[Updated for 2012]

Al right, let us break this fucker down. The very first thing you need to realize (if you haven’t already), is that any type of fitness or nutrition “tactic” has its benefits and drawbacks. Even in today’s world where Paelo dieting has become the hipster’s BFF and Intermittent Fasting has taken on the popularity levels of Zumba, there are times where eating 5,6 or even 7 to 8 times per day is not only beneficial, but almost necessary.

The original article I had up was intended to get people’s ass burning. And it did…very much so. If you were one of the turkeys that sent me page long essays as to why I was oh so wrong, I thank you from the bottom of my ass. My close friends and I had a huge laugh at your expense. Fishing for trolls and “mr.right’s” has never been that easy.

For the re-write, I figured it was time to get real and provide a balanced approach. Imagine that, me producing something well balanced… sort of like your girlfriend on my personal barbell last night.

I joke, I wouldn’t touch that with a 10 foot pole so you can stop worrying.

I’m going to start off with the following: yes, I’ve read the studies. Yes, I know people don’t need to eat 6 meals a day. Yes, I’ve always told my clients that  meal frequency is irrelevant and yes, it’s completely true that I personally ate and have been eating 4-6 meals a day for many years and the results speak for themselves.

The distinct advantage I have is that paradoxes don’t have an effect on my intelligence. You only need to look at the amount of “old timers” that have been eating frequently versus those that haven’t in order to come to a grand realization – it doesn’t fucking matter, because what actually works is something most people don’t seem to focus on.

Half the battle for most people, as I’ve found, is psychological. And while the physiological effects of high meal frequency can be debated by dorks who have nothing better to do, it’s psychological awesomeness is a huge draw for me personally.

So on we go. I’m going to give you 6 reasons why you should consider eating 6+ meals per day.

[For those that are impatient, I'll give away the point of all this now - by the end of this article, high frequency eating will hopefully, be a tool in your toolbox. It'll be used when needed and discarded when not. I've personally been switching between the two quite often, with zero negative impact on results or performance. Go figure]

1. Better Energy Levels

Do you know one of the most taxing processes for your body? It’s digestion of food. Ever had a huge ass meal (like say, steak and potatoes) only to find yourself vegetating on the couch for a few hours after? Or ever had the strong urge to fall asleep at work because of the ginormous lunch you stuffed down your throat?

Yeah, there’s a reason for that.

Huge meals take a huge amount of energy to digest. And since the meal was huge, the duration of the digestion process will also be increased.

Eating smaller meals will prevent you from dozing off and will keep you up and alert. I don’t need RedBull to pull all nighters. All I need is some oatmeal and a pot of coffee. Consuming those foods in small portions every hour or so will keep me up all night long. Don’t believe me? Go try it. Specially if you’re a broke ass college student.

2. Getting Fat Bulking

The argument used to be that high frequency eating is better for your blood glucose levels. Well a study was done(1) comparing 3 meals/day versus 6 meals/day, the insulin and BG (blood glucose) levels and the results were not what I expected. First let me get something out of the way, and that is the design of the study itself. Yes, the subjects were fed liquid meals and yes the carbohydrate source was pretty much straight glucose – not what you would eat normally but liquid absorption rate is much higher so that’s what they use. The end result was this…

“Baseline glucose and insulin values were not different between study days. Peak glucose levels were highest on the 3CHO day; however the 12 h glucose AUC was higher during the 6CHO condition (p = 0.029) than 3CHO condition, with no difference in the insulin response. The 6HP condition resulted in a decreased glucose AUC (p = 0.004) and insulin AUC (p = 0.012) compared to 6CHO.

Conclusion

In non-obese individuals, glucose levels remained elevated throughout the day with frequent CHO meals compared to 3CHO meals, without any differences in the insulin levels.”

First, let me explain what all the wording means. CHO is a carbohydrate dominant meal where is PRO is a protein dominant meal. The numbers (3 or 6) represent the number of meals total calories were divided into, giving you the frequency. Simple shit. So, what about the results? Well, while there was not much difference between the CHO and PRO groups (it’s expected that a carb heavy meal would result in greater BG levels), there was a difference between the 3 and 6 meal groups. It seems that 3 meals a day resulted in lower BG levels for the individuals.

In my opinion, the real world results would be a lot less dramatic since having glucose syrup and all-liquid meals is not something people do unless you got your ass kicked and are bed ridden in a hospital. Still, you cannot argue with the facts.

So what is a high frequency meal plan good for? Well for mass… duh! Look, there are guys out there that I help pack on muscle and they can eat huge meals every sitting so in 4 meals they can achieve their macro-nutrient ratios I outlined for them. However, there are some (like me) that just can’t eat massive ass meals. But I’ll be damned if i don’t reach my ratios for the day, especially if I’m feeling like bulking. So what do i do? Simple, eat 6-8 times a day. The general trend I’ve found is the following:

If you’re 150lbs or smaller and want to bulk up, you can likely get away with eating 3 large meals per day as the amount of food you need to consume is manageable.

If you’re bigger than 150lbs, with a high resting metabolic rate and you want to bulk your way to 190lbs or even 200lbs, I almost dare you to consume your caloric requirements in 2 or 3 sittings. Those with large appetites and possibly large stomachs can manage, but it’s uncomfortable as hell.

A good example that comes to mind is Stan “The White Rhino” Efferding. He is a multi-millionaire, successfull bodybuilder, a powerlifting world record holder and eats about 8 times per day. He is a monster of a man, and I’m sure his appetite is equally as monstrous. Still, the man needs 6-8 meals. You go ahead and try telling him that he’s a pussy for not eating like a “caveman”. Just be sure your life insurance is perfectly in order before doing so.

3. You’ll feel hungry LESS often, probably

Lets face the obvious facts here: If you are eating often (say ever 2 hours or so), it really doesn’t give your body a chance to trigger any hunger signals… even if you miss one out of the 6 meals. But on the other hand, lets say you have a big breakfast and during lunch you’re short on time so you don’t manage to eat much, if at all. Since dinner is now 4-6 hours away, I can pretty much guarantee that your stomach will begin making some nasty noises as you trek your way home. Last time I checked, no one really likes this feeling and the noises are quite embarrassing. So eating frequently will at the very least, prevent  you from looking like a noise maker.

On a side note: I’ve noticed that over time your body will adapt to the type of eating method you choose. Since my body expects food every 2-3 hours now, it automatically bitches if I haven’t fed it in due time. It’s like having an auto alarm clock, and this can be awesome. I usually don’t have to think about eating, I just get hungry every 2 hours. So for those douchebags that keep telling me that eating 6x a day requires too much effort, think again. It requires effort only up until the point your body adapts and it becomes a habit. On the other hand, if you’re in the fasting bandwagon then you know quite well how the first two weeks went. You cried home to mommy while drinking shit loads of coffee till the hunger pangs went away – you just didn’t have the balls to tweet about it. Well, the secret’s out.

Does this all seem like a contradiction? Probably. But when it all comes down to it, adopting and sticking to a set eating “habit” is the important takeaway here. Most people who switch from 3 to 6 meals a day generally wont find themselves feeling hungry, and that’s just speaking from feedback. Specially when they adhere to my meal plans which are more protein heavy, a fact proven by this study(2).

What I found interesting about that study though, was that the obese subjects actually felt hungrier when they ate 6 meals a day, yet had lower BG levels. This happens to be a direct contradiction to the study in point #2. So what should you believe? Let me make it simple…

Switching form a low frequency eating to high frequency eating while increasing the ratio of protein consumed will, from my experience, help you feel fuller for longer (since protein is satiating) and can result in lower BG levels.

If you feel like you’ve been taken for an information ride, full of U-Turns and Round-Abouts then you’re absolutely right. Bite me. As this is what I do.

4. More options

This one was a revelation for me – an elusive obvious I never even picked up on until I decided to write this article. I realized that whenever I ate frequently, my cooking skills improved, which led to me to trying out a variety of different foods. I mean, if you have to eat 6 different meals… why would you eat the same shit over and over? It’s boring and pathetic.

[Try something new]

Which is another reason why the bulk phase can be fun, you can try a bunch of different foods as long as they meet your macro requirements. When I eat 3 times a day, my daily food log looks boooring. I’m eating to be functionally alive rather than living to eat as I probably have shit to do. There’s no real variety unless I go eat out. Having 6 slots to fill will literally force you to come up options. As a result your pallet will expand, you will be introduced to stuff you never thought you would like and will generally end up being a less boring individual.

That doesn’t mean I find you highly fascinating though, let’s not get carried away.

5. Most people end up eating LESS when meal frequency goes up!

This one made me sit up and take notice. From all my data and experience that I have working with clients, I found that thsoe who were eating less frequently were actually consuming MORE calories. At first it may sound confusing… I mean, doubling the amount of times you eat food should increase your overall caloric intake right?

Wrong.

It’s psychology, my friend. If your goal is to lose weight, and you are prone to frequent eating… guess what would happen? You would automatically make damn sure that each meal was balanced and light so that you don’t overeat and balloon up (at least after a bit of guidance and training under me). Let me give you a sample breakdown from a client’s log.

I won’t reveal any personal details since I practice strict confidentiality.

Breakfast: 600 calories

Lunch: 550 calories

Snack: 300 calories

Dinner: 700 calories

Total: 2150 calories in a day

Now after discussing their goals, training level and their weekly activity level, I found that their actual base metabolic rate requirement was only 1700. So you can see why they were over weight. I’ve always said that caloric math isn’t 100% accurate, there are too many real-world factors to make fat loss a simple number crunching venture, but it’s still a decent way to get an overall picture of the problem at hand. Below is what their new meal log looked like.

(Note: This was during the first week without much push from my end. I didn’t even tell them the amount of calories to aim for or how many meals to eat, I just gave them the macronutrient break down and told them to plan out the meals as they saw fit. And it resulted in awesomeness)

Breakfast: 300

Snack: 250

Lunch: 350

Snack: 200

Dinner: 300

Snack: 250

Total: 1650

Hmm… isn’t that interesting? I told this person to eat however they liked and while they had an increase in frequency, they actually ended up eating less. It’s not only the caloric deficit that resulted in their successful fat shredding, it’s also the macronutrient breakdown and kick ass workouts, which was properly designed by yours truly.

[not exactly what I had in mind when I said high-frequency eating…]

6. Time Restriction

Not everyone has the luxury of sitting down and spending an hour eating a feast. I’ve worked plenty of lame ass jobs in my time where breaks lasted anywhere from 15-20 minutes and as such, I was practically forced into eating often and frequently. Sometimes you have to do best with what you have. But did that keep me from my glorious 6 pack? Clearly not.

When clients are extremely short on time, I usually tell them exactly what to eat during their breaks. To meet their caloric requirements for the day, frequency of meals naturally tends to go up. It’s either that, or they spend 2 weeks in nutritional hell adapting to an intermittent fasting cycle. Both solutions work well, you just need to pick one and stick to it. No jumping from one plan to another, this isn’t grade school hopscotch.

So in conclusion we end up with what I started in the intro – what actually works is knowing and manipulating your caloric requirements, having proper macro ratios set, busting your ass lifting heavy iron against grand daddy gravity and reading my articles. All have been proven. If you rely on 6 meals a day as the crutch, you’ll probably end up far from your goal. Same goes for 3 feasts per day. Meal frequency is the icing on top – actually I realized that’s a terrible analogy – meal frequency is the cheese on a hamburger. Regardless of what you say, it doesn’t make or break the burger. It’s about the meat. Cook that right, and you’ll always end up with the desired result – mouth watering deliciousness.

Start eating.

Oh, and if you feel overwhelmed with the amount of research available on fitness and nutrition, then be sure to visit the Social Fitness Site called Fitmarker. It’s weeds through the crap so you can discover pure gold!

References:

(1) Effect of meal frequency on glucose and insulin excursions over the course of a day – Michael E. Holmstrup, Christopher M. Owens, Timothy J. Fairchild, Jill A. Kanaley.

(2)The influence of higher protein intake and greater eating frequency on appetite control in overweight and obese men.
Leidy HJ, Armstrong CL, Tang M, Mattes RD, Campbell WW.

———–
© 2010 – 2012, By FitJerk. FitJerk.com is a division of Flawless Fitness Media – All Rights Reserved – No part of this post is to be republished without author consent under any forms of media (including print, internet, video or audio transcription). Doing so is a violation against copyright law and should be punishable by a punch to the face. All images are copyright of their respective owners.

Tired Of Looking Ordinary? Click Here And Get FJ To Design A Fitness Plan Just For You! FREE Initial Consultation.