Meal Timing & Meal Frequency

 Meal Timing & Meal Frequency

Here is the honest truth about meal frequency. It doesn't really matter if you eat three or six meals or anything in between. All studies on different meal frequencies have shown that different setups lead to basically the same results. This also means you don't gain anything from eating several small meals.

No, it doesn't boost your metabolism to any meaningful degree and your overall energy expenditure will be the same as if you ate three large meals. But what about the extreme cases like only two meals per day or more than six?

More than six meals shouldn't be a problem in theory, but for me personally it wouldn't be practical to be preparing meals all the time. Two or even just one meal per day can lead to problems because they would have to be quite big to cover your daily calories.

Also, when it comes to protein you want to ensure a steady supply throughout the day which would be difficult with only one meal as your body would digest all at once and would have a hard time storing any protein for later.

But of course anything is possible and studies on intermittent fasting have shown that if you design your diet correctly and ensure that you consume sources of slow digesting protein, two meals a day can lead to the same results.

But in my opinion, you don't have to overcomplicate things here so I'll just leave it up to you. The most practical scenario is probably one where you eat 36 six meals throughout the day.

Once you have your meal schedule in place, the only other thing

you need to worry about are pre- and post-workout meals.

In the rest of this section I will explain protein, carbohydrate and fat timing in more detail.