Which is better, one meal or five meals a day?
Five, hands down. Eating small meals more often will make you lean. Eating one will make you soft (regardless of whether you’re overweight). Eating frequently keeps blood sugar more constant, and therefore hormone levels of insulin steady (keeping fat storage to a minimum and insulin receptors healthy). Providing your body with fuel ‘as needed’ revs your metabolism burning calories at the maximum rate. You also burn a portion of the calories consumed just to digest the food you’re eating, every few hours, so the thermogenic effect is that you’re retaining fewer calories for future energy. Eating one large meal provides more calories than is immediately needed. This floods the blood with glucose and the resulting insulin surge to reduce it causes the excess energy to be stored as body fat. Not eating later triggers a starvation response, slowing metabolism and calorie burn, even at rest. When calories are next needed, and not provided by another meal, the body will break down muscle for
