preach, no angle...just a good book about how we got here.
  • explodingmango
    explodingmango Posts: 171 Member
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    Our ancestors got by on a steady diet of whatever they could fit in their face holes that didn't poison them to death. Humans are a highly adaptable species - and a highly varied one.

    That may be disappointing if you're looking for guidance about what your body is "optimized" to eat, but, well, unless you're asking a dietitian who knows your history (or someone who wants to sell you a book or magazine), that's really all you're going to get.

    The best thing you can do toward figuring out what you're best off eating to eat is to use MFP or another food journaling platform religiously, and note how you feel. See if you can spot correlation between eating a certain food and feeling really, really good the next day, or eating at a certain time and getting sick, or something like that.

    The only thing you mentioned up there that's completely true is that 3 meals a day is a social construct - and that doesn't mean it's unnatural or unhealthy; it's just a culture-bound convenient pattern based around the modern work day. Which is not far from how our ancestors did it - they adopted a pattern based around when someone brought home a fresh deer carcass or found a nice ripe harvest of berries.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,986 Member
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    MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »
    'Our ancestors' would depend a lot from where your roots come from. Even so, I wouldn't worry so much about what my ancestors ate as to what suits me now. If you feel like what you're doing now isn't working, then mix it up a bit. Try several small meals throughout the day (they don't slow your metabolism down), or three meals, or one large meal. Just ensure that it's something you'll be able to stick to long-term.

    "Our ancestors" would also depend on how many centuries or millenia you look back. It's a pretty arbitrary way of deciding how to eat. As MichelleSilverleaf says, find what works for you now.
  • sgt1372
    sgt1372 Posts: 3,981 Member
    edited October 2017
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    nowine4me wrote: »
    But at least you won't die getting squashed by a T-Rex.

    Actually, homo sapiens have only been around for about 1-2 million years. T-Rex and other dinos lived about 85-65 million years ago after which they became extinct.

    So, humans and dinos never lived at the same time. Only the extinction of dinos and the emergence of mammals as a viable species made it possible for apes and humans to evolve.

    As for what we are optimized to eat, we are omnivores and (food politics aside) can/will eat anything. Just ask Andrew Zimmern on Bizzare Foods.

    Before organized agriculture, animal husbandr and food storage technology, we ate whatever we could kill or fin, whenever we could kill or find anything to eat. And, when we couldn't kill or find anything to eat, we starved.

    It's called feast or famine and it's the same for ALL animals in the wild. That's why our bodies store excess food as fat and burns fat when there is no food to eat. However, this isn't very instructive in terms of deciding how we are "supposed" to eat or choosing the "best" way to eat.

    For me, the best way to eat is when I am hungry and only enough to maintain my weight at my desired weight and BF level. I do that by eating/snacking 2-5x's a day, logging everything that I eat and limiting my intake to the caloric limit that will achieve my weight/BF objectives.

    What works for others will probably vary.

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