How many meals should we eat per day?

There are lots of questions and debates about how many meals we should eat daily, so let’s just explain things once in a lifetime.

Amount of meals and metabolism

The most common mistake is that smaller meals accelerate metabolism. The fact is that slow and fast metabolism does not exist, and you can read a detailed article, variations are here from person to person but they are not coming from slow and fast metabolism but from non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).

Daily calorie intake

Throughout the day we have our caloric intake that we need to consume through the foods, and our goal depends on whether this intake will be a calorie deficit (less energy input than we need to remove fatty tissue), a calorie surplus (adding more energy than what we is needed for the purpose of building muscle tissue) or maintenance (input at the level we need to keep the current level, used as intermediate or rest from deficit / surplus).

How many meals per day?

Align them to best suit you according to your daily schedule or obligations. Sometimes the day will be so thick that you will consume your 1,800 calories in three meals because you simply will not get an opportunity to eat more than that or you will eventually allocate them to five meals.

The amount of meals you enter in a day does not affect anything but organizing your time and optimizing your menu.

More smaller meals will not accelerate metabolism or remove fatty tissue but calorie deficit.

Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9155494

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19943985

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8383639

https://examine.com/nutrition/do-i-need-to-eat-six-times-a-day-to-keep-my-metabolism-high/

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