Misinformation.

Let's look at meal frequency, which would fall into the personal preference category. Does meal frequency matter?

It might matter for behavioral reasons and it might matter for performance reasons and if it leads to better gym performance it could minimally effect expenditure. But it DOES NOT effect metabolism

So if I should have 2400 calories per day, I could just eat 16800 calories on Monday mornings and skip eating the other 6 days? Is that how metabolism works? What is the minimum frequency for meals? I don't want to read misinformation, and you're the expert on it, so please clear this up for me.

I'd like to talk about something.

Often times on the forums, we'll see someone post what looks like a helpful post full of dieting information. If the information is faulty, some people will reply with the intent to correct it in the hopes that too many people don't buy into the bad information.

Then a bunch of people will get upset with the guy or gal who is trying to correct the person, saying "Stop hating" or "Stop being so negative!". (Sometimes people do post rude replies but it seems like any disagreement is arbitrarily viewed as negative as of late).

Misinformation is bad.

I will give you a few examples to attempt to explain why:

Let's look at meal frequency, which would fall into the personal preference category. Does meal frequency matter?

It might matter for behavioral reasons and it might matter for performance reasons and if it leads to better gym performance it could minimally effect expenditure. But it DOES NOT effect metabolism and if someone says this gem:

"It's very important to eat every 3 hours so that your metabolism keeps burning. If you skip a meal your metabolism will slow down and your body will actually STORE FAT. So please make sure to eat every 3 hours". (<--- this claim is entirely false)

...this is problematic because people who DON'T currently eat frequently might think "Crap, I'm doing it wrong. I'm going to have to fix this". Now they're going to reschedule what could be an eating pattern that works very well for them based on the bad information that increasing their frequency will increase metabolic rate. Additionally, they'll have to eat smaller meals (because they would obviously keep kcals/macros constant) which would probably have a negative effect on adherence/satiety.

Is eating frequently arbitrarily bad? No. It's personal preference. But convincing someone that it's metabolically relevant is BAD, because this convinces them that they must follow this advice.

Lets look at a different example from a recent thread:

"You shouldn't combine carbs and fats in the same meal because it will cause your body to store fat!"

This was recently posted in a topic and not only is it completely bogus and not supported by anything, but the end result was (literally) that someone replied with:

"Thanks so much for this, I'm going to stop eating PB+J sandwiches".

So someone comes on here and posts something completely false and out of fear, another person eliminates something they enjoy from their diet. Now, for all we know someone else is reading that post and not replying, because they're in the kitchen stressed out over how they're going to re-arrange every meal in their day so that the carb sources aren't ever eaten with fat.


This is not a good thing.

There's a very small list of things that are necessary to lose weight.
There's a very large list of things that are personal preference for losing weight. (In this list I include medical reasons, moral reasons, individual intolerances).


Both of these are important, but focus on the necessities first and customize the personal preference aspects to give you the best adherence or most enjoyment possible out of your journey.


And don't confuse the two for yourself or others.

/end rant.

A lot of fitness junk is pretty grey-area. You'll see people argue til they're blue in the face (blue in the monitor???) and post articles/facts/studies supporting both sides.

I usually trust the advice of whoever is sexier.

Never steers me wrong.

So if I should have 2400 calories per day, I could just eat 16800 calories on Monday mornings and skip eating the other 6 days? Is that how metabolism works? What is the minimum frequency for meals? I don't want to read misinformation, and you're the expert on it, so please clear this up for me.