As you’ve learned from my Starvation Mode article, skipping meals, or not eating enough food can drop your metabolism and sabotage your efforts to get lean. So what happens if instead of skipping meals, you eat more frequently? This post will delve into the benefits of frequent eating that you can apply to your life.
But before mentioning some of these benefits, I want to share with you an article I came across about how Sumo wrestlers eat to pack on so much weight. The average Japanese man is only around 145 pounds, yet amazingly, sumo wrestlers can reach 500+ pounds! So how do they eat to get so huge? Is it possible that you have similar eating habits as a sumo wrestler?
It turns out sumo wrestlers skip breakfast, then eat 1, or 2 enormous meals at 11am, then 6pm. If they eat two meals, they usually take a 4 hour nap right after the 11am meal to drop their metabolism. I’m taking a wild guess that you probably don’t want to look like a sumo wrestler (even though sumo wrestlers are venerated for their impressive stature in Japan).
If you read my free Get Lean Guide, you know that frequent eating is one of my 4 Pillars of effective nutrition to get a leaner body. If I had to choose one habit of mine that’s different from most other people and that’s directly responsible for my low body fat (I have 5-7% body fat year round), it’s that I eat frequently. Yes, I eat clean foods, strength train etc., but eating frequently helps keep my metabolism humming all day.
Here are some other extremely important benefits to eating frequently:
- Better utilization of nutrients
- Decreased risk of overeating at any particular meal
- Smaller insulin response, which creates a fat liberating environment (insulin is a storage hormone that promotes fat storage)
- Improves energy levels because blood sugar levels are more stable
So how many meals and snacks should you eat each day? Because it takes about 2.5-3 hours for your digestive system to digest food, the bodybuilding methodology is you take the amount of hours you are awake and divide by 3. So if you get 6-8 hours of sleep each night, then ideally you should eat 5-6 meals per day. For most of us, I know that’s asking a lot, but just as sumo wrestlers eat 1-2x per day, the opposite extreme is fitness models and natural bodybuilders who eat at least 6x per day.
For most working professionals with a hectic schedule, 3 meals and 1 snack can work a lot better than just three meals:
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Mid-afternoon snack
- Dinner
For you more ambitious types looking to get ripped, here’s what I do:
- Breakfast
- Mid-morning snack
- Lunch
- Mid-afternoon snack
- Dinner
- Late night snack (if hungry)
One more point to mention is that I recommend eating only when you are hungry, which for me happens to be every 3 hours. Obviously, I realize eating 6 meals/snacks per day is more extreme, but if you are eating like a sumo wrestler, increasing the frequency of your meals can make a massive difference not only in your body fat levels, but also your energy levels.
Oh dear god, that is an awful picture! Of course this comes in today… just after I finished a HUGE lunch…but only beacuse I got stuck in a meeting that lasted ALL morning so I couldn’t fit in my mid-am snack, plus my breakfast was really small. Ugh. I’m hoping that the fact it was salad, although massive, will keep me from looking like that!
On days that I am not eating properly and skip a meal or two, I have noticed that I am very tired and have difficulty keeping weight off. Now I know why!
interesting, I find that eating smaller meals also boosts my mental focus and work productivity
I eat every 4 hours. It help immensely with keeping off bad food temptations and snacks. The 4 hour body book completely changed my life.
interesting, what about night shift workers? You recomend to eat every 3 hours through the night as well?
Thank you very much for sharing all this information
@Santi – I need to update this article because there are a lot of people who do not eat every few hours and get great results, but I still do stand by the idea of frequent eating when maximizing fat loss. In terms of eating during the night, that’s a great question and frankly I’m not sure the answer off the top of my head. I would reason the same laws would apply to a night shift worker, but the totally number of calories to eat may be less because metabolism may be slightly lower during night hours.
Thanks Marc, i will test that, till now i was avoidind to eat at night, with very bad results..