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Transcript
Should you have more frequent meals or skip meals? I find this depends. Some people respond well by skipping meals and fasting, and some people really put on weight when they do this. At this stage we don’t have the level of knowledge to know exactly who should have more frequent meals and who shouldn’t so basically I encourage people if they are not sure to try it out and see what works for you, maybe one month have small healthy frequent meals every 2-3 hours whilst awake, and another month the opposite where maybe you only eat in an 8 hour window and 2-3 meals. The other factor is practicalities, in your life can you find the time to eat small meals frequently, or is fasting more practical?
When we look at the studies we see a few things. A 2009 review study looked at a range of studies and did not find that eating frequency had a significant role in weight loss
Other studies have suggested that eating 4-5 meals a day vs irregular eating is associated with a lower weight and may reduce impulsive snacking and appetite making it easier to control what you eat
So the evidence seems mixed and I think that is for exactly the reason I pointed out above, that there is so much variability in humans and our lives. So I don’t get too strict about this but rather encourage you to find what works for you and remember that may change over time.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19566598