May 20, 2020 • 31 mins
Eat less frequently, eat more frequently, practice intermittent fasting – Once again, there is so much conflicting information when it comes to eating for optimal health. Should you be periodically starving yourself or should you be eating every few hours? The approaches couldn’t be more contradictory and the research is indeed mixed, but maybe the answers are less complicated than they are made out to be. Hear Tom tackle the meal frequency debate on this episode of FD.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. There
are no health benefits to eating more often. That is
(00:23):
a takeaway, an actual headline slash takeaway from an article
on whether or not eating more frequently throughout the day
is beneficial, and it is one of the top publications
when you google this topic. Let me read it again.
(00:43):
There are not some not there are no health benefits
to eating more often. Wow, that gets me angry. And
it goes is on. You know, it goes on to
say it doesn't increase the number of calories burned or
(01:04):
help you lose weight. So that's the topic of today's show,
Why you should eat more often? Why there are incredible
benefits to doing so? And I'm just gonna skip to
the end. I was gonna save this to the end,
but it qualifies things right away. I have spent my life,
(01:24):
as I've talked about on many other episodes, about following
people who have been successful doing what they do and
getting the results they got. And let's go to the extremes.
Let's just cut to the chase right away, Bodybuilders. I
was watching last night a friend female bodybuilder and another
(01:49):
bodybuilding friend of hers, and they were doing meal prep.
They were doing meal prep for the week. It was
to most people an insane amount of food. Now, most
of you aren't bodybuilders. Most of you aren't going to
eat eat that many calories and that much food. But
your goals are different. But it doesn't matter because their
body fat, their weight maintenance, and their health by and
(02:09):
large really good. They don't struggle with body fat, they
don't struggle with their weight, and they eat really frequently.
So we're gonna take the extremes and the example and
the results that they get, and then we're gonna distill
it down for you, you who are not a bodybuilder,
(02:32):
but who want to be healthier, who want to be
a healthy weight, and you want to enjoy life, so
to say and make that statement, there are no health
benefits to eating more often, And I'm gonna go through
some of the studies they used to try and defend
that statement, that ridiculous statement. It's ridiculous. And let me
(02:55):
just follow that up with in one of the Harvard
news letters on this same topic, they said, there does
appear to be an inverse association between weight and eating frequency,
that is the heavier a person is, the less often
they eat. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
(03:20):
There are two things involved there, in my opinion, A
that the vast majority, as I've said again on so
many other shows, the vast majority of nutrition research comes
from what self reports. So do people lie to people,
(03:41):
underestimate to people, forget what they eat? Yeah? Are you?
Does that make sense? And here's the other thing. Let's
assume for argument's sake that that's true. They eat less
frequently the heavier you are. So you go, okay, it's
just a calories. They just consume more. Of course they do.
(04:03):
Of course you do. If you weigh more calories in
calories out, you're going to be consuming more, and you're
also going to be eating longer. In other words, so
many people eat in a minute or two minutes, and
we don't sit down. We're constantly on the move. The
more you weigh anecdotally, watch a show like My Six
(04:24):
Pound Life. Again, the extremes, But we learned from the extremes,
whether it's exercise nutrition, we have to be honest and
we have to use common sense. So sure, but maybe
a meal for someone who is especially extremely overweight that
(04:45):
may take twenty minutes rather than ten, and the amount
of calories consumed in that extra time. So let's say
it's less frequent, the amount of cowies consumed and the
time of each meal, I would argue is probably they're
both significantly more than a person who eats more frequently.
(05:06):
It doesn't make sense, So let's just jump right into it.
But you know what, quick break and then we're gonna
jump right into it. I've worked up which means this
is a good topic. They're all great topics, but this one,
let's get into it. We'll be right back. There are
(05:32):
no health benefits to eating more often. Does that make sense?
Does that make sense? The relationship we have with food
is so screwed up. And one reason it can be
screwed up is because it's so plentiful, because we're not starving,
because we're not hunter gathers, because we don't have to
(05:53):
go out and find it. It's everywhere. That is one
of the major problems. So we have the luxury of
starving ourselves every now and again if we want to,
and I'll talk about that. Why would you want to?
Why would you want to? And let's just start with
one of the arguments. And I'm using this article not
to bash the article, but because it contains about three
(06:15):
or four of the top bogus arguments I would claim
against eating more frequently. Okay, tell me if this makes sense.
First and foremost, satiety. Okay, satiety means feeling full, feeling full,
not over eating feeling full. We leave it at that. Okay.
So in that article, less frequent eating has also been
(06:36):
shown to improve satiety and reduce hunger compared to more
frequent meals. If that's not the most gregious example of
contrary to common sense. If that were the case, people
would eat less frequently. If less frequent eating has been
(06:58):
shown to improve satiety, even that people would eat less frequently.
One full and oversimplification, tiny bit maybe, but still the
basic premise holds true. If you ate at nine o'clock
and you're like, oh, I feel full, I don't have
to eat again till till noon or till two, and
then a two you ate, you know, not too and
then you you're full. You're fine. No, that's not how
(07:23):
it works. And a lot of this comes down to
what do those meals consist of? Oh, but that's not
discussed and it's in the research. I'll bring up one
article specifically, but that kind of makes it's kind of important.
Are they carves, are they approached? What's the macro nutrient ratio?
(07:45):
How many calories? But to make these overarching statements that
just serve to totally confused you and everyone out there
who are just trying to get the right information. And
it starts with there are no health benefits to eating
more often. Most people are gonna go, okay, I'm not
even gonna read. I'm done. Why why bother reading undred
(08:09):
more words? You just explained it all in a nutshell.
Less frequent eating has also been shown to improve satiety
and reduced hunger compared to more frequent meals. Well, let's
go to the study they cited for that one in
support of that. Okay, here it is title Effects of
(08:30):
meal frequency on metabolic profiles and substrate partitioning in lean
healthy males, Lean healthy males. Okay, maybe that's not what
we're really talking about here about Let's let's just go
with it. How many lean healthy meals twelve twelve, not
huge sample, twelve and they randomly received two different diets,
(08:53):
one to a low meal frequency and want to hire
meal frequency for three days. Three days that can make
a huge difference. And they measured metabolic markers and satiety hormones.
And the takeaway from this one is the low frequency
diet increased satiety and reduced hunger ratings. Sounds kind of
(09:16):
goofy to me. So what was the diet that would
probably be important right? Well, for this one, it was protein, fat,
and carbohydrates. I personally would say that's low in protein
and high end carbs. And we could go deeper and
(09:37):
say what kind of carbs, but let's just stop there.
More protein. Did a whole show on protein. I'm a
big fan of protein for satiety, for building muscle and
many other health benefits and weight loss and all the
things that are connected to a little bit higher protein.
fIF that's not very much for me, all right, So
(09:59):
to what people three days protein? I don't need to
go too deep into that study. But what was the
takeaway from that that less frequent eating has been shown
to improve satiety and reduce hunger. That's a pretty broad
(10:20):
statement for studies like that. That's my argument. And let's
go back. Let's go back. Who are the people being successful?
We all know those people. You know those people. I
am one of those people. My goal is to figure
out and this is the overarching theme of the show today,
to eating more healthy foods, to say, there are no
(10:44):
health benefits to eating more often, so let's not eat
much at all. Let's not get and I'm getting ahead
of myself here because I'm getting worked up. Let's not
get the health benefits of eating those healthier foods more often.
It's not about depth of nation. It's not about not eating.
It's about saying, oh my goodness, we have so many
(11:08):
different healthy foods available to us. Let me try to
find the ones that I like and eat those frequently.
All right. Another argument that is within this article and
within the people who say you shouldn't eat more frequently
it doesn't matter, is that they come down to metabolism.
(11:32):
To metabolism, I mean, scroll ahead here. So oh yeah,
So the idea that eating more frequent, smaller meals increases
metabolic rate is a persistent myth. Here's my simple takeaway
from that. I don't care. I don't eat more frequently
to raise my metabolic rate. I don't care. Now, this
(11:53):
is the thermic effect of food, is what they're kind
of referring to here, And you know the argument they make,
and I'll stay with it. I don't even. I don't care.
I'm not eating more freely to raise my metabolism. I'm
meeting more frequently to feel full, to fuel my body
and my brain, as I will talk about, and to
(12:13):
get in the nutrients that I should. I don't care
about burning more calories. So thermic effective food part of
your basil metabolic rate, and it's the energy that your
body uses to process essentially that food, to digest and
all those things. And you know, the argument made is
that it doesn't matter how you break it up, if
(12:33):
you have to one thousand calorie UH meals or four
calorie meals, the thermic effect is the same. Don't want
to get into it because I don't care. It's not
part of why I eat more frequently. So I'll agree
to that. You can have that argument. You win on
that one, but I don't care. Okay. But then they
(12:56):
go on if anything, I reading from the east, because
this again common critique criticism. If anything, eating fewer mute
meals is healthier. And the final takeaway that they say
is it seems quite clear that the myth of frequent
(13:16):
small meals is just that a myth. Wow, again, my
heart rate is is elevated like I'm doing four or
forties at the track, because it just isn't helpful. It's
so I know, I know a lot of these writers,
and it's let's be the iconoclass. Let's go against conventional wisdom.
(13:40):
Let's let's what's the science out there. Let me go
against that I've spent my lifetime. Actually, the first couple
of times I was on TV was going against like
ridiculous claims that some writers had made in pretty well
known publications. And it was so easy to refute these
(14:00):
arguments and to poke holes in them. So let's start
at the beginning. Let's start with breakfast. So if you're
skipping breakfast, as when when are you going to eat?
Because in this article it talks about breakfast, right, that's
(14:20):
what it starts with. Because if you're eating more frequent meals,
basically you want to start with breakfast. Well, in this
article they say maybe not, they say obviously, They actually
say observational studies consistently show that breakfast skippers are more
likely to be obese than people who eat breakfast. They
(14:41):
just supported the argument but of course they go on
to say it and they're not wrong. Was that correlation
or causation? And then the line is everyone knows that
breakfast is good for you, so people who have healthy
habits overall are more likely to eat breakfast. That was
the argument against eating breakfast or for eating breakfast. Now
(15:04):
you can eat a really cruddy breakfast. And that is
the point too, is whenever we talk about eating more
frequently and what number and type of meals and all
that stuff, what you're eating matters, and it's not talked about.
But to say that everyone knows, first of all, not
everyone knows that breakfast is good for you, not everything
(15:26):
people say it's obviously don't follow it. But to argue
that people who have healthy habits overall are more healthy breakfast,
well let's go the other way. Maybe if he breakfast,
you're gonna start to have healthy habits over all, over
all healthy habits. I mean, I couldn't believe when I
read that line. You're you're supporting a holistic approach to
(15:50):
your health. Maybe if I start my day healthy, I'm
gonna be healthy throughout the day and I'm gonna have
healthy habits overall. But here's the advice in the article
and I quote, but as general advice, if you are
not hungry in the morning, skip breakfast. Just make sure
to eat healthy for the rest of the day. Wow. Again,
(16:13):
that's like saying, be really hungry, take nothing in until noon,
and then see if the wheels don't fall off, see
if you don't overreach. Just eating just just extra easier
said than done. And there's a reason why. Observational studies
show that people who skip breakfast are more likely to
be overweight than people who eat breakfast, and people who
(16:33):
eat breakfasts are more likely to have healthy habits overall.
Are you kidding me? Oh my gosh, So we're talking
about skipping meals too. Let's talk about skipping meals because
it's it's important thermic effective food we talked about doesn't
(16:54):
really matter. And then there's intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting which
is so common so talked about today. The argument here
skipping meals every now and then helps you lose weight
and may improve your blood sugar control over time. Skipping
meals every now and again helps you lose weight. Where
(17:19):
are they getting that from? Well, let's go to the
study cited resting energy expenditure in short term starvation is
increased as a result of an increase in serum nor
epern Efron. I'm not even going to get into most
(17:43):
of this in this study because when the term starvation,
short term starvation is right there in the title of
the study, I'm kind of done. I'm kind of done.
And do you want to know how long the starvation
period was for in this study? Eighty four hours, eighty
(18:07):
four hours, four days, day one to three and four.
They talk about listen, you want to starve yourself, be
my guest. You want to raise your resting energy expenditure
a little bit by starving yourself, beat my guest. But
that's not what I want for people who want to
(18:30):
be healthy and who want to fuel their body in
their brains. And to show that studies on short term
fasting the metabolic rate may actually increase in the beginning. Wow,
is that how you want to live? And again, if
you're skipping breakfast already, so you're not even breakfast and
(18:53):
then you're gonna maybe have lunch or the meal, whatever
you want to call it, and then you're gonna skip
another when When when are you gonna eat? When? Are
you going to eat? I mean, this is insane to me.
All right, the good news, Enough with the negative stuff.
Harvard one of the newsletters, kind of you know, summarizes
(19:15):
what I believe, what I believe and what makes common
sense to me, and what bodybuilders show and people who
maintain their weight neat food and don't have a really
unhealthy relationship with food show and a quote a decrease
in hunger and an increase So we're talking about the
benefits of eating more meal. So this is in support
Harvard again, a decrease that the benefits are a decrease
(19:38):
in hunger, contrary to what we were just told in
that other study when you starve yourself though, and an
increase in fullness, which can potentially prevent overeating. In fact,
when people become very hungry, the risk increases that they
will choose unhealthy, high calorie foods such as pizza and soda.
This can lead to eating too much at one sitting
and finally, and most important, eat eating more frequent meals.
(20:02):
According to Harvard, more opportunities to consume healthy foods such
as fruit, vegetables, and whole grains. Okay, it's about finding
healthy foods it's not about skipping things, it's not about starving,
it's not about having that unhealthy relationship with your food.
(20:27):
It's about sitting down. One of the greatest moments I
had in regards to this many years ago is at
a nutrition conference sitting down and someone said, you know,
we need to sit down. As Americans, we sit down
and look at our plates and think what can't I eat?
And in many European countries, although that's changing, but you
(20:47):
go to Italy and places where you know, the food
is just natural portion sizes, uh farm to table. They
sit down and they enjoy their food. They take their time.
They don't think what can't I eat. It's high quality,
it's smaller quantities, and it's wine, and it's cheese and
(21:11):
it's bread. It's not what they are avoiding. It's what
they're enjoying. And everyone can do that, but we can't
do that with all this misinformation. One final quick break
and when come back and give you numbers, So how
do you do this five to six meals? How many calories?
How do you spread it out? What should you do?
(21:33):
More specific when we come back, why you should eat
five to six meals per day? That's what I do.
That's what's worked for me. That's what worked for so
many of my clients back in the day, and continues
(21:54):
with people I consult with, and and and it's what
I do. It's what's work. It's about finding those foods,
as I've said over and over again, because I want
to hammer it home. Just like exercise, you find the exercise.
If you hate indoor cycling, you don't have to do it.
You got nine million other forms a cardio. If you
(22:16):
don't like eggs as a source of protein, you don't
have to eat it. You gotta find a different healthy
source of protein. Okay, vegan, vegetarian, whatever you want to do.
You just have to find what you like and then
that's gonna work for you. All right. So I'm just
gonna throw out some round numbers to give you an
(22:37):
idea of how to do this to get started at
the very least, because they want actionable advice for everyone
generally speaking, you know, women, and obviously depends on your
body size and activity level, but let's use as round numbers.
Two thousand cows per day men, let's say around now again.
Plus or mind is based on age, weight and activity level,
but let's just use really round numbers to show you
(22:59):
how you can do this. So if you eat and
you have your breakfast, as I highly recommend, let's say
your meals are seven am, ten am, one pm, three pm,
seven pm, and then a snack at nine pm. Okay,
so breakfast at seven ten, yes, ten, one, three, seven, nine.
Now the ten, the three, and the nine are gonna
(23:23):
be a little bit smaller. And here's the way I
have found success. Let me give you the number. So
if we're talking two thousand cowies for a woman, breakfast
four hundred calories, then at ten am three hundred, then
at one back to four hundred, so it's gonna go
four hundred, three hundred and alternate. So basically, the in
(23:45):
between meals are a little bit less, and you can
bump that down, so you could do a breakfast as
a woman at five hundred calories. Start your day, front
load your day, totally believe in that five hundred cowies,
and then you're ten am two hours and then four hundred,
three hundred, four hundred and then two hundred is your
(24:05):
final one and that's gonna help you sleep. You can
do you know, a healthy whatever, apple with peanut butter
a little protein shake at nine pm if you want,
or you can take that two hundred and put it
back and do five meals. Okay, and let's do this
for men. And you're gonna see five hundred collies for breakfast,
to fifty for that ten am, five hundred for lunch,
(24:28):
to fifty for that three PM, five hundred for dinner,
and to fifty at nine pm. So you see how
you can break it down, and you can see how
that's six meals. If you don't want to do that
nine pm, take those calories, whether it's two hundred or
two fifty and front loaded. Again, I'm basically saying seven,
(24:49):
one and seven are your meals, and it's that just
thinking as I say that out loud. If you eight
three meals a day, seven one and seven, is that doable? Wait,
let me go back to what they said. Let me
go back seven three meals. Less frequent eating has been
shown to improve satiety. Yeah, so if you eat at
(25:13):
seven and at one and at seven pm, you should
be full. No, and let me kind of tie this
all together as we were, you know, kind of bring
this show to a to a close here when they
talk about more frequent eating. In many of these articles
they use terms like grazing and nibbling. Absolutely not. I
(25:36):
disagree totally. That is not more frequent meals. That's snacking.
Grazing is not more frequent meals. I need to make
that clarification. If you watch professional athletes, you know, go
to the extreme study people who need to need to
be at their optimal to make a living. And again
that's not You're gonna not gonna be as extreme. But
(25:58):
we learn from that. We take the science, as they
say all the time, the science and the anecdotal and
the extremes, and then common sense, and we pull it
all together and we figured out in the show and
I explain it, and so it's not about nibbling and
grazing that doesn't work. That's where problems happen. So do
(26:20):
not misunderstand me when I talk about more frequent meals.
It's not grazing. And the Harvard publication use that term grazing.
That's confusing, that's not helpful. That's a perfect way to
kind of bring this all together. So just to give you,
uh a couple of ideas. Two cows, what is that?
That's an apple with peanut butter apple great source of carbs,
(26:44):
healthy fruit nutrients, peanut butter, protein. When you put those
two things together, satiety, the protein with the and you go.
Sugars don't start me. When you add protein to a
fruit like that, it changes the way your body processes
it in a positive way. Peter and Hummus. Again, size
matters with all this, But Peter and Hummas cottage, cheese
(27:06):
and fruit. You'll see the theme here. And those are
basically that That to fifty apple with peanut butter. That's
your ten AM, that's your one PM. Those are the
meals that when you skip them, the wheels fall off.
Those are the meals that are so important in my opinion.
The two in betweens Satiety, not letting those blood uh
(27:29):
sugar levels drop, not getting too hungry, constant level of
energy for your body and your brain. You're not just
eating for weight loss, you're eating for health. You're eating
to have the energy to do what you need to
do throughout the day, and you're eating to fuel your brain. Okay,
(27:55):
and finally, decreased risk of cancers and other diseases. Is Yes,
fewer calories longevity, but you can do fewer calories and
healthy foods and and nutrients to do all those things
that we don't talk about enough at least other people.
(28:17):
I definitely do here. We need to eat the foods
to be protective against disease and many other things like
cancer that comes from eating the healthy foods. Okay, so
there you have it. I want you to eat. I
(28:37):
want you to eat. This is this not great news.
So what is the takeaway? You got to find healthier foods.
And I can say it with absolute certainty that if
you think you can't eat healthy foods frequently and be
happy and satisfied, you just haven't figured it out yet.
(29:02):
I love what I eat, and over time you get
healthier and healthier. You crave the bad stuff, the less
healthy stuff a little less. You still have it. I
talk about all the time, and you hear all the time,
and most people are and most people aren't eating three
meals a day. I don't care that. Finally, that line
(29:25):
one mile more time, because it's just nuts. The inverse
association between weight and eating frequency. No way, unless meals
are an hour long, when you're when you're eating three
or two or four. So common sense science and living,
(29:46):
we need to eat. I want you to be able
to have a healthy relationship with food, not an unhealthy one.
M And that's enough, all right. Thank you so much
for listening. I am Tom Holland. This is Fitness Disrupted.
If you haven't yet rated the show, please do so
(30:09):
and you can follow me tom h Fit is my
Twitter as well as my Instagram. Tom h Fit question
comments right there. You can go to Fitness disrupted dot
com as well and email me through the site and
anytime you, you know, do social media with fitness disrupted.
If you hashtag fitness disrupted, I will see it that
way as well. Thank you so much. It's about science,
(30:33):
it's about common sense. It's about living being healthy. It's
not just about being a certain weight. It's about living
our healthiest, happiest fives. There are three things we can control.
What we put into our mouths, how much we move,
(30:54):
and our attitudes. That is awesome. Thank you for listening.
I'm Tom holl And. This is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in yourself.
Fitness Disrupted is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
(31:15):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. There
are no health benefits to eating more often. That is
(00:23):
a takeaway, an actual headline slash takeaway from an article
on whether or not eating more frequently throughout the day
is beneficial, and it is one of the top publications
when you google this topic. Let me read it again.
(00:43):
There are not some not there are no health benefits
to eating more often. Wow, that gets me angry. And
it goes is on. You know, it goes on to
say it doesn't increase the number of calories burned or
(01:04):
help you lose weight. So that's the topic of today's show,
Why you should eat more often? Why there are incredible
benefits to doing so? And I'm just gonna skip to
the end. I was gonna save this to the end,
but it qualifies things right away. I have spent my life,
(01:24):
as I've talked about on many other episodes, about following
people who have been successful doing what they do and
getting the results they got. And let's go to the extremes.
Let's just cut to the chase right away, Bodybuilders. I
was watching last night a friend female bodybuilder and another
(01:49):
bodybuilding friend of hers, and they were doing meal prep.
They were doing meal prep for the week. It was
to most people an insane amount of food. Now, most
of you aren't bodybuilders. Most of you aren't going to
eat eat that many calories and that much food. But
your goals are different. But it doesn't matter because their
body fat, their weight maintenance, and their health by and
(02:09):
large really good. They don't struggle with body fat, they
don't struggle with their weight, and they eat really frequently.
So we're gonna take the extremes and the example and
the results that they get, and then we're gonna distill
it down for you, you who are not a bodybuilder,
(02:32):
but who want to be healthier, who want to be
a healthy weight, and you want to enjoy life, so
to say and make that statement, there are no health
benefits to eating more often, And I'm gonna go through
some of the studies they used to try and defend
that statement, that ridiculous statement. It's ridiculous. And let me
(02:55):
just follow that up with in one of the Harvard
news letters on this same topic, they said, there does
appear to be an inverse association between weight and eating frequency,
that is the heavier a person is, the less often
they eat. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
(03:20):
There are two things involved there, in my opinion, A
that the vast majority, as I've said again on so
many other shows, the vast majority of nutrition research comes
from what self reports. So do people lie to people,
(03:41):
underestimate to people, forget what they eat? Yeah? Are you?
Does that make sense? And here's the other thing. Let's
assume for argument's sake that that's true. They eat less
frequently the heavier you are. So you go, okay, it's
just a calories. They just consume more. Of course they do.
(04:03):
Of course you do. If you weigh more calories in
calories out, you're going to be consuming more, and you're
also going to be eating longer. In other words, so
many people eat in a minute or two minutes, and
we don't sit down. We're constantly on the move. The
more you weigh anecdotally, watch a show like My Six
(04:24):
Pound Life. Again, the extremes, But we learned from the extremes,
whether it's exercise nutrition, we have to be honest and
we have to use common sense. So sure, but maybe
a meal for someone who is especially extremely overweight that
(04:45):
may take twenty minutes rather than ten, and the amount
of calories consumed in that extra time. So let's say
it's less frequent, the amount of cowies consumed and the
time of each meal, I would argue is probably they're
both significantly more than a person who eats more frequently.
(05:06):
It doesn't make sense, So let's just jump right into it.
But you know what, quick break and then we're gonna
jump right into it. I've worked up which means this
is a good topic. They're all great topics, but this one,
let's get into it. We'll be right back. There are
(05:32):
no health benefits to eating more often. Does that make sense?
Does that make sense? The relationship we have with food
is so screwed up. And one reason it can be
screwed up is because it's so plentiful, because we're not starving,
because we're not hunter gathers, because we don't have to
(05:53):
go out and find it. It's everywhere. That is one
of the major problems. So we have the luxury of
starving ourselves every now and again if we want to,
and I'll talk about that. Why would you want to?
Why would you want to? And let's just start with
one of the arguments. And I'm using this article not
to bash the article, but because it contains about three
(06:15):
or four of the top bogus arguments I would claim
against eating more frequently. Okay, tell me if this makes sense.
First and foremost, satiety. Okay, satiety means feeling full, feeling full,
not over eating feeling full. We leave it at that. Okay.
So in that article, less frequent eating has also been
(06:36):
shown to improve satiety and reduce hunger compared to more
frequent meals. If that's not the most gregious example of
contrary to common sense. If that were the case, people
would eat less frequently. If less frequent eating has been
(06:58):
shown to improve satiety, even that people would eat less frequently.
One full and oversimplification, tiny bit maybe, but still the
basic premise holds true. If you ate at nine o'clock
and you're like, oh, I feel full, I don't have
to eat again till till noon or till two, and
then a two you ate, you know, not too and
then you you're full. You're fine. No, that's not how
(07:23):
it works. And a lot of this comes down to
what do those meals consist of? Oh, but that's not
discussed and it's in the research. I'll bring up one
article specifically, but that kind of makes it's kind of important.
Are they carves, are they approached? What's the macro nutrient ratio?
(07:45):
How many calories? But to make these overarching statements that
just serve to totally confused you and everyone out there
who are just trying to get the right information. And
it starts with there are no health benefits to eating
more often. Most people are gonna go, okay, I'm not
even gonna read. I'm done. Why why bother reading undred
(08:09):
more words? You just explained it all in a nutshell.
Less frequent eating has also been shown to improve satiety
and reduced hunger compared to more frequent meals. Well, let's
go to the study they cited for that one in
support of that. Okay, here it is title Effects of
(08:30):
meal frequency on metabolic profiles and substrate partitioning in lean
healthy males, Lean healthy males. Okay, maybe that's not what
we're really talking about here about Let's let's just go
with it. How many lean healthy meals twelve twelve, not
huge sample, twelve and they randomly received two different diets,
(08:53):
one to a low meal frequency and want to hire
meal frequency for three days. Three days that can make
a huge difference. And they measured metabolic markers and satiety hormones.
And the takeaway from this one is the low frequency
diet increased satiety and reduced hunger ratings. Sounds kind of
(09:16):
goofy to me. So what was the diet that would
probably be important right? Well, for this one, it was protein, fat,
and carbohydrates. I personally would say that's low in protein
and high end carbs. And we could go deeper and
(09:37):
say what kind of carbs, but let's just stop there.
More protein. Did a whole show on protein. I'm a
big fan of protein for satiety, for building muscle and
many other health benefits and weight loss and all the
things that are connected to a little bit higher protein.
fIF that's not very much for me, all right, So
(09:59):
to what people three days protein? I don't need to
go too deep into that study. But what was the
takeaway from that that less frequent eating has been shown
to improve satiety and reduce hunger. That's a pretty broad
(10:20):
statement for studies like that. That's my argument. And let's
go back. Let's go back. Who are the people being successful?
We all know those people. You know those people. I
am one of those people. My goal is to figure
out and this is the overarching theme of the show today,
to eating more healthy foods, to say, there are no
(10:44):
health benefits to eating more often, so let's not eat
much at all. Let's not get and I'm getting ahead
of myself here because I'm getting worked up. Let's not
get the health benefits of eating those healthier foods more often.
It's not about depth of nation. It's not about not eating.
It's about saying, oh my goodness, we have so many
(11:08):
different healthy foods available to us. Let me try to
find the ones that I like and eat those frequently.
All right. Another argument that is within this article and
within the people who say you shouldn't eat more frequently
it doesn't matter, is that they come down to metabolism.
(11:32):
To metabolism, I mean, scroll ahead here. So oh yeah,
So the idea that eating more frequent, smaller meals increases
metabolic rate is a persistent myth. Here's my simple takeaway
from that. I don't care. I don't eat more frequently
to raise my metabolic rate. I don't care. Now, this
(11:53):
is the thermic effect of food, is what they're kind
of referring to here, And you know the argument they make,
and I'll stay with it. I don't even. I don't care.
I'm not eating more freely to raise my metabolism. I'm
meeting more frequently to feel full, to fuel my body
and my brain, as I will talk about, and to
(12:13):
get in the nutrients that I should. I don't care
about burning more calories. So thermic effective food part of
your basil metabolic rate, and it's the energy that your
body uses to process essentially that food, to digest and
all those things. And you know, the argument made is
that it doesn't matter how you break it up, if
(12:33):
you have to one thousand calorie UH meals or four
calorie meals, the thermic effect is the same. Don't want
to get into it because I don't care. It's not
part of why I eat more frequently. So I'll agree
to that. You can have that argument. You win on
that one, but I don't care. Okay. But then they
(12:56):
go on if anything, I reading from the east, because
this again common critique criticism. If anything, eating fewer mute
meals is healthier. And the final takeaway that they say
is it seems quite clear that the myth of frequent
(13:16):
small meals is just that a myth. Wow, again, my
heart rate is is elevated like I'm doing four or
forties at the track, because it just isn't helpful. It's
so I know, I know a lot of these writers,
and it's let's be the iconoclass. Let's go against conventional wisdom.
(13:40):
Let's let's what's the science out there. Let me go
against that I've spent my lifetime. Actually, the first couple
of times I was on TV was going against like
ridiculous claims that some writers had made in pretty well
known publications. And it was so easy to refute these
(14:00):
arguments and to poke holes in them. So let's start
at the beginning. Let's start with breakfast. So if you're
skipping breakfast, as when when are you going to eat?
Because in this article it talks about breakfast, right, that's
(14:20):
what it starts with. Because if you're eating more frequent meals,
basically you want to start with breakfast. Well, in this
article they say maybe not, they say obviously, They actually
say observational studies consistently show that breakfast skippers are more
likely to be obese than people who eat breakfast. They
(14:41):
just supported the argument but of course they go on
to say it and they're not wrong. Was that correlation
or causation? And then the line is everyone knows that
breakfast is good for you, so people who have healthy
habits overall are more likely to eat breakfast. That was
the argument against eating breakfast or for eating breakfast. Now
(15:04):
you can eat a really cruddy breakfast. And that is
the point too, is whenever we talk about eating more
frequently and what number and type of meals and all
that stuff, what you're eating matters, and it's not talked about.
But to say that everyone knows, first of all, not
everyone knows that breakfast is good for you, not everything
(15:26):
people say it's obviously don't follow it. But to argue
that people who have healthy habits overall are more healthy breakfast,
well let's go the other way. Maybe if he breakfast,
you're gonna start to have healthy habits over all, over
all healthy habits. I mean, I couldn't believe when I
read that line. You're you're supporting a holistic approach to
(15:50):
your health. Maybe if I start my day healthy, I'm
gonna be healthy throughout the day and I'm gonna have
healthy habits overall. But here's the advice in the article
and I quote, but as general advice, if you are
not hungry in the morning, skip breakfast. Just make sure
to eat healthy for the rest of the day. Wow. Again,
(16:13):
that's like saying, be really hungry, take nothing in until noon,
and then see if the wheels don't fall off, see
if you don't overreach. Just eating just just extra easier
said than done. And there's a reason why. Observational studies
show that people who skip breakfast are more likely to
be overweight than people who eat breakfast, and people who
(16:33):
eat breakfasts are more likely to have healthy habits overall.
Are you kidding me? Oh my gosh, So we're talking
about skipping meals too. Let's talk about skipping meals because
it's it's important thermic effective food we talked about doesn't
(16:54):
really matter. And then there's intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting which
is so common so talked about today. The argument here
skipping meals every now and then helps you lose weight
and may improve your blood sugar control over time. Skipping
meals every now and again helps you lose weight. Where
(17:19):
are they getting that from? Well, let's go to the
study cited resting energy expenditure in short term starvation is
increased as a result of an increase in serum nor
epern Efron. I'm not even going to get into most
(17:43):
of this in this study because when the term starvation,
short term starvation is right there in the title of
the study, I'm kind of done. I'm kind of done.
And do you want to know how long the starvation
period was for in this study? Eighty four hours, eighty
(18:07):
four hours, four days, day one to three and four.
They talk about listen, you want to starve yourself, be
my guest. You want to raise your resting energy expenditure
a little bit by starving yourself, beat my guest. But
that's not what I want for people who want to
(18:30):
be healthy and who want to fuel their body in
their brains. And to show that studies on short term
fasting the metabolic rate may actually increase in the beginning. Wow,
is that how you want to live? And again, if
you're skipping breakfast already, so you're not even breakfast and
(18:53):
then you're gonna maybe have lunch or the meal, whatever
you want to call it, and then you're gonna skip
another when When when are you gonna eat? When? Are
you going to eat? I mean, this is insane to me.
All right, the good news, Enough with the negative stuff.
Harvard one of the newsletters, kind of you know, summarizes
(19:15):
what I believe, what I believe and what makes common
sense to me, and what bodybuilders show and people who
maintain their weight neat food and don't have a really
unhealthy relationship with food show and a quote a decrease
in hunger and an increase So we're talking about the
benefits of eating more meal. So this is in support
Harvard again, a decrease that the benefits are a decrease
(19:38):
in hunger, contrary to what we were just told in
that other study when you starve yourself though, and an
increase in fullness, which can potentially prevent overeating. In fact,
when people become very hungry, the risk increases that they
will choose unhealthy, high calorie foods such as pizza and soda.
This can lead to eating too much at one sitting
and finally, and most important, eat eating more frequent meals.
(20:02):
According to Harvard, more opportunities to consume healthy foods such
as fruit, vegetables, and whole grains. Okay, it's about finding
healthy foods it's not about skipping things, it's not about starving,
it's not about having that unhealthy relationship with your food.
(20:27):
It's about sitting down. One of the greatest moments I
had in regards to this many years ago is at
a nutrition conference sitting down and someone said, you know,
we need to sit down. As Americans, we sit down
and look at our plates and think what can't I eat?
And in many European countries, although that's changing, but you
(20:47):
go to Italy and places where you know, the food
is just natural portion sizes, uh farm to table. They
sit down and they enjoy their food. They take their time.
They don't think what can't I eat. It's high quality,
it's smaller quantities, and it's wine, and it's cheese and
(21:11):
it's bread. It's not what they are avoiding. It's what
they're enjoying. And everyone can do that, but we can't
do that with all this misinformation. One final quick break
and when come back and give you numbers, So how
do you do this five to six meals? How many calories?
How do you spread it out? What should you do?
(21:33):
More specific when we come back, why you should eat
five to six meals per day? That's what I do.
That's what's worked for me. That's what worked for so
many of my clients back in the day, and continues
(21:54):
with people I consult with, and and and it's what
I do. It's what's work. It's about finding those foods,
as I've said over and over again, because I want
to hammer it home. Just like exercise, you find the exercise.
If you hate indoor cycling, you don't have to do it.
You got nine million other forms a cardio. If you
(22:16):
don't like eggs as a source of protein, you don't
have to eat it. You gotta find a different healthy
source of protein. Okay, vegan, vegetarian, whatever you want to do.
You just have to find what you like and then
that's gonna work for you. All right. So I'm just
gonna throw out some round numbers to give you an
(22:37):
idea of how to do this to get started at
the very least, because they want actionable advice for everyone
generally speaking, you know, women, and obviously depends on your
body size and activity level, but let's use as round numbers.
Two thousand cows per day men, let's say around now again.
Plus or mind is based on age, weight and activity level,
but let's just use really round numbers to show you
(22:59):
how you can do this. So if you eat and
you have your breakfast, as I highly recommend, let's say
your meals are seven am, ten am, one pm, three pm,
seven pm, and then a snack at nine pm. Okay,
so breakfast at seven ten, yes, ten, one, three, seven, nine.
Now the ten, the three, and the nine are gonna
(23:23):
be a little bit smaller. And here's the way I
have found success. Let me give you the number. So
if we're talking two thousand cowies for a woman, breakfast
four hundred calories, then at ten am three hundred, then
at one back to four hundred, so it's gonna go
four hundred, three hundred and alternate. So basically, the in
(23:45):
between meals are a little bit less, and you can
bump that down, so you could do a breakfast as
a woman at five hundred calories. Start your day, front
load your day, totally believe in that five hundred cowies,
and then you're ten am two hours and then four hundred,
three hundred, four hundred and then two hundred is your
(24:05):
final one and that's gonna help you sleep. You can
do you know, a healthy whatever, apple with peanut butter
a little protein shake at nine pm if you want,
or you can take that two hundred and put it
back and do five meals. Okay, and let's do this
for men. And you're gonna see five hundred collies for breakfast,
to fifty for that ten am, five hundred for lunch,
(24:28):
to fifty for that three PM, five hundred for dinner,
and to fifty at nine pm. So you see how
you can break it down, and you can see how
that's six meals. If you don't want to do that
nine pm, take those calories, whether it's two hundred or
two fifty and front loaded. Again, I'm basically saying seven,
(24:49):
one and seven are your meals, and it's that just
thinking as I say that out loud. If you eight
three meals a day, seven one and seven, is that doable? Wait,
let me go back to what they said. Let me
go back seven three meals. Less frequent eating has been
shown to improve satiety. Yeah, so if you eat at
(25:13):
seven and at one and at seven pm, you should
be full. No, and let me kind of tie this
all together as we were, you know, kind of bring
this show to a to a close here when they
talk about more frequent eating. In many of these articles
they use terms like grazing and nibbling. Absolutely not. I
(25:36):
disagree totally. That is not more frequent meals. That's snacking.
Grazing is not more frequent meals. I need to make
that clarification. If you watch professional athletes, you know, go
to the extreme study people who need to need to
be at their optimal to make a living. And again
that's not You're gonna not gonna be as extreme. But
(25:58):
we learn from that. We take the science, as they
say all the time, the science and the anecdotal and
the extremes, and then common sense, and we pull it
all together and we figured out in the show and
I explain it, and so it's not about nibbling and
grazing that doesn't work. That's where problems happen. So do
(26:20):
not misunderstand me when I talk about more frequent meals.
It's not grazing. And the Harvard publication use that term grazing.
That's confusing, that's not helpful. That's a perfect way to
kind of bring this all together. So just to give you,
uh a couple of ideas. Two cows, what is that?
That's an apple with peanut butter apple great source of carbs,
(26:44):
healthy fruit nutrients, peanut butter, protein. When you put those
two things together, satiety, the protein with the and you go.
Sugars don't start me. When you add protein to a
fruit like that, it changes the way your body processes
it in a positive way. Peter and Hummus. Again, size
matters with all this, But Peter and Hummas cottage, cheese
(27:06):
and fruit. You'll see the theme here. And those are
basically that That to fifty apple with peanut butter. That's
your ten AM, that's your one PM. Those are the
meals that when you skip them, the wheels fall off.
Those are the meals that are so important in my opinion.
The two in betweens Satiety, not letting those blood uh
(27:29):
sugar levels drop, not getting too hungry, constant level of
energy for your body and your brain. You're not just
eating for weight loss, you're eating for health. You're eating
to have the energy to do what you need to
do throughout the day, and you're eating to fuel your brain. Okay,
(27:55):
and finally, decreased risk of cancers and other diseases. Is Yes,
fewer calories longevity, but you can do fewer calories and
healthy foods and and nutrients to do all those things
that we don't talk about enough at least other people.
(28:17):
I definitely do here. We need to eat the foods
to be protective against disease and many other things like
cancer that comes from eating the healthy foods. Okay, so
there you have it. I want you to eat. I
(28:37):
want you to eat. This is this not great news.
So what is the takeaway? You got to find healthier foods.
And I can say it with absolute certainty that if
you think you can't eat healthy foods frequently and be
happy and satisfied, you just haven't figured it out yet.
(29:02):
I love what I eat, and over time you get
healthier and healthier. You crave the bad stuff, the less
healthy stuff a little less. You still have it. I
talk about all the time, and you hear all the time,
and most people are and most people aren't eating three
meals a day. I don't care that. Finally, that line
(29:25):
one mile more time, because it's just nuts. The inverse
association between weight and eating frequency. No way, unless meals
are an hour long, when you're when you're eating three
or two or four. So common sense science and living,
(29:46):
we need to eat. I want you to be able
to have a healthy relationship with food, not an unhealthy one.
M And that's enough, all right. Thank you so much
for listening. I am Tom Holland. This is Fitness Disrupted.
If you haven't yet rated the show, please do so
(30:09):
and you can follow me tom h Fit is my
Twitter as well as my Instagram. Tom h Fit question
comments right there. You can go to Fitness disrupted dot
com as well and email me through the site and
anytime you, you know, do social media with fitness disrupted.
If you hashtag fitness disrupted, I will see it that
way as well. Thank you so much. It's about science,
(30:33):
it's about common sense. It's about living being healthy. It's
not just about being a certain weight. It's about living
our healthiest, happiest fives. There are three things we can control.
What we put into our mouths, how much we move,
(30:54):
and our attitudes. That is awesome. Thank you for listening.
I'm Tom holl And. This is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in yourself.
Fitness Disrupted is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
(31:15):
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