7 ms·

Sorry for the dumb question, but given the total calories are the same, does this mean that it is generally healthier to eat one big meal per day rather than 10

by rocgf 8y ago

Sorry for the dumb question, but given the total calories are the same, does this mean that it is generally healthier to eat one big meal per day rather than 10 small ones? Given my current understanding from all the intermittent fasting hype lately, it is indeed better to eat big meals rarely rather than small meals frequently. For some reason, your post got me slightly confused because I lack the necessary knowledge to have a proper model about nutrition in place.

bad_user 8y ago
The answer to your question is yes. I’m doing 18:6 or 20:4 protocols, I eat 2 meals per day usually and I like measurements. My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t.
- wdewind 8y ago
  > My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. The problem is that there isn't any real data, on an epidemiological level, that says this matters. I don't mean to be offensive, it's just a weird obsession with the Keto community I don't really understand. Same with insulin spikes. They just don't matter. It's averages over a long period of time that matter. If you're eating two large meals, you're still releasing a lot of insulin, you're still doing the same amount of fat storage, you're just timing it differently. If that works for you, great. > I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. This is a semantic construction that is not supported by the science. You are correct that you would not measure nearly as high blood ketone levels, but you are incorrect in the idea that you wouldn't consume essentially the same amount of fat over the same amount of time given the same caloric inputs. Most people also go into ketosis while they are sleeping. > With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This doesn't matter. Given the same energy requirements and the same energy inputs you're going to burn the same amount of fat over a 24 hour period regardless of when those inputs come. Anything else is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. > This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Yes, keto is actually a low protein diet as much as a high fat diet. Most people ignore the first part. > Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t. This is great, and a very real reason for people to try IF/Keto/Other diets. But it does not suggest anything other than a compliance hack that is working well for you.
  - JanSt 8y ago
    > If you're eating two large meals, you're still releasing a lot of insulin, you're still doing the same amount of fat storage, you're just timing it differently. If that works for you, great. Yes, but your body won't be able to use it's stored fat in the presence of insulin. If you keep that up long enough, you can only burn calories coming in. If you eat a lot of meals AND a caloric deficit your body needs to decrease your metabolism, mostly heat, thus cold hands and feet. > This is a semantic construction that is not supported by the science. It is. See insulin vs glucagon. > but you are incorrect in the idea that you wouldn't consume essentially the same amount of fat over the same amount of time given the same caloric inputs It's about your metabolism not CICO. > Most people also go into ketosis while they are sleeping. Well it won't be a deep ketosis. The longer your fast, the lower the insulin, the more body fat will be used. > This doesn't matter. Given the same energy requirements and the same energy inputs you're going to burn the same amount of fat over a 24 hour period regardless of when those inputs come. Anything else is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. It absolutely does matter, because your body does not burn a static amount of calories but adapts to the situation. Slowing metabolism is real. If you can't burn energy (low caloric input but frequent meals), your body will do what it needs to survive. > Yes, keto is actually a low protein diet as much as a high fat diet. Most people ignore the first part. Yes! > This is great, and a very real reason for people to try IF/Keto/Other diets. But it does not suggest anything other than a compliance hack that is working well for you. While it's anecdotal, there are good reasons for this effect. You don't need to go low carb for a healthy diet, but cutting insulin raising foods for periods of time does have its merit. Take no more than 3 meals a day and leave 12+ hours food-free. Will do wonders for most people.
    - wdewind 8y ago
      > Yes, but your body won't be able to use it's stored fat in the presence of insulin. If you keep that up long enough, you can only burn calories coming in. If you eat a lot of meals AND a caloric deficit your body needs to decrease your metabolism, mostly heat, thus cold hands and feet. Right but what happens when you no longer inputting calories and thus no longer have high insulin? Then you start burning the fat again. You can only keep your insulin levels pathologically elevated if you are eating enough to support that over the long term, regardless of when you eat. Again, your body is very good at supplementing energy needs with fat when it needs to. Again there is no study showing meal time having any impact when calories are balanced, and several confirming the opposite. > It absolutely does matter, because your body does not burn a static amount of calories but adapts to the situation. Slowing metabolism is real. If you can't burn energy (low caloric input but frequent meals), your body will do what it needs to survive. Your body adapts to a short term situation (a meal and the small post-prandial period) but in the long term (24 hour period) it makes zero difference. > Slowing metabolism is real. Yes but it's also reversible by, shockingly, increasing caloric demand. To be very clear, the proof required for what you are suggesting is a study with a minimum of 2 groups eating the same exact meals but at different times, and being forced to finish the entire meal and experiencing different outcomes. This has never happened, and based on our current understanding of metabolism never will. Maybe it would change, but this would be a massive massive change in our understanding of how the human body deals with energy.
sioux77 8y ago
Healthier is subjective. Diabetics are taught to eat multiple small meals a day to manage blood sugar levels better.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  That of course assuming you're diabetic, otherwise you are totally capable of consuming food either way.
  - sioux77 8y ago
    Capable, but it doesn't matter since your blood sugar level will spike higher and for longer with a single large meal even in a non-diabetic individual.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      And why, when compared to a constant elevated level from many small meals, is that a bad thing?
- keymone 8y ago
  What diabetics are told to eat has generally been bullshit for good half a century. The whole low-fat craze and cholesterol horror stories I mean.
wdewind 8y ago
> Sorry for the dumb question, but given the total calories are the same, does this mean that it is generally healthier to eat one big meal per day rather than 10 small ones? We can't answer this confidently, the way I would say it is: there isn't strong evidence to support the idea that either is better. > Given my current understanding from all the intermittent fasting hype lately, it is indeed better to eat big meals rarely rather than small meals frequently. For some reason, your post got me slightly confused because I lack the necessary knowledge to have a proper model about nutrition in place. The IF people (along with the Keto people) use a variety of tricks to try and prove their point. There is absolutely not a single paper showing calorically balanced food intake has different clinically significant outcomes. Period, full stop etc. There are tons of papers saying things like if you force people to eat in constrained windows they eat fewer calories (or if you force people to eat high fat diets they eat fewer calories etc.). Those are all useful outcomes: they are "compliance hacks." But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science. As for yourself: nutritional science is weak, and if the nutritional science says do something, and you observe a bad outcome in yourself from doing it, I'd take your own personal data over the nutritional science, frankly. For instance: fiber is a great modulator. If you go to a GI specialist and say "I'm having dietary issues," increasing fiber is usually the first thing they recommend. But also, sometimes that doesn't work and then the next thing is decreasing fiber (FODMAP diet). So it's really hard to make sweeping recommendations because the body is so complex and nutrition involves so many different cooperating systems that can all go slightly wrong.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  >>But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science. This doesn't seem correct. IF has statistically significant benefits: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-sur... (Supporting papers linked at the end)
  - wdewind 8y ago
    I'm sorry to just repost my paragraph from above, but I believe I already responded to this: > The IF people (along with the Keto people) use a variety of tricks to try and prove their point. There is absolutely not a single paper showing calorically balanced food intake has clinically significant outcomes. Period, full stop etc. There are tons of papers saying things like if you force people to eat in constrained windows they eat fewer calories (or if you force people to eat high fat diets they eat fewer calories etc.). Those are all useful outcomes: they are "compliance hacks." But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science. 1. These papers do not show different outcomes with calorically controlled inputs, as I mentioned. One of the tricks used by the IF scientific community is to serve the same number of calories and so it looks like the same number of calories were consumed in the abstract. They never are, because if this did happen it would have massive implications for our understanding of the human body. It would require us to be wrong about a lot of things. 2. There is a difference between statistical significance (which could be, but has not been, shown in calorically controlled diets), and clinical significance (which definitely has not been shown in calorically controlled diets, and likely will not).
RHSeeger 8y ago
As a Type 1 diabetic, it's certainly easier to control one's blood sugar eating multiple, smaller meals per day. Specifically, the rate at which the food and insulin are absorbed into the system can vary by a large amount. The smaller the meal (and insulin does needed for it), the less extrme a high/lower blood sugar spike is likely to be.
- wdewind 8y ago
  Yes, I want to point out that diabetics react differently and really do have to manage insulin, it's the idea that metabolically healthy people also have to that is a red herring. Obesity is not an insulin disorder just because insulin is involved. Diabetes is absolutely an insulin disorder.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    But what causes an insulin disorder? I thought the argument for eating like a diabetic is so you don’t become one.
    - wdewind 8y ago
      You have to be more specific. T1 diabetes is almost entirely genetic, T2 diabetes is almost entirely behavioral. T2 diabetes is caused by eating too many calories. T2 diabetes is reversed by constraining calories, regardless of macronutrient composition.
      - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
        What about the other fad diet boogeyman, inflammation? Is there any relevance between that and insulin responses? Or anything else?
        wdewind 8y ago
        It's the same idea: talking about spikes vs average. Calories is what matters. Yes, insulin and inflammation can be linked, but also you wont have excess of either on a calorically controlled diet. Interestingly context can totally reverse the implications here too. For instance: as a weightlifter I want a heavy insulin response and I want a heavy inflammatory response because both of those help build muscle. So even saying that inflammation is bad requires a bit more nuance. It's very complicated, which is why Calories In Calories Out is such a powerful simplification. It doesn't tell you everything, but everything fits into that explanation, and if you can figure out how to control calories a ton of other bad things stop happening too.
lmilcin 8y ago
There seem to be no definitive answer to this, sadly. But... My own experimentation (beware of experiments with the sample size of one...) results is that restricting myself eating rarely but in bigger doses makes me feel more healthy and makes keeping / loosing weight much easier. Rarely in this case means something like one large meal a day or every two days or something inbetween. Now, I attribute this to what happens between the meals. Just as training to run a marathon is mostly focused on teaching your body to reach into fat stores before your glycogen stores run out I think of fasting in between meals as an excercise for the body in running pathways in the opposite direction. My understanding is that the fat stores are neither good or bad. Your body uses them to store energy for later with the assumption that it will be extracted at some point. If you keep yourself satied constantly, keep insulin levels all the time except maybe short time before breakfast, your body is not trained in effectively using the stores. The metabolic pathways for ketosis are unused and underdeveloped. In that state, as soon as you stop eating and blood glucose levels fall you start feeling hungry. There are other reasons for this happening (misinterpreting not being satiated for hunger) but one of the reasons is that the metabolic pathways for getting back at your fat energy stores are not kicking fast enough to react to demand. This is of course vicious cycle -- you get hungry quickly so you reach for a snack or something else to immediately satisfy your hunger which further makes sure you never excercise yourself to deal with hunger.

by rocgf 8y ago

bad_user 8y ago

The answer to your question is yes. I’m doing 18:6 or 20:4 protocols, I eat 2 meals per day usually and I like measurements. My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t.

wdewind 8y ago
> My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. The problem is that there isn't any real data, on an epidemiological level, that says this matters. I don't mean to be offensive, it's just a weird obsession with the Keto community I don't really understand. Same with insulin spikes. They just don't matter. It's averages over a long period of time that matter. If you're eating two large meals, you're still releasing a lot of insulin, you're still doing the same amount of fat storage, you're just timing it differently. If that works for you, great. > I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. This is a semantic construction that is not supported by the science. You are correct that you would not measure nearly as high blood ketone levels, but you are incorrect in the idea that you wouldn't consume essentially the same amount of fat over the same amount of time given the same caloric inputs. Most people also go into ketosis while they are sleeping. > With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This doesn't matter. Given the same energy requirements and the same energy inputs you're going to burn the same amount of fat over a 24 hour period regardless of when those inputs come. Anything else is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. > This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Yes, keto is actually a low protein diet as much as a high fat diet. Most people ignore the first part. > Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t. This is great, and a very real reason for people to try IF/Keto/Other diets. But it does not suggest anything other than a compliance hack that is working well for you.
- JanSt 8y ago
  > If you're eating two large meals, you're still releasing a lot of insulin, you're still doing the same amount of fat storage, you're just timing it differently. If that works for you, great. Yes, but your body won't be able to use it's stored fat in the presence of insulin. If you keep that up long enough, you can only burn calories coming in. If you eat a lot of meals AND a caloric deficit your body needs to decrease your metabolism, mostly heat, thus cold hands and feet. > This is a semantic construction that is not supported by the science. It is. See insulin vs glucagon. > but you are incorrect in the idea that you wouldn't consume essentially the same amount of fat over the same amount of time given the same caloric inputs It's about your metabolism not CICO. > Most people also go into ketosis while they are sleeping. Well it won't be a deep ketosis. The longer your fast, the lower the insulin, the more body fat will be used. > This doesn't matter. Given the same energy requirements and the same energy inputs you're going to burn the same amount of fat over a 24 hour period regardless of when those inputs come. Anything else is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. It absolutely does matter, because your body does not burn a static amount of calories but adapts to the situation. Slowing metabolism is real. If you can't burn energy (low caloric input but frequent meals), your body will do what it needs to survive. > Yes, keto is actually a low protein diet as much as a high fat diet. Most people ignore the first part. Yes! > This is great, and a very real reason for people to try IF/Keto/Other diets. But it does not suggest anything other than a compliance hack that is working well for you. While it's anecdotal, there are good reasons for this effect. You don't need to go low carb for a healthy diet, but cutting insulin raising foods for periods of time does have its merit. Take no more than 3 meals a day and leave 12+ hours food-free. Will do wonders for most people.
  - wdewind 8y ago
    > Yes, but your body won't be able to use it's stored fat in the presence of insulin. If you keep that up long enough, you can only burn calories coming in. If you eat a lot of meals AND a caloric deficit your body needs to decrease your metabolism, mostly heat, thus cold hands and feet. Right but what happens when you no longer inputting calories and thus no longer have high insulin? Then you start burning the fat again. You can only keep your insulin levels pathologically elevated if you are eating enough to support that over the long term, regardless of when you eat. Again, your body is very good at supplementing energy needs with fat when it needs to. Again there is no study showing meal time having any impact when calories are balanced, and several confirming the opposite. > It absolutely does matter, because your body does not burn a static amount of calories but adapts to the situation. Slowing metabolism is real. If you can't burn energy (low caloric input but frequent meals), your body will do what it needs to survive. Your body adapts to a short term situation (a meal and the small post-prandial period) but in the long term (24 hour period) it makes zero difference. > Slowing metabolism is real. Yes but it's also reversible by, shockingly, increasing caloric demand. To be very clear, the proof required for what you are suggesting is a study with a minimum of 2 groups eating the same exact meals but at different times, and being forced to finish the entire meal and experiencing different outcomes. This has never happened, and based on our current understanding of metabolism never will. Maybe it would change, but this would be a massive massive change in our understanding of how the human body deals with energy.

sioux77 8y ago

Healthier is subjective. Diabetics are taught to eat multiple small meals a day to manage blood sugar levels better.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
That of course assuming you're diabetic, otherwise you are totally capable of consuming food either way.
- sioux77 8y ago
  Capable, but it doesn't matter since your blood sugar level will spike higher and for longer with a single large meal even in a non-diabetic individual.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    And why, when compared to a constant elevated level from many small meals, is that a bad thing?
keymone 8y ago
What diabetics are told to eat has generally been bullshit for good half a century. The whole low-fat craze and cholesterol horror stories I mean.

wdewind 8y ago

> Sorry for the dumb question, but given the total calories are the same, does this mean that it is generally healthier to eat one big meal per day rather than 10 small ones? We can't answer this confidently, the way I would say it is: there isn't strong evidence to support the idea that either is better. > Given my current understanding from all the intermittent fasting hype lately, it is indeed better to eat big meals rarely rather than small meals frequently. For some reason, your post got me slightly confused because I lack the necessary knowledge to have a proper model about nutrition in place. The IF people (along with the Keto people) use a variety of tricks to try and prove their point. There is absolutely not a single paper showing calorically balanced food intake has different clinically significant outcomes. Period, full stop etc. There are tons of papers saying things like if you force people to eat in constrained windows they eat fewer calories (or if you force people to eat high fat diets they eat fewer calories etc.). Those are all useful outcomes: they are "compliance hacks." But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science. As for yourself: nutritional science is weak, and if the nutritional science says do something, and you observe a bad outcome in yourself from doing it, I'd take your own personal data over the nutritional science, frankly. For instance: fiber is a great modulator. If you go to a GI specialist and say "I'm having dietary issues," increasing fiber is usually the first thing they recommend. But also, sometimes that doesn't work and then the next thing is decreasing fiber (FODMAP diet). So it's really hard to make sweeping recommendations because the body is so complex and nutrition involves so many different cooperating systems that can all go slightly wrong.

enraged_camel 8y ago
>>But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science. This doesn't seem correct. IF has statistically significant benefits: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-sur... (Supporting papers linked at the end)
- wdewind 8y ago
  I'm sorry to just repost my paragraph from above, but I believe I already responded to this: > The IF people (along with the Keto people) use a variety of tricks to try and prove their point. There is absolutely not a single paper showing calorically balanced food intake has clinically significant outcomes. Period, full stop etc. There are tons of papers saying things like if you force people to eat in constrained windows they eat fewer calories (or if you force people to eat high fat diets they eat fewer calories etc.). Those are all useful outcomes: they are "compliance hacks." But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science. 1. These papers do not show different outcomes with calorically controlled inputs, as I mentioned. One of the tricks used by the IF scientific community is to serve the same number of calories and so it looks like the same number of calories were consumed in the abstract. They never are, because if this did happen it would have massive implications for our understanding of the human body. It would require us to be wrong about a lot of things. 2. There is a difference between statistical significance (which could be, but has not been, shown in calorically controlled diets), and clinical significance (which definitely has not been shown in calorically controlled diets, and likely will not).

RHSeeger 8y ago

As a Type 1 diabetic, it's certainly easier to control one's blood sugar eating multiple, smaller meals per day. Specifically, the rate at which the food and insulin are absorbed into the system can vary by a large amount. The smaller the meal (and insulin does needed for it), the less extrme a high/lower blood sugar spike is likely to be.

wdewind 8y ago
Yes, I want to point out that diabetics react differently and really do have to manage insulin, it's the idea that metabolically healthy people also have to that is a red herring. Obesity is not an insulin disorder just because insulin is involved. Diabetes is absolutely an insulin disorder.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  But what causes an insulin disorder? I thought the argument for eating like a diabetic is so you don’t become one.
  - wdewind 8y ago
    You have to be more specific. T1 diabetes is almost entirely genetic, T2 diabetes is almost entirely behavioral. T2 diabetes is caused by eating too many calories. T2 diabetes is reversed by constraining calories, regardless of macronutrient composition.
    - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
      What about the other fad diet boogeyman, inflammation? Is there any relevance between that and insulin responses? Or anything else?
      - wdewind 8y ago
        It's the same idea: talking about spikes vs average. Calories is what matters. Yes, insulin and inflammation can be linked, but also you wont have excess of either on a calorically controlled diet. Interestingly context can totally reverse the implications here too. For instance: as a weightlifter I want a heavy insulin response and I want a heavy inflammatory response because both of those help build muscle. So even saying that inflammation is bad requires a bit more nuance. It's very complicated, which is why Calories In Calories Out is such a powerful simplification. It doesn't tell you everything, but everything fits into that explanation, and if you can figure out how to control calories a ton of other bad things stop happening too.

lmilcin 8y ago

There seem to be no definitive answer to this, sadly. But... My own experimentation (beware of experiments with the sample size of one...) results is that restricting myself eating rarely but in bigger doses makes me feel more healthy and makes keeping / loosing weight much easier. Rarely in this case means something like one large meal a day or every two days or something inbetween. Now, I attribute this to what happens between the meals. Just as training to run a marathon is mostly focused on teaching your body to reach into fat stores before your glycogen stores run out I think of fasting in between meals as an excercise for the body in running pathways in the opposite direction. My understanding is that the fat stores are neither good or bad. Your body uses them to store energy for later with the assumption that it will be extracted at some point. If you keep yourself satied constantly, keep insulin levels all the time except maybe short time before breakfast, your body is not trained in effectively using the stores. The metabolic pathways for ketosis are unused and underdeveloped. In that state, as soon as you stop eating and blood glucose levels fall you start feeling hungry. There are other reasons for this happening (misinterpreting not being satiated for hunger) but one of the reasons is that the metabolic pathways for getting back at your fat energy stores are not kicking fast enough to react to demand. This is of course vicious cycle -- you get hungry quickly so you reach for a snack or something else to immediately satisfy your hunger which further makes sure you never excercise yourself to deal with hunger.