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(JonPaul @ Jan. 23 2007,17:45)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE"><div>
(Totentanz @ Jan. 14 2007,12:36)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Just eat however many or few meals it takes to hit your calorie goal. The amount of meals you eat in a day won't matter.</div>
This doesn't sound right. I know the more meals you eat, the faster your metabolism goes. I thought that was pretty well known. When food is inserted into the body, the body works to digest food the inputted and increases the metabolic process for the next few hours, right in time for another meal.
I don't know how that impedes weight gain, but for general health, 6 meals a day seems to be recommended norm with pretty good reason to back it up.</div>
Meal frequency and energy balance.
Bellisle F, McDevitt R, Prentice AM.
INSERM U341, Hotel Dieu de Paris, France.
Several epidemiological studies have observed an inverse relationship between people's habitual frequency of eating and body weight, leading to the suggestion that a 'nibbling' meal pattern may help in the avoidance of obesity. A review of all pertinent studies shows that, although many fail to find any significant relationship, the relationship is consistently inverse in those that do observe a relationship. However, this finding is highly vulnerable to the probable confounding effects of post hoc changes in dietary patterns as a consequence of weight gain and to dietary under-reporting which undoubtedly invalidates some of the studies. We conclude that the epidemiological evidence is at best very weak, and almost certainly represents an artefact. A detailed review of the possible mechanistic explanations for a metabolic advantage of nibbling meal patterns failed to reveal significant benefits in respect of energy expenditure. Although some short-term studies suggest that the thermic effect of feeding is higher when an isoenergetic test load is divided into multiple small meals, other studies refute this, and most are neutral. More importantly, studies using whole-body calorimetry and doubly-labelled water to assess total 24 h energy expenditure find no difference between nibbling and gorging. Finally, with the exception of a single study, there is no evidence that weight loss on hypoenergetic regimens is altered by meal frequency. We conclude that any effects of meal pattern on the regulation of body weight are likely to be mediated through effects on the food intake side of the energy balance equation.
this was posted by ARRON F a few yrs back in the "how many meals a day" thread/poll in this very diet/nutr. section. all who are concerned with this issue should read that thread 1st, there is a lot of outstanding info in it as well as a variety of opinions, approaches etc etc.
for my money it comes down to cals in vs cals out. how you get them in is a matter of preference. if your lifestyle (work, family, sched, habits) leads to eat 6 meals or 3 or even 12 it doesnt matter. what does matter is eating enough to grow.
cutting diet does seem to be slightly diff. but only from the standpoint of higher meal freq helps some with appetite control.
good luck