Research Review

Bellisle F et. al. Meal frequency and energy balance. Br J Nutr. (1997) 77 (Suppl 1):S57-70.

Several epidemiological studies have observed an inverse relationship between people's habitual frequency of eating and body weight, leading to the suggestion that a 'nibbling' meal pattern may help in the avoidance of obesity. A review of all pertinent studies shows that, although many fail to find any significant relationship, the relationship is consistently inverse in those that do observe a relationship. However, this finding is highly vulnerable to the probable confounding effects of post hoc changes in dietary patterns as a consequence of weight gain and to dietary under-reporting which undoubtedly invalidates some of the studies. We conclude that the epidemiological evidence is at best very weak, and almost certainly represents an artefact. A detailed review of the possible mechanistic explanations for a metabolic advantage of nibbling meal patterns failed to reveal significant benefits in respect of energy expenditure. Although some short-term studies suggest that the thermic effect of feeding is higher when an isoenergetic test load is divided into multiple small meals, other studies refute this, and most are neutral. More importantly, studies using whole-body calorimetry and doubly-labelled water to assess total 24 h energy expenditure find no difference between nibbling and gorging. Finally, with the exception of a single study, there is no evidence that weight loss on hypoenergetic regimens is altered by meal frequency. We conclude that any effects of meal pattern on the regulation of body weight are likely to be mediated through effects on the food intake side of the energy balance equation.

My comments: Ok, since nothing interesting came up on Pubcrawler this week, I decided that I'd crush another long-standing nutritional dogma (I thought about changing this from a research review to a mythbusting column but I'm going to run out of stupid myths to dismiss). How many times have you heard something along the lines of "Eating 6 times per day stokes the metabolic fire." or "You must eat 6 times per day to lose fat effectively." or "Skipping even one meal per day will slow your metabolic rate and you'll hoard fat." Probably a lot.

Well, guess what? The idea is based on piss-poor observational studies and direct research says that it's all bullshit. The idea came, essentially out of a misunderstanding of the thermic effect of food (TEF) also called dietary induced thermogenesis (DIT) which are the calories burned in processing of the food you eat. While TEF differs for the different nutrients, on average it constitutes about 10% of a typical mixed diet. So every time you eat, your metabolic rate goes up a little bit due to TEF. Aha! Eat more and metabolic rate goes up more, right?

Except, let's think about that. Say we have two people, both eating 3000 calories per day. One eats 6 meals of 500 calories/meal while the other eats 3 meals of 1000 calories/meal. The first will have a TEF of 50 calories (10% of 500) 6 times/day. The second will have a TEF of 100 calories (10% of 1000 calories) 3 times/day. Well, 6X50 = 300 calories/day and 3X100 = 300 calories/day. No difference. Sure, if you increase food intake from, say, 1500 calories to 2000 calories, you will burn more with TEF; but this has nothing to do with meal frequency, it has to do with eating more food.

Which brings us, the long way around, to the above review paper which examined not only earlier observational work but also direct studies of varying meal frequency on either weight loss (during such studies) or metabolic rate. And, with the exception of a poorly done study on boxers (which I'll discuss later, maybe next week), they found no effect of varying meal frequency. None. They concluded that earlier studies finding an effect of meal frequency on weight gain (or loss) had more to do with changes in appetite or food intake, not from a direct impact on metabolic rate. For example, early observational studies found that people who skipped breakfast were heavier. The study suggested that perhaps people who were overweight had started skipping breakfast in an attempt to lose weight; not that skipping breakfast made them fat.

That is, and in keeping with last week's study (and a lot of confusing issues regarding the effect of food on bodyweight/bodyfat), certain eating patterns tend to impact on caloric intake. Some early studies actually found that eating more frequently caused weight gain, mainly because the foods being added were snacks and were in addition to normal food intake. Other studies have shown that splitting one's daily calories into multiple smaller meals helps to control hunger: people tend to eat less when they split their meals and eat more frequently. When you go too long between meals (I usually find that 3-5 hours is about the limit depending on the meal composition), you tend to get hungry and end up at the vending machine eating candy. Eating more smaller meals can also have some health benefits in terms of blood glucose control and blood cholesterol; no-one is denying that.

However, this is all tangential to the claims being made for metabolic rate. Whether you eat 3 meals per day or 6, if your daily caloric intake is identical, you will expend the same number of calories per day from TEF. And, as opposed to mice and rats, for whom everything happens faster, skipping a meal will not affect human metabolic rate at all. Quite in fact, it takes at least 3-4 days of fairly strict dieting to impact on metabolic rate; a single meal means nothing. You will not go into 'starvation mode' because you went more than 3 hours without a meal.

More practically, I sometimes wonder if the people who are adamant about 6 meals/day have ever worked with a small female athlete or bodybuilder. A 120 lb female may have a daily food intake of 1200 calories/day on a diet. Dividing that into 6 meals gives you 200 calorie 'meals'. More like a snack. 4 meals of 300 calories or even 3 meals of 400 calories is a much more livable approach than a few bites of food every 3 hours. The low caloric intake on my Rapid Fat Loss Handbook more or less prevents a 6 meal/day approach, each 'meal' ends up being nothing. I recommend 3-4 meals/day on that diet.

So, like last week's research review about the glycemic index, quit obsessing about meal frequency if it doesn't fit easily into your lifestyle. I consider 3-4 meals/day a workable minimum for most, 3 meals plus a couple of snacks works just fine too. High meal frequencies may have benefits under certain conditions but are in no way mandatory. And, in case you missed it the first time through: eating more frequently does NOT, I repeat DOES NOT, 'stoke the metabolic fire'.

Interview with Steve Shafley

1: Hi Steve, thank you for joining us. Who are you and why should we care what you have to say

SS: Who am I? I am a mediocre strength athlete, with experience in powerlifting, Olympic lifting, and strongman competitions, mostly powerlifting. My big claim to fame is that I am the front man for the Power and Bulk forum, which has been around in one guise or another since ~1999. I have been haunting the internet weight training scene for a long time, and, while I'm not a trainer, guru, elite athlete, or coach, I can occasionally make an interesting comment or recommendation, when I'm not being an idiot, anyway. I have been called "outspoken" and "asshole" and also compared to certain incurable diseases most often transmitted via shared needles or unprotected sex. I am in my mid-to-late 30s now

2: Tell us about your own past athletic accomplishements or current goals

SS: Wrestling, playing football, and running track in high school. No meteoric rises to the top, just hard work and slowly getting better. I came into my own while playing rugby in college, and ended up being one of the better flankers and then props in the club leagues I played in. I would like to think I had some untapped potential and could have taken it farther then I did, but I didn't, so it doesn't matter now. I started playing rugby just about the time I started to lift weights, so that sparked an interest in strength and conditioning for me, although it took me a long, long time before I got a good grip on it. My current goals are taped up on my desk in front of my PC. They are "train 4x weekly with weights", "clean up diet", and "return to the platform." So far I haven't made much headway. I'd like to put together a 700/500/650 full meet (preferably in single ply gear) sometime before I'm 40. My best meet was 560/400/565 about 3-4 years ago. You can see I've got a long way to go. I don't know if I'll ever do an olympic lifting meet again, but that was definitely a fun meet to compete in. I power snatched 90kgs and C&Jed 120 or 125 kgs in that meet. I'll probably never do strongman again, but that was, by far, the most enjoyable strength sport I'd competed in

3. As athletes and lifters move from beginner to intermediate to advanced, what do you think needs to change in tems of their training

SS: Volume and intensities both increase along the beginner to advanced continuum. Sport-specific skill work is required every step of the way. An older study done on rugby showed there were dramatic differences in the times a player spent sprinting from the low level club side to a good national side. At one point during a sport like rugby, conditioning becomes the primary factor in separating the winners from losers. This isn't necessarily the case in single attempt strength/power events (throwing, PL, OL). In all cases, though, as the athlete improves his prowess, more and more specialization is required. I have a feeling that in many cases, an intermediate athlete/lifter requires more variety and change in their program then an advanced athlete does

4. What's the best piece of training advice you've heard lately

SS: I always fall back to something Dan John said. "Pay your money and show up." There's nothing that fuels my training like actually training for a competition. I haven't competed since 2003. You can draw your own conclusions from that

5. What about the worst

SS: If you are injured, you need "STFU" therapy. Get into the gym, STFU about your injury and train. Also, watching some teenagers over on another forum tell Charles Staley to "SUJO" (sack up just once) with regards to using some of the Innosport methods

6. Who in this field has influenced you and who do you listen to

SS: I think almost anybody has something to offer, it's just a matter of finding out what it is. For strength training, I have a very strong bias towards the Q&A staff of EliteFTS and Louie Simmons. Dan John, whom I've corresponded with for almost a decade now is someone who's usually been there and done that, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for his opinions. For stimulating out-of-the-box, creative thinking, I enjoy reading Bryce Lane's material. The first person I think of when I think about performance nutrition is you, Lyle (nudge nudge, wink wink). I have a strong tendency to favor anecdotal discussions of training techniques rather than reviewing the scientific literature

7. If you had to give athletes a single important piece of advice in terms of making gains, what would it be

SS: Find a knowledgeable coach and/or a good training partner

8. In your own training past, what would you say was your worst mistake? Put differently, if you could go back and time and train more effectively, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently

SS: Too much emphasis on bodybuilding type work in a performance based setting. If I could start over, the first thing I'd do would be to technically master to olympic lifts. With that foundation, I think a lot more training options open up further down the road

9. You are the self-proclaimed Mad Puppet King of the Power and Bulk Board; tell us more about that board

SS: The Power and Bulk arose from the ashes of the Bulk and Power ezboard, which was operated by a young guy from the U.K. who decided to leave a cryptic message on the main page after he deleted it abruptly "Kcuf Ffo Tnuc Ecaf" Mysterious! The guy known as "Brock Harder" on Bodyrecomp and I decided to resurrect the board, because it was a strong community even back then, and many of us had met in real life. Our vision was a place not affiliated with any one type of training, with an emphasis on amateur competition in the strength sports and your basic kind of "I want to get bigger and stronger" lifter. A lot of places had some kind of restrictions on what kind of topics you could talk about, and we wanted it to be wide open. Today the P&B is home to a lot of different kinds of lifters. We have boards dedicated to throwing, strongman, grip training, and powerlifting, along with many off-topic boards. We've recently changed the format from ezboard to phpBB, and that's gone pretty well. The saying goes that on the P&B, feel free to be an asshole, but, please, be a funny asshole. Also note that we are considered a "cess pit" by a certain segment of the on line community

10. Was that position elected or did you obtain it through vile treachery

SS: I like to call it like I see it. That tendency, and the tendency to write and post something before I think things entirely through is what really made me the front man of the Power and Bulk. A "Puppet King" in truth, because I can't admin the phpBB software very well. Brock and I have good help, though. They get paid in spicy chicken sandwiches and decent porn.

Questions and Answers

Q: Pls. give me best strategies for fat-loading

I'm alternating day with low-kcal/low carb, moderate kcal/high fat/low carb and Sunday Carb-up of 12 hours. In terms of stamina and endurance I have found that saturated fat create a better response. During cardio indoor with my spinbike (MORRIS Interval Training), and outdoor in MTB, my heart rate is more reactive

I'm worried for the claims on this kind of fat...

A: First and foremost, given that you're not eating a constant diet of saturated fat, I doubt it's much to worry about. At least one study I recall found that elite cyclists put on a high-fat diet (but still in calorie balance) showed no problems health wise, mainly because they were burning off all of the fat. Ignoring the nutters who think that saturated fat is just utterly healthy for you, I think the whole issue of saturated fat has been blown out of proportion to some degree. In any case, eating a high saturated fat intake one or two days/week is unlikely to be any huge issue in my mind

Yes, on a diet low in veggies with people who are inactive, smoking, under high stress, fat, getting few nutrients/anti-oxidants, there's no doubt that excessive sat fat is an issue. For active individuals eating plenty of fruits and veggies and getting plenty of anti-oxidants (and who are lean, don't smoke, etc), I don't think it's such an issue

As far as fat loading goes, I can't say I've ever used it or tried it with anyone, so I can only really report what some of the research says. For context, readers should know that muscle contains a store of intramuscular triglycerides (IMTG) which, like stored glycogen, exist to provide energy during activity (primarily aerobic long duration activity). Research is finding that extremely low-fat diets, as often practiced by endurance athletes, can lead to IMTG depletion which might impair performance over long-durations

The problem has been how to replenish IMTG. The basic issue is that, if you carb-load, you don't effectively replenish IMTG (the fat gets stores, the carbs go to glycogen). If you want to fat load (replenish IMTG), you compromise glycogen resynthesis. The solution is probably that you will have to stagger the intake; either consuming high-carb/low-fat (for glycogen) or high-fat/low-carb for IMTG resynthesis. Recommendations of 35-57% total dietary fat or 2 g/kg bodymass (about 1 g/lb) immediately after training have been made and one researcher suggests that high carbs/low-fat for the first 6-8 hours of recovery (following a fairly exhaustive/long duration endurance bout) followed by the addition of normal amounts of fat (numbers above) may be ideal

Q: What's a good beginner's routine for someone who's never worked out before

First and foremost, realize that total beginners are in a situation where they essentially need to get in shape to train. The first 6-8 weeks of their training should start from a low-volume with low-intensity and gradually increase to build their fitness and condition their bodies. Jumping straight into too much or too hard of a training program only increases the risk of injury and dropout. An additional factor, especially with regards to the weight room is that technique and learning the lifts should be the focus, moreso than how much weight they are actually lifting

The nice thing is that rank beginners get fitness gains with aerobic intensities as low as 50% of maximum heart rate and loads as low as 60% of 1 repetition maximum (about 20RM) on the bar

The routine that i used to use with my beginner clients (it appeared in my first book The Ketogenic Diet, along with intermediate and advanced workout routines) appears below

Exercise

Leg press(1*)

Calf raise (2)

Leg curl (3)

Bench press(1*)

Row (1*)

Shoulder press (2)

Pulldown (2)

Triceps pushdown (3)

Biceps curl (3)

Crunch (1*)

Low back extension (3)

Numbers after each exercise indicate what exercise session a given exercise should be introduced. All exercises are done for 8-12 repetitions (see below) with a minute or so rest in-between. The first workout would be one set of leg presses, one set of bench presses, one set of rows, and one set of crunches. At the second workout, the first four exercises would be done and the calf raise, shoulder press, and pulldown would be added. At the third workout, the previous seven exercises would be done with the addition of the leg curl, triceps pushdown, biceps curl, and back extension at which point no new exercises would be added. This progression allows beginners to ease into training without generating too much muscle soreness.

So after one week, they'd be performing a single set of all of the above exercises. In subsequent weeks, they could add additional work sets, working up to 2-3 sets/exercise over their first 6-8 weeks. I use a double progression with beginners, I'll start them with a very light weight and have them build to 12 repetitions. When they can do 12 repetitions easily, I'll add some weight and they'll usually drop back to 8-9 reps. Then they can build back up. This allows them to gradually increase the intensity of their workouts without ever being subjected to massive overload. By the time they are working fairly hard, the progression has been so gradual that they don't even notice it. As well, starting light like this allows them to feel some immediate success and progress from workout 1, important for keeping them coming to the gym.

In addition to the above weight training program, they'd also be doing some type of basic aerobic/cardiovascular progression, starting at 10-20 minutes at a low intensity (50% maximum heart rate, RPE of 3-4) and increasing either the duration (to a maximum of 60 minutes), intensity (gradually moving to about 65-70% max heart rate or an RPE of 5-6) a minimum of 3 times/week. At this point, cardio can be done before or after the weight workout, or on alternate days. For folks with limited time, I might simply stick with a single set of each exercise for the duration of their break-in period followed by 20-30 minutes of cardio, this keeps the workout to an hour or less

After 6-8 weeks of this type of basic conditioning, they could be moved to a higher intensity program and start more formal training (depending on their goals)

Q: What is the most overrated supplement/supplements that don't work

A: 99% of what's out there. Here's a good rule of thumb: when a new supplement come out, don't fall into the trap of early adoption. Wait a year or two; if the product is still around (see: creatine, ephedrine/caffeine), odds are it's doing something beneficial. If, like 99.9% of products that have come out over the past 2 decades, it does nothing, it'll die off like all of the previous products.