Nutrition Q&A - 5 or 6 Meals a Day

What is the rationale behind having five or six meals per day instead of three?

It’s quite simple really – eating more frequently speeds up your metabolism, allowing you to burn fat faster. Eating every few hours is also the best way to build muscle. And the more muscle you build, the faster your metabolism will become. This never ending cycle of lean muscularity can be yours if you adopt the lifestyle habit of eating every three waking hours.

How, though, can the simple act of eating more speed up your metabolism and allow you to build more muscle? I’m glad you asked. Here are three important ways:

1. The very process of eating and digesting food burns calories. Some foods, in fact, have what are called negative calories (lettuce for instance) – it takes more calories to consume them than they originally contained! Certain foods have a higher thermic effect than others – that is, it takes more calories to digest them. Such foods as lean proteins and green vegetables come into this category. So, the more often you eat the more calories you burn.


2. Eating high quality, lean protein every 3 hours will release a steady, ongoing supply of amino acids into the bloodstream. Adding in some complex carbs will allow for a moderate supply of insulin to flow through as well. These two things are critical for muscle growth. They will keep your body in a state of positive nitrogen balance, thus preventing the muscle catabolism which is common when the constant flow of amino acids is not present (such as when people skip meals).


3. Eating smaller, more frequent meals with give you a lot more energy which will last through the whole day. By eating quality proteins and complex carbs five times per day, you will be able to normalize your blood sugar and insulin levels. This will prevents the energy highs and lows that many people experience on a day-to-day basis.

So, eating smaller, more frequent meals makes sense. It further makes sense to taper those meals so that the largest one is the breakfast meal, with the smallest one being dinner. The reason is simple - we are more active in the morning and become increasingly less so as the day progresses. Therefore we are more likely to burn off calories in the day time. You should also try to leave as big a gap as possible between your last meal and the time you hit the sack.

Fitting five or six meals into a person’s schedule is no easy thing. In fact, it requires careful planning. The first thing you need to do is to allocate times to eat and stick to them, no matter what. Think a day ahead about what you’ll be doing at your eating times the next day. If possible pre-prepare foods for the next day. The bottom line is that you’ll have to conjure up the discipline to stick with it until the practice of eating a meal every three hours becomes a habit. That effort, however, will be well rewarded - this could well be the most beneficial thing you ever do in your bodybuilding life.

About the Author: Dane Fletcher is the world's foremost training authority. He writes exclusively for GetAnabolics.com, a leading online provider of Bodybuilding Supplements. For more information, please visit http://www.GetAnabolics.com