Ep 583 | The Snacking Lie You’ve Been Living?

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I'm going to hit you with something today that might rattle your routine quite a bit. You have been told that you need to snack. We've all been fed this line that you need to snack between your main meals, that you should eat every few hours to boost your metabolism or keep your blood sugar stable to avoid getting hangry. You've heard that small meals all day is the key to weight loss and energy. However, I am here to tell you that I think that that's a lie. And like a lot of lies, it was manufactured, actually engineered, in order to sell you more stuff. Stick with me. Okay, the origin of snacking. If we rewind, I want you to think through this. For most of human history, we did not graze on food all day long. We did not. If you go back to like the cavemen, they only ate when food was available to them. So it was like, it was like feast and famine. You know, if they were gathering berries, sure, they'd be eating those berries. But that wasn't planned. They happened to find the berries, right? And then they'd go long periods of time without eating. And if they, if they were able to, to capture or kill something and consume it, they did and had a big meal. But they weren't grazing in the way that we do. They ate 2 to 3 meals. Historically, people have eaten 2 to 3 meals, usually spaced pretty far apart, sometimes eating, eating nothing at all. And today, snacking is this truly modern invention. Its explosion in the US was not driven by any sort of health science. Its explosion was driven by the big food companies. And these big food companies were looking for a new revenue stream, call it what it is. In the, in the post-World War II boom, companies like Kraft and General Mills and Nabisco, they figured something out. They figured out that if they could convince more people to eat in between meals, then they didn't just have to sell food, they could actually sell more occasions to eat. So suddenly they give us chips and snack cakes and protein bars and granola bars and Doritos and all these thousand I'm sorry, 100-calorie packs. And then they wrap it in all these buzzwords like healthy fuel or mini meals or guilt-free. None of this was about nutrition. It was about marketing. It really was. Let's tackle a few of the big myths. All right? I am not, and I probably should have said this at the start, I am not a licensed health provider. I am just giving you my opinion based on all that I read and study and trying to make the most of my health. So as I run through these myths, challenge them all you'd like. This is what my research has shown me. Myth number 1 is eating every few hours boosts your metabolism. I found that to be false. I found it to be false. Studies from the British Journal of Nutrition shows that There's no measurable increase in energy expenditure from eating more frequently. Your metabolism doesn't really care if you eat 2 meals or 6, as long as your total calories are the same. It doesn't matter. It's a myth that it boosts your metabolism. I have personally experimented with this, and while it's tough for me to say my metabolism went up or down, I do look for how I feel. I do, you know, eat small— I've tried smaller meals, I've tried bigger, I've tried it all. I've seen no measurable difference, difference in my performance or how I feel. Myth number 2, smaller frequent meals help you lose weight. It's false. In 2015, there was a paper in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition that found no difference in fat loss between people eating 3 meals versus 6 meals a day, as long as calorie intake and protein were the same. The meal timing didn't matter either. The thing that mattered, discipline. Discipline mattered. So when it comes to weight loss, it was more about caloric intake and it was more about discipline than it was quantity of meals, small frequent meals versus larger meals. And then myth number 3, and frankly, this is the one that kind of kicked it off for me in terms of researching a bit more. Myth number 3, you'll crash without snacks. Now, why did that one kick it off for me, or what was I looking to solve for? Well, you know, I have these kids, and one in particular definitely reacts when she hasn't consumed food. Now, granted, she's a kid, she hasn't fully developed emotionally, physically, all of that. And I, you know, I started like asking myself, well, how can I curb the way that she behaves when she doesn't have food for a long period of time. What I found is that you don't crash without snacks unless you're, you know, metabolically broken in some sort of way. Healthy people maintain steady blood sugar for hours. Again, I'm talking about a kid here, so there's different things going, but when you think about adults, healthy adults maintain blood sugar levels, like stable blood sugar levels for hours. In fact, fasting windows like, like time-restricted eating can improve insulin sensitivity, according to research and all the different journals out there. So I don't know about this, you'll crash without snacks. I think if you ate healthier meals and learn to stabilize your blood sugar because you ate healthier meals, I would think that maybe you would feel like you won't crash without snacks. This has been my personal experience. So whether or not you agree with those myths, we could probably agree that people before us did not snack nonstop. Again, whether or not you agree with what I discovered and called myths, we all know we were not hardwired to eat 6 times a day. So why do we, why do we keep snacking? Why do we keep doing this? I think it's because we've been trained to snack. Food is everywhere. It's engineered to be hyper palatable. You know, it's sweet, it's salty, it's crunchy, it's addictive. And it's marketed as necessary. It's marketed as necessary for focus and fitness and feeling full. Like they're masterful in the way they put this stuff out there. But most snacking today is unnecessary, ultra processed. And usually responsible for our overeating. You're not feeding hunger these days if you are a regular snacker. I'm sorry this is so direct, but really not sorry. You're not feeding hunger, you're feeding a habit. There's a real difference between snacks and meals. Now, to be fair, there are cases when snacking might make sense. If you're an elite athlete, you have high caloric needs, you probably need to snack. If you're a medical patient that has some sort of GI issue, maybe you need to snack. If you have kids that have smaller stomachs and rapid growth, like my kid, maybe she needs to snack. But for most of us, you don't need 6 feedings a day. You probably need whole meals, maybe a little bit more discipline, and enough space between them to let your body do its job, which is burn fat and manage insulin and create focus and recover. So, as we wrap up, now my final takeaway for today, snacking is, is just not a health strategy. I really truly believe that. I think it's a sales strategy. And so, what I want to challenge you to do, again, if you agree in at least a portion of what I'm talking about here today, that nonstop snacking is just not how we are wired as human beings to live, if you believe that, I want you to audit your snack habit this week. How often are you actually eating out of boredom? How much of it is real food versus packaged junk? And then lastly, what would happen if you stuck to just 2 or 3 really solid meals per day? I want you to track it, I want you to see how you feel. You might notice, You know, once you get used to it, more clarity. You certainly will notice better digestion. I would bet everything in my pocket on that. And I think there's a good chance you might find an even leaner body composition without really doing much else. Because sometimes less eating, believe it or not, ends up being more, more living. Just trying to challenge the way you've been thinking a little bit. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.