Eating Often: Why?

[Ninsha]

Ok, I understand that eating often raises the metabolism (I think?). What causes this to happen?

In that same vein...if I eat something low calorie constantly throughout the day, like Broccoli, or Celery...will it have the same effect, or is the metabolism boost reliant on calories for it's action?

How do liquids work into this equation?

 

[scott72]

Eating often keeps your metabolism firing throughout the day and allows your body to absorb more of the nutrients in food because you're not overloading like you would with a 3 meal a day routine. Your body can only absorb a certain amount of nutrients and the rest is waste. It also keeps you from getting extremely hungry as you would be eating every 3 hours or so thus avoiding the overeating syndrome. Last but not least it keeps you anabolic, which is a good thing for muscle mass.

 

[nparisi]

Nicely put...

 

[Rodja]

Simple-it provides glucose and AA stability thus providing an environment that is built for muscle gain/fat loss depending on kcal consumption.

 

[Nitrox]

Eating often keeps your metabolism firing throughout the day and allows your body to absorb more of the nutrients in food because you're not overloading like you would with a 3 meal a day routine.

I think this is open to misinterpretation. Your body will use or store all the food energy provided by macronutrients. It will not waste energy. Micronutrients may go to waste as well as protein, which will be deaminized and then converted to glucose or fat.

 

[spigot]

I think this is open to misinterpretation. Your body will use or store all the food energy provided by macronutrients. It will not waste energy. Micronutrients may go to waste as well as protein, which will be deaminized and then converted to glucose or fat.

I didn't think the incorporation of protein/aminos into fat happened at any significant rate.

 

[Hank Vangut]

some good points made already.

long breaks or starvation between meals increases cortisol levels, causing your metabolism to slow, breaking down protein (muscle) for energy and encourages fat storage.

whole foods are more thermogenetic than liquids because they require more energy (calorie expenditure) to break them down and digest. fiberous foods like celery and brocolli are more thermogenetic than simple carbohydrates because it is unable to be fully broken down and utilized and is passed through - a lot of work for little calorie gain.

 

[hsg1437]

shorter fasting periods decrease lipase. let's not forget that. more fat converting enzymes = less kcal req'd to store them as fat. starving = you being morefficient at getting fat.

more & smaller meals also = smaller stomach. after a while you begin to fill your stomach and feel full with less food at a sitting. practice practice.

"little and often" is a beautiful maxim. it's how we should eat. it was also the sleep pattern of great people: einstein, da vinci, edison.

 

[Hank Vangut]

yep, that's right....i'm a copy-paste guy.

Acute effects on metabolism and appetite profile of one meal difference in the lower range of meal frequency.A gorging pattern of food intake has been shown to enhance lipogenesis and increase body weight, which may be due to large fluctuations in storage and mobilisation of nutrients. In a state of energy balance, increasing meal frequency, and thereby decreasing inter-meal interval, may prevent large metabolic fluctuations. Our aim was to study the effect of the inter-meal interval by dividing energy intake over two or three meals on energy expenditure, substrate oxidation and 24 h satiety, in healthy, normal-weight women in a state of energy balance. The study was a randomised crossover design with two experimental conditions. During the two experimental conditions subjects (fourteen normal-weight women, aged 24.4 (SD 7.1) years, underwent 36 h sessions in energy balance in a respiration chamber for measurements of energy expenditure and substrate oxidation. The subjects were given two (breakfast, dinner) or three (breakfast, lunch, dinner) meals per d. We chose to omit lunch in the two meals condition, because this resulted in a marked difference in inter-meal-interval after breakfast (8.5 h v. 4 h). Eating three meals compared with two meals had no effects on 24 h energy expenditure, diet-induced thermogenesis, activity-induced energy expenditure and sleeping metabolic rate. Eating three meals compared with two meals increased 24 h fat oxidation, but decreased the amount of fat oxidised from the breakfast. The same amount of energy divided over three meals compared with over two meals increased satiety feelings over 24 h. In healthy, normal-weight women, decreasing the inter-meal interval sustains satiety, particularly during the day, and sustains fat oxidation, particularly during the night.

 

[Cerberus]

a lot of brotelligence here ... typical.

 

[OCCFan023]

a lot of brotelligence here ... typical.

Nutritional information is now warranted as "brotelligence"? Hmm I was unaware of factual information, including studies, warranted that type of ignorant statement.

Oh wait I actually took your post as meaningful, my mistake.