Optimal No. of Meals?
You read right, Dwayne Johnson, otherwise known as The Rock, consumes 7 meals a day! We ain’t talking salads either, we are talking proper meals, meat, vegetables and potatoes. Just check out his diet below:
| Dwayne Johnson’s Diet |
Meal 1
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Meal 2
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Meal 3
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Meal 4
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Meal 5
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Meal 6
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Meal 7
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This is his so called ‘muscle-building’ diet. No doubt it has worked for him, the man has some muscle! But, remember how I said we should question everything? I know it seems we have a winning formula, 1) The Rock is hench 2) The Rock eats 7 meals a day. So put two and two together and we should all be eating 7 meals a day to get hench?
Too often it is acceptable to have an idea of why something works, and then use this to sell it without any testing or proof. There is no experiment that asserts validity. And thus many of the accepted truths in the nutrition and training field fall within this, and they persist due to habit. I think that is ludicrous, I think times are changing and I want to push this change. In reality you should provide proof that the idea is based on facts, and testing to ensure it works.
Trouble is it seems kinda logical to have many meals in the day if building muscle is our goal. And traditionally bodybuilders have been under a strict eat every 2-3 hours rule, to ensure constant supply of nutrients to our muscles. By eating more often you not only provide our muscles with fuel, you stoke the metabolic fire and avoid spikes in our blood sugar levels amongst other benefits. While that all sounds great, and on the surface I see the potential logic, but often the premise is flawed, lets look at each claim in further detail.
Yo Bro
“Eating more often spikes your metabolism”
OK so where does this claim come from, because every claim has a source. When we eat we do in fact increase our metabolism, through something called The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). TEF equates to the energy burnt to digest the food, yup, we don’t ingest something and get 100% of the energy, some gets lost in digestion (around 10%). So the thought was by eating more often, we are stimulating more TEF, thus increasing our metabolism. Mini-meals ftw.
However, TEF is directly proportional to the amount you’re eating. This is where the above argument losing its standing. When two people consume identical diets, no matter how many meals they eat, the amount burnt in TEF is the same. So when diets are matched studies have shown no differences in expenditure between nibbling and gorging. It becomes another one of those situations where people miss the forest for the trees, because when you focus on the bigger picture, the entire diet over the long term, there is no difference.
Hang on, I heard if you skip breakfast you don’t ignite your metabolism, and if you don’t do that you’ll burn less. Intermittent fasting, in which you go through periods of typically 16 hours of no food has destroyed this argument. Our metabolism doesn’t operate that quickly, we do not impose some sort of starvation response by missing a meal.
Whether you eat 3 meals, 11 meals or Dwayne’s 7 meals, when diets are matched, there is no difference in metabolic rate. Any effects of meal pattern on the regulation of our body weight are mediated through effects on the food intake side of the energy balance equation. Increasing the number of meals in hope of boosting your metabolic rate is a total waste of time.
But Bro
“What about your blood sugar, it’ll crash”
This claim again on surface seems very logical, that if we want to keep stable energy levels, we need to be grazing constantly. Feeding our bodies little and often, to keep a nice flow of energy coming in. Further to that, surely eating frequently means we avoid getting hungry too. Again, that all makes sense on the surface, so lets delve into it.
Contrary to the above, our bodies actually regulate our blood sugar levels incredibly well. You know what our bodies love? Homeostasis. Whether it’s our body fat, temperature or blood sugar levels, our body is extremely well adept at keeping them tightly bound to a strict range. Assuming you are perfectly healthy we don’t see our levels climb and sink like a crazy yoyo. In fact more recent studies done on younger fit and healthy subjects have shown them to have greater blood sugar control on 3 as opposed to 6 meals, go figure.
But Bro
“You’ll go catabolic if you don’t keep feeding your muscles protein”
So we know our blood sugar levels do just fine without frequent feeding, and it doesn’t magically jack up our metabolism. But surely if we want to maintain or grow muscle, and protein is the key to this, we need a constant supply of it. If we go for hours without, won’t our bodies start eating away at our hard earned muscle?
Right so the thinking is we are better off having say 30g of protein split into 6 meals as opposed to 60g split into 3 meals. Because, we want a constant supply of aminos to not lose muscle. This misses something quite important, and that is digestion speed. You eat more, it takes longer to digest. After a high protein meal amino acids are released slowly into your bloodstream. A typical meal takes 5-6 hours to get digested, so even if you are having 3 larger meals, you’re still digesting and using the last one!
The only time meal frequency shows to make any difference with this is when protein intake is inadequate. In cases where the person isn’t getting enough protein (1g per pound or so) a higher frequency of feedings can help spare lean body mass.
So the body does not trigger a hormonal cascade to signal starvation if it goes without food for hours, in fact it copes well with this. The only time a ‘starvation response’ really kicks in is after 3-4 days of very low calories.
But Bro
“Your body cannot digest loads of protein at once”
The thought is that our bodies can only digest a certain amount of grams of protein at once, the rest gets wasted. Thus we are better off eating smaller amounts more frequently. I mean it isn’t like we are masses of meat in one sitting in the past is it…oh wait. Therefore, lets look deeper into this.
So we know our ancestors were hunter gatherers, they went through times of feast and famine. They certainly had no problem eating a tonne of meat at once. When you eat more protein, it takes longer to digest and be used. That is about as complex as it gets. a standard meal is still being digested 5 hours later, that means amino acids are still being released into the bloodstream and absorbed by our muscles.
From E.M. Forster
“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
Just as the point Forster is making, stop abiding by so called ‘theories’ that people have repeated enough times so they become ‘facts’. If you allow others to give you orders, you do not learn, instead question everything and come to your own conclusions and #ReviveStronger
In part 2 I am going to look deeper into why eating frequently can actually be a bad thing for some, and then in the final part I will finish with some practical application. It isn’t as cut and dry as eat whenever you want…
Further Reading:
- Learn more about intermittant fasting: http://www.leangains.com/
- Lyle McDonald on meal timing and energy balance: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html/
- [NEW] The Coach & Client Connection Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82CHJbe00no
- [NEW] Blog Post for Physiqu Apparel: http://www.physiqapparel.com/blog/can-we-outwork-our-genetics/
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