The issue of meal frequency is hotly debated in the nutrition world, often without reference to adequate and appropriate science.
On one side, you’ll have proponents of eating 6-8 meals per day referring to ‘stoking the metabolism’, and on the other, you’ll have proponents of intermittent fasting, referring to the increased fat utilisation during an increased fasting period when often only eating 1-2 meals per day within a given window.
Both approaches make sense logically on the surface, in different ways, and people have definitely used these techniques to make huge amounts of progress in different fields.
But the fact that both of these extremes ‘work’ should tell you that there is a deeper principle underlying what determines your progress.
Does it Actually Matter?
Many scientists have studied this area of nutrition and of particular interest here, there have been many studies comparing what happens when two groups of people eat the same number of calories, but one group eats them from fewer meals and one group spreads them out across many meals.
The result in the vast majority of these studies is equal outcomes in weight-loss and fat-loss for both groups, when calories are equal.
The results of these experiments indicate that what determines outcomes in terms of fat-loss is the calories consumed daily rather than the number of meals one consumes.
With that said, when people are allowed to eat freely (not aiming for a calorie target), studies have shown that people who eat fewer meals per day often tend to see more fat-loss.
Think about that for a moment.
Does that contradict the previous paragraph?
When you consider that when people eat fewer meals, they often tend to eat fewer calories, you’ll see that it actually backs up the previous point.
When calories are sufficiently low, fat-loss occurs.
By removing a meal or two out of your daily intake, most people end up automatically reducing their calorie intake, and losing body fat as a result.
It’s also important to point out that for other people, reducing the number of meals they’re consuming can lead to extra levels of hunger during the period between meals, leading to less adherence to the diet, and ultimately less progress as a result.
This leads to the ultimate conclusion that how many meals you eat isn’t as important as most people might presume, at least in terms of fat-loss.
For these reasons, it’s important to assess what meal frequency works for you as an individual from a preference and sustainability point of view.
Ultimately that is the most important factor when it comes to deciding how many meals you should be eating each day.
When it Does Matter
Because of what’s outlined above, you’ll see many coaches and athletes stop there, presuming that’s the end of the story, and that there is no relevance of meal frequency to your athletic goals.
But a closer look at nutritional science (and your own practical experience) will tell you that there are a number of elements to consider.
Appetite Management
As I’m sure you can imagine, eating 2500 kcal from 7 small meals is going to feel subjectively different than eating 2500 kcal from 2 large meals.
That’s not to say one is better than the other.
On one hand, you never have to go for any longer than a couple of hours without food, BUT each individual meal may not be very satisfying/satiating due to the small size.
On the other hand, you get to eat 2 large meals, each of which might be very filling, BUT you end up with prolonged periods of the day where you’re not eating, potentially leading to hunger and the propensity to make poor food choices as a result.
There are pros and cons to both these approaches.
However, what’s going to suit most people is to eat a number of meals somewhere in between these, where you’re able to eat decent-sized meals without going for long periods of not eating.
Given that there is no real advantage (apart from preference perhaps) to having a very small or very large number of meals outside of the normal range, opting for somewhere between 3-5 meals/snacks tends to be a good starting point for most people in terms of keeping hunger minimised and allowing for enjoyable meals.
This tends to make sense for most people’s daily lives also, having breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and perhaps a snack or two.
Schedule
When it comes to any intervention in your life, it has to work within the framework of your overall existing lifestyle.
For example, if you’re a busy professional working 60 hours a week, your ability to choose when you eat or train is going to be limited in comparison to a student who only has classes for 10 hours of the week.
For that reason alone, a blanket recommendation of a number of meals per day won’t be broadly applicable to everyone.
One person may only have 2-3 opportunities during the day to eat, whereas another might have complete control of their time and be able to eat 5-6 times if he/she wanted to.
Finding a meal timing strategy that fits into your daily schedule will make a big difference to how easy or difficult making the changes feels, and therefore how sustainable your approach will be.
Getting this right will usually involve planning and trial and error, in order to get that number right for you.
Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS)
Muscle Protein Synthesis is the creation (synthesis) of muscle tissue, that occurs when we eat a sufficiently large, high-quality protein source, and/or when we engage in resistance training (lifting weights, for example).
The body is constantly in a state of both breakdown and synthesis of all of its tissues, and muscle is no exception.
For this reason, optimising the synthesis (building) side of that equation is crucially important for your recovery and muscle/strength gain goals.
Logically, it would make sense to aim to ‘spike’ this MPS response as many times as possible per day, so that might lead you to conclude that more meals are better.
However, studies have shown that aiming to do so any more than about 5 times per day doesn’t bring any extra benefit.
The same research also showed that ‘spiking’ the MPS response 3 times per day brought close to the same daily total benefit per day as 5 times per day, when the same total protein intake was consumed for that day.
This leads us to the conclusion that eating 3-5 protein sources per day is optimal for increasing muscle protein synthesis, and therefore helping optimise your recovery and muscle gain.
This obviously isn’t possible if only consuming 1-2 meals per day, and also indicates that eating more than 5 times per day isn’t required, so eating 3-5 protein-containing meals per day is what I recommend to clients.
Eating Around Training and Matches
Getting your nutrition right around training sessions and competitive events can have a big effect on your performance, as well as your recovery and adaptation.
For this reason, both the pre-training and post-training meals should be seen as a key part of any nutritional approach.
If you’re only eating 1-2 meals per day, this may make it more difficult to optimise these meals, since it will require that you eat a lot of food within each of them, and not have any other meals outside of them.
Adjusting your eating schedule to allow you to optimise those meals will likely require eating more than 1-2 meals per day, again, making the 3-5 meals per day target a good one.
Article Written By Conor O’Neill
Conor O’Neill is a Nutritionist, Strength & Conditioning coach, Psychologist, and Author.
He has helped 1000+ everyday athletes to pursue excellence in their physique and performance through optimising their nutrition, training, and psychology.
You can find out more about The Everyday Athlete Program by going to everydayathleteprogram.com/coaching.