Breakfast, lunch, and dinner - is a way of life for many of us. We frequently hear that people need to eat 5-8 meals a day to lose weight and stay healthy. It is everywhere - Television, Internet, Newspapers, magazines etc. Eating 6 meals a day, they say, helps control cravings, keep hunger at bay and regulate blood sugar. Eating more number of meals seems to be the secret behind the weight loss of many people.
But is it really true? Do you think people lose weight because of number of meals they ate? So, going from 3 meals a day to 6 meals a day can make people lose weight?
This multiple meals per day concept have become a bit of a fad. So, lets delve into this to really understand this.
Multiple meals per day are recommended for 2 main reasons -
- Increase Metabolic Rate - The concept is more often a person eat more calories can be burned.
- Having long intervals between meals can lead to craving and consumption of unhealthy foods.
So, lets talk about the metabolic advantage first. Basically, human body burns calories trying to digest food. Now, by increasing the number of meals we eat per day, we try to "cheat the system" by making the digestive system work more, and thus burn just a few more calories.
Now the question is, how many more calories human body burns by eating multiple meals a day? The answer is - not very much. Most peoples daily calorie burn (by Basal Metabolic Rate) ranges between 1300-1800 calories per day. By increasing the number of meals from 3 to 8, they probably increase it incrementally. Lets be generous and say 5%. That is a total of 60-100 calories more per day.
To lose half kilograms per week, human body needs to have a deficit of about 500 calories per day. So, in the bigger picture of burning calories and lose weight, burning 60-100 calories per day is not enough to get effective weight loss results.
Then how to lose weight? Well, even if anybody does eat 6 meals a day for the "metabolic advantage", the key to weight loss is to make sure that there are enough calorie deficits. In other words, over a larger number of meals, the person needs to eat fewer calories. Does it seem tougher? The real key here is to control cravings for unhealthy foods and mind. Even with 6 meals a day, any person may land-up craving unhealthy foods, so its not a perfect method to cut cravings & calories.
The last point about 6 meals a day diet is somewhat related to peoples culture. For example, India is the land of Yoga. All latest research studies validate that yoga principles seem to be deeply scientific. Even, Yoga recommends eating after an interval of 4 hours, which leads to 3 meals a day. The idea is about the time our body needs to complete the full digestion process, before we start another one.