Intro
I hear this a lot. “Eat more often and you’ll burn more calories and fat”. So, let’s discuss the logic behind this.
This idea usually comes from that guy or girl at your gym who’s been lifting weights for quite a few years and still insists on eating chicken and broccoli out of Tupperware immediately post workout.
We all know that person, right?
This thinking is based on the idea of maximising something known as the thermic effect of food (TEF), which is one of four components of a person’s metabolism.
In summary, the TEF is the number of calories (energy) that it takes to metabolise the food that you eat and use that food for energy.
The thinking goes that the more times you eat, the more energy you need to expend to metabolise that food. However, this doesn’t quite make sense.
This example will show you why.
Example
Lets say you deicide to eat 6 meals a day of varying calories. The TEF will look like this.
Meal One – 200 cals x 10% TEF – 20 cals
Meal Two – 400 cals x 10% TEF – 40 cals
Meal Three – 300 cals x 10% TEF – 30 cals
Meal Four – 200 cals x 10% TEF – 20 cals
Meal Five – 600 cals x 10% TEF – 60 cals
Meal Six – 300 cals x 10% TEF – 30 cals
Total TEF = 200 cals
Lets see an example then If calories are kept the same but you split this over 3 meals.
Meal One – 700 cals x 10% TEF – 70 cals
Meal Two – 800 cals x 10% TEF – 80 cals
Meal Three – 500 cals x 10% TEF – 50 cal
Total TEF = 200 cals
See in both examples that the TEF is the same. It’s not an exact science but it takes the same number of calories to metabolise the food you eat in both examples.
Is this to say that eating more meals is a completely useless endeavour?
Absolutely not.
In fact, we know that protein is best “pulsed” through the day with on average four servings being roundabout what we know as optimal at the minute.
Alongside this its also worth considering that if you want to optimise any form of exercise, for performance at least, then solid nutrition placed around training times will help.
So while eating multiple meals may play absolutely no part in improving your chances of burning more calories or fat loss, its still a useful tool when it comes to maximising muscle protein synthesis and fuelling for performance.
Got questions?
Let me know at ConcentricNutrition@gmail.com
Paul
