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Is it better to eat smaller meals more often to lose weight?

Abhijit Chanda

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Will Eating Frequent Meals Help Me Lose Weight? Abhijit

Many people have told me that the benefits of eating small frequent meals include boosting your metabolism to help you lose body fat quickly. The logic flows from the fact that your metabolism goes up every time you eat, so eating more frequent meals will keep your metabolism at a high level so that you lose weight.

Unfortunately, this technique of weight loss doesn’t necessarily work unless your total caloric intake is less than you’re burning on a daily basis. In this post, I’m going to tell you about the problems and benefits of with eating small, frequent meals along with a deeper understanding of what your metabolism is, how to speed it up and how to lose weight reliably and sustainably.

First, what is this “metabolism”?

Simply, it’s the cumulation of all the processes in your body that keep you alive. It’s how the body breaks down food to get at the nutrition so it can grow, repairs itself, and runs all your organs. Now, we have to learn a few words before we move on. Some you’ll know. Some, not so much (probably): 

  1. BMR: Your metabolism is measured as your Basal Metabolic Rate, which is the number of calories you burn when you’re not doing anything. You know, like your ideal Sunday. Just lying in bed and watching Netflix….and, you know, chilling. If you want to figure out what your BMR is, there are lots of online calculators.

  2. Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE): This is the total number of calories you actually burn in a day when you’re not chilling and watching Netflix. Like going for a walk, playing with your kids/dog, doing the dishes, cleaning your door handle. That stuff.

What does that Have to do with weight loss?

How much weight you lose is dependant on how many calories you’re eating through the day, minus your total daily energy expenditure. If you get a negative number, you’re on the right track. And if you get a positive number, you’ll have to cut down the calories a bit. It’s as simple as that. It’s called Energy Balance. And that’s what you should be paying attention to when it comes to losing weight. Countless scientific studies have shown this again and again and again. You just need to be consuming fewer calories than you are spending. That is a bit over-simplistic, but that’s the foundation of weight loss.

Let’s say your TDEE is 2,200 calories a day while you’re eating 2,500, you will end up gaining weight. If you eat food worth 2,200 calories, you’ll stay the same. And if you eat less, you’ll lose weight. Boom. Now we can go home.

No, wait! There’s more!

First, If you want to know how to track your calories, try out MyFitnessPal. They have apps for both iOS and Android, and they are free! Then you’ll know how many calories you’re consuming and can start taking control of what you eat.

So, does eating every two hours speed up your metabolism?

Going back to the beginning, do we really need to speed up our metabolism? Is speeding up your metabolism the only way to lose weight? Or at least the most effective? And do we have to eat every two hours to do it?

Short answer: Yes. Speeding up your metabolism will help you lose weight faster and keep it off. But do frequent meals help you do this? Not really. Your metabolism does speed up whenever you eat. But that’s for a very good reason: you’re eating! Your metabolism has to go up to digest and metabolise all the food. It’s like saying you should drive more to use your petrol and keep adding more petrol each time you drive. It’s obvious. And stupid. Why the hell would you want to waste petrol like that?! Okay, I digress. But yes, food is fuel for your body. And we need to deplete as much of it as we can so we can lose weight. The fun bit is, there are things you should be doing other than eating to speed up your metabolism and increase your TDEE. Let me give you 4 ways you can speed up your metabolism:

  1. Strength training

    The big plus is, you continue burning fat at a higher rate long after you stop working out - for 36 to 48 hours! Doing weight training also builds up lots of muscle tissue, which is hungry for calories even when you’re doing nothing. Do you know what that means? A faster metabolism! It’s not by many calories, but they do add up over time. Plus, this is a big help if you fall off the wagon for a bit – you won’t put on as much weight as you might without the muscles. Make sure you do every body part at least once a week and get a day or two of rest in between. Ladies, you don’t need to worry about looking bulky or manly. You won’t look that muscular easily, you just don’t have the male hormones for it. Yup. Testicles make men muscular (and bald). True story.

  2. Aerobic exercise

    If you enjoy walking, running, cycling or swimming, these all come under aerobic exercises, otherwise called Cardio. You’ll need to do at least half an hour of these, 2 to 5 days a week, for it to be effective. You burn primarily fat during the workout and it also improves your endurance and heart health. The only downsides to these kinds of exercises are that they can be a bit boring and monotonous, and the fat you burn is limited only to while you’re working out. To make it interesting, you could try interval training or HIIT, which is fast bursts of high-intensity cardio interspersed with lower intensity recovery periods. You can even mix it in between your strength training workouts for added benefits. Just go easy on it so it doesn’t lead to you overtraining or having an injury.

  3. Stay active

    Increasing your level of activity through the day, like playing with your kids, standing more, taking the stairs at work and getting up and walking around through the day also helps increase your overall TDEE.

  4. Eating Protein

    This is an incredibly effective way of boosting your metabolism whenever you eat. It takes a lot of energy for your body to break down and metabolise protein. In fact, up to 25% of the calories you consume as protein get used just to in the process of metabolising it. Carbohydrates and fats take far fewer calories to process. Make sure each of your meals, however many of them you have, is rich in proteins. The recommended amount of protein you should consume in a day is around 1 gram for every kilogram of bodyweight. So for an 80 kg man, that would be around 80 g of protein. If you want to break that up into 4 meals, that’s 20 g per meal. So what does 20 g of protein look like? Four eggs usually come to around 18 g to 20 g of protein. A chicken breast contains about 50 g of protein. A cup of boiled lentils (dal) has around 18 g. You can find many more protein rich foods listed here.

Conclusion

Okay, so that’s a lot of information. Let’s wrap this up with the key points:

  1. Instead of counting meals, count your calories. Calculate your TDEE and cut down 300 to 500 calories from your diet. I’ll do a dedicated article on tracking your food really soon so bookmark this website so you don’t miss it.

  2. Increase your daily activity levels and start working out. Do a combination of cardio and weights too.

The number of meals you have in the day, and when you have them, is less important than how many calories you consume. More frequent meals may also give you more opportunities to overeat and end up in a calroic surplus at the end of the day. I’m sure that’s not what you want.

However, if you prefer eating small, frequent meals and it’s helping you control your diet easily and sustainably, please keep on doing it. If you prefer to have fewer meals in the day or find intermittent fasting more comfortable, then do that. Hell, if the keto diet works for you, you can do that too. Just check with your doctor first.

Remember, the best diet for you is the one you can sustain indefinitely. Eat in a way that’s comfortable to you, don’t overdo the calories and make sure you get plenty of protein in every meal.

If you have any questions, put them down there in the comments. Till next time, be rationable.

Further Reading & References