Several small meals a day or 2-3 big meals?

minimiss669 wrote: »

paperpudding wrote: »

Well, no, I'm not saying switching it up is the key to anything or has any advantages.

I see no advantages, other than personal preference, to eating exactly the same calorie/ timing pattern every day or it being different on different days.

Darn it, I thought I hit upon a key to weight loss! Something else I wonder about eating large meals, say as you would if you were eating within a small time window. If I'm eating more than I need at that moment, doesn't the extra get stored as fat? Im guessing that the body doesn't work that way, but I associate being full with gaining weight.

Doesn't work that way. Keep in mind that it takes time to metabolize food: It's not like it hits your stomach and poof, you burn it in the next 15 minutes or it turns into fat. (Full digestive tract transit can take 50+ hours, and there's digestive fun of one sort or another happening most of the way, including the phase where our lower gut bugs eat our leftovers and produce chemicals that feed back to benefit our bodies. Complicated: There's a lot going on. And, even if it did turn into fat for a hour, and then that fat got burned off 2 hour later in a workout . . . why would we care? The net result is approximately the same.

The preference/satiation effects of eating timing are are a much bigger deal for average folks than any metabolic or biochemical-magic issues. If I get cranky without breakfast, bicker with my spouse, and it ends in divorce, that's more important in my life than whether I burned 32 more calories by fasting longer (and there's no great evidence I would).

If someone's an elite athlete, trying to squeeze out the last 0.005% performance improvement against equally committed opponents, maybe even for bodybuilders who are very lean and going for certain technical changes before a competition, nutrient timing may be worth looking at.

For us typical people? Nah, not so much. If it doesn't affect our individual satiation or our self-perceived energy level, the only thing tricksy nutrient timing does is make us feel like we're doing something extra cool and special.