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..
I have to disagree with one of your conclusions: Sumo wrestlers eat very little fat and a lot of rice. That’s why they’re so fat. Overeating high glycemic carbohydrates is easy but overeating fat is a lot harder. They just wouldn’t be able to eat 5,6,7K calories per day on a low-carb diet. I’ve tried overeating fat one day (by gulping coconut milk cans) and my satiety was so high that I didn’t feel any hunger for the next 36-40 hours.
And when I eat a lot of rice I need to take a nap, it’s not my decision I just get sleepy all of a sudden. Sumo wrestlers too probably don’t need to force themselves into a nap after eating a lot of rice.
I don’t have a strong opinion on eating frequency, which frequency is optimal I don’t know, but it’s the low-fat high-carb high-calorie diet that makes the Sumo fat, not eating one big meal per day.
@Michael – I need to update this article as I wrote it when I first started the website. The Sumo wrestlers get fat because they are eating more calories than they burn. Simple as that. I actually find higher fat foods do not satisfy my hunger at all. For example, I can eat a high fat burger that’s 1000 calories and be starving within 2 hours, or I could eat 8 ounces of chicken, 1/2 cup of steamed rice, and a cup of veggies, for around 500 calories and be full for 4-5 hours. It’s interesting how so many people say fat creates a high level of satiety because it generally takes 6-8 hours to digest, but I find the lean meat + starchy + fibrous carb to be far more satisfying for my hunger. Hunger is a complicated subject that varies from person to person, but that’s my take.
I’ve just recently come off a high protien, low carb diet after one month due to insomnia.
One week after going back to my old habits I was sleeping like a baby again. I did loose 10 pounds fast, but the lack of sleep killed my workouts, and mental state! I’m now eating a healthy balance, without the high glycemic carbs like white bread, rice and pasta. With regular oat meal, whole wheat sandwiches and 50-70g or protien a day. The weight is still coming off, but at a lower rate. But I feel much healthier.
I’ve had friends do very well over long periods of time without sleep distuption on a high fat-high protien diet. These same friends also say they feel much better without gluten in thier diets.
I have a theory that ectomorphs- naturally thin people, do much better with a high carb moderate protien diet. And that people with lots of fat AND muscle(endomorphs)- like my firends- Do better on a higher fat high protien diet.
May explain why powerlifters preach high protien so much, cause its worked for them.
And distance runners swear by high carbs, saying they couldn’t do it any other way.
@Sanford – I think you are absolutely right. Some people handle carbs much better than others. If I have less than 100 grams of carbs, I feel terrible. My sweet spot is around 150-200 grams.
Eating more frequently throughout the day isn’t going to lead to a ‘smaller insulin response.’ Every time we eat food, any food, our insulin levels elevate, so the less often we eat the less this happens. Obviously food types are very important here also, as sugar is the worst substance to consume when it comes to fluctuating blood glucose, so the less carbohydrates the better. The Intermittent Fasting crowd get some great results and this is a factor in why. Fasting also seems to have lots of benefits with regards fat loss due to favorable hormonal responses in the body. The reply about feeling tired after a high carb meal is spot on, and again this is due to your blood glucose levels spiking and then crashing and the hormonal responses associated with it. Keep insulin levels stable and train the way Marc advocates and you’re good to go!