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Busting the Myth of Three Square Meals a Day
by Shannon Wills, X Ray Tech Schools Blog
We’ve been raised on a steady diet of three square meals a day – breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course, the English have their tea and then their supper (as opposed to dinner), but we Americans turn our nose down on this practice as sissy and something fit only for old women who have nothing better to do but gossip and sip their tea. Ah, but how wise the English were – they knew the value of a higher number of meals, with less eaten at each one. Today though, we’re going one step ahead of them and advocating six meals a day, not square ones, but with enough food to keep those hunger pangs at bay.
So why is it important that we eat less at each meal but include a higher number of meals in each day?
Because:
• It boosts your metabolic rate and helps you lose weight in the process: If you’re asking how eating more often can help you lose weight, here’s the answer. When you eat just three meals a day or if you skip a meal, your body stores excess calories as fat because it does not know when it is going to be fed again – the gaps between meals are erratic or too long. But when you eat five or six meals a day, you space out your food and calories evenly. Since your body knows that more food is on the way in a short period of time, it uses all the food that you eat as instant energy to fuel your activities and prevents fat from accumulating. Your metabolism increases because your body has to continuously act on the food you eat. When your metabolism increases, you burn calories more efficiently and even when you’re sedentary. So don’t skip meals, especially breakfast – all it does is slow down your metabolism and induce cravings.
• It provides you with more energy: Your body is continuously energized instead of your energy levels rising and falling in spikes as it does when you eat three heavy meals each day. Your blood sugar and insulin levels don’t fluctuate erratically too and you are less likely to be afflicted by diabetes.
• Your calories are used more efficiently: When you boost your metabolism, more calories are diverted for muscle growth rather than being stored as fat. This helps you achieve weight loss faster and more effectively.
• Nutrients are absorber faster and better: When you eat smaller meals more frequently, all the nutrients in your food are easily assimilated into your blood stream. Besides, when you reduce the amount of food eaten in a single sitting, you prevent bloating, indigestion and gas. Your stomach feels light throughout the day and you don’t feel excessive hunger pangs that could bring on ulcers of the stomach.
This is an instance where more is less – the more meals you eat, the less your chances of disease and weight gain.
This post is contributed by Shannon Wills, who writes on the topic of x ray tech schools. She welcomes your comments at her email shannonwills23 at gmail.com.
14 Comments
I’m actually going to have to disagree with you. I think the “common wisdom” is to eat many meals, but there’s no scientific data supporting this, just theory. I’ve gone for years (although currently on a break from this) eating only one meal a day, or I should say, only eating in a 4-hour window (6pm-10pm) each day. Contrary to what everyone assumes, this actually, after a short adjustment period, makes me a lot LESS hungry throughout the day, gives me a lot more energy, and in general makes me feel better. Not only that, it aids in weight loss/maintenance because there is only so much you can eat in a 4-hour period, and usually after a large meal at the beginning of this, I’m too full to contemplate eating anything else for at least a few hours.
As far as boosting metabolism goes, I don’t think there’s any evidence of this. This is an old saw but there’s also evidence that maintaining a low metabolism can have beneficial effects on health and longevity. In fact the reason I started doing this “intermittant fasting” (or as some people like to call it “intermittant eating”) is due to studies inticating that at least in some animal studies that it provided similar health benefits to Caloric Restriction diets but without the reduced calories (although many find that they just eat less on this kind of plan).
Mainly, though, I would just argue that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this type of stuff. If you feel better eating many small meals, maybe your body (and psychology) is more suited to that kind of regime. But I found for me anyway that despite what all the mainstream advice about eating lots of small meals, that eating only in one small window per day was a lot more manageable and made me obsess much less about food than if I was constantly trying to plan out the next mini-meal!
.-= Levi Wallach´s last blog ..Is the Palm Pre stealing Apple’s Mojo? =-.
Actually, if you follow the dietary recommendations of the Weston A Price Foundation, and eat three meals a day, you will lose weight. Slowly but surely. And you will not feel hungry or bloated, and will have lots of energy. The key is to eat lots of saturated fat from healthy animals, such as butter, cream, grassfed meat and fat, organ meats, etc, traditional nutrient dense foods such as unrefined coconut oil, and to avoid toxic modern foods.
For those who are interested in losing weight. keeping it off, and improving their health, I highly recommend the book Eat Fat Lose Fat, by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig.
Three meals a day has been the standard for most of the cultures of the world, for most of time. As with all traditions related to food, there is a reason for this.
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with this post as well. The body cannot actually use it’s stores of fat for energy unless there is at least a 3 hour fasting period between meals. Fasting is very important for helping to shrink the stomach. When you are eating all day, you are never giving your digestion a chance to rest, and you will never use your stored body fat for energy. You are also telling your stomach that it always needs something in it. If you are hungry between meals, you are not eating enough fat (particularly saturated). Fasting is in fact quite safe and healthy, and very traditional. If you think about it, traditional peoples did not always have enough food to be munching all day. In fact, eating only once or twice a day was probably the norm. Eating 3 meals a day is the MAXIMUM number of times we should be eating a day. Digestion itself also takes A LOT of energy. When you are constantly digesting food throughout the day, you are bound to be more tired and sluggish. We have things to do during the day, why not free up the energy for the important tasks at hand, rather than digesting and eating all day?
For people who are interested in healthy weight loss the WAPF way, check out the book The Liberation Diet, by Kevin Brown and Annette Presley. Both WAPF chapter leaders, Kevin is also a personal trainer and Annette is a registered dietician. This book is wonderful and dispels a lot of diet myths, just like the ones in the above post. There are also many success stories. I have lost 12 lbs. myself since January.
I eat intuitively; some days two meals and other days 5 or 6 times, depending on my hunger level which changes with my activity level. I have never done well with fasting which, I believe, is mother nature’s way of telling me it’s not good for me. I will occaisionally cleanse with limited types of food, but never make myself ‘go hungry’, it’s saps my strength.
Stanley, I agree with some of what you say, but not others. I don’t like the use of “modern” in the sense of food because it links anything modern with “bad.” I don’t think it’s black and white. However, I would agree that processed foods are bad, and that whole foods, especially meats, fats, berries, nuts, and some veggies are great for you. I think where I’d make a sharp break from your way of thinking, though is in my definition of the word “traditional.” Whereas Weston A. Price and you yourself regard in terms of societies that are not modern (in the sense of eating things that were invented in the last century or so), I consider “traditional” to be about our pre-agricultural ancestors. IE hunter-gatherers and such. Those societies more closely reflect what our genome has evolved to handle. Even the 10,000 or so years since the advent of agriculture hasn’t been enough to cause a serious selection in our physiology to account for the onslaught of grains that we consume now (and have been for most of those last 10,000 years). In the same vein, I don’t believe that there’s any evidence of “3 square meals” in pre-agricultural societies. To the contrary I believe eating was done in a somewhat haphazard way depending on when animals (or the occasional wild fruits/veggies/nuts) could be obtained. Since there was no real food storage technology back then, we could not really save food up for the most part and redestribute it at other times/days, except in limited cases where such food was able to keep for a while. Remember this is prior to animal husbandry, fermentation, salting, etc. So while some items are of particular value from societies that are post-agricultural but still “pre-modern,” I don’t believe all are, and at least in my opinion I’m looking first at the pre-agricultural human for this. Even so, there are certainly things that pre-modern AND pre-agricultural humans did that was not of optimal health, and just making blanket assumptions that everything they did was good without any science to back it up I believe is not very useful…
.-= Levi Wallach´s last blog ..Is the Palm Pre stealing Apple’s Mojo? =-.
@Christine, I agree with a lot of what you say. I would only point out the issue with using dietary fat for energy. There’s no specific time limit as far as I know regarding your body using dietary fat for energy. Metabolism is a pretty complex and sophisticated system with various pathways, with various hormones taking part. The most basic stuff that I know about this is that the body can convert various macronutrients to be utilized for energy – protein and carbs get converted to glucose and fat gets converted to ketones. The body will usually opt to convert the carbs first as they are the fastest and easiest. I believe fat is actually easier for the body to convert to ketones than protein is to glucose. It could be this 3 hour mark that you mention is based on some average person’s intake of carbs/protein/fat at an average meal. And that the carbs in that average meal provide enough calories to provide the average body energy for three hours until the body then starts using the fat and/or protein? In actuality the process is much more complex, but let’s say this is a reasonable ballpark estimate. The point I want to make is that there are no magic numbers like this in reality. That we are all different and eat different amounts of calories and different ratios of macronutrients, we all have different energy requirements (both basal metabolic and the constantly varying one based on our daily or even hourly activity levels), etc. When I’m doing this I generally “fast” for about 20 hours, but I don’t feel I’m stuck on this number and have sometimes done a bit less, and occasionally up to 36 or so hours. I think your body knows what you need and can prompt you to eat more when you really need that extra amount if you’ve gone without for an extended period. The body’s pretty smart about this stuff, we just need to learn to listen to it and trust it more than the registed dieticians!
.-= Levi Wallach´s last blog ..Is the Palm Pre stealing Apple’s Mojo? =-.
@Lauara, it sounds like you are listening to your body. My only suggestion visa vis fasting (as with most dietary regimens) is that the body does become used to a certain way of eating and when we change it, most people tend to see negative physiological reactions as the body adjusts itself. This is why I always give myself two or three weeks on a new eating plan before I make a decision to chuck it. That way I know whether it is simply not something my body can handle, or whether my body just needs to adjust itself to where it can work efficiently within the new system…
.-= Levi Wallach´s last blog ..Is the Palm Pre stealing Apple’s Mojo? =-.
I have to agree with the others who are commenting. Traditional wisdom promotes eating three or fewer times per day, to give the digestive system a chance to recover and focus the body’s energy on other tasks. After all, the gut contains 70% or so of our immune system, and more nerves and neurotransmitters than our brains. It does a lot more than digest food, and it should be given a chance to fulfill its other tasks.
In my personal experience, I am less hungry on fewer meals. I used to eat eight – seriously eight – times per day, and I was hungry all the time! Recently I have been only eating two meals per day. I found my mind is clearer, my appetite more normal and as an added bonus I have lost some weight as well. Sally Fallon herself recommended dropping down to two meals a day if you have trouble losing weight.
I used to be on the “6-or-more-meals-a-day” bandwagon, but it feels much more natural to be off it. I feel like my body is relaxed and content, instead of focused entirely on food.
.-= Elizabeth Walling´s last blog ..From Kefir to Yogurt: Raw Milk is Good, Cultured is Better! =-.
This is an interesting thread. It’s funny how some people think three meals a day is the conventional wisdom, and some think many small meals a day is the conventional wisdom. I guess conventional wisdom is tricky to pin down.
I always heard that it’s healthier to eat several small meals a day, and I thought it was true because I my blood sugar would drop if I didn’t eat often enough. But now that I’m not afraid to eat saturated fat and other nutrient dense foods, I am satisfied with three meals a day and rarely reach for a snack between meals.
Also, I love the ritual involved in eating a meal and I think this is weakened when you try to eat 5+ meals a day. Seems like you are always eating, preparing something to eat, or cleaning up from something you’ve just eaten. Three is plenty for me.
.-= Melissa @CelluliteInvestigation´s last blog ..CELLULITE NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD: Battle of the British Anti-Cellulite Knickers =-.
Melissa, it’s funny you should be it that way. When I was eating 6-8 times a day, I began to hate food (even though I craved it). It just drove me crazy always trying to prepare something and bring snacks with me all the time. It’s like food wouldn’t leave me alone! Now I can eat a healthy meal (with lots of saturated fat like you said) and I don’t have to worry about eating for a few hours. It’s amazing. I can actually concentrate on other things besides worrying about my next snack.
.-= Elizabeth Walling´s last blog ..From Kefir to Yogurt: Raw Milk is Good, Cultured is Better! =-.
This is a great discussion! All I have to add is that I don’t know how someone could find the TIME to eat 5 or 6 meals a day! As Melissa said, 3 times a day is plenty to have to figure out what we’re eating, make it and clean up afterward.
.-= Kelly the Kitchen Kop´s last blog ..5 *Real Food* Christmas Gift Ideas! =-.
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