How Many Meals Per Day To Eat | Meals Per Day To Lose Fat

YouTube, what is going on? We are back with another video, and in this video we are going to be covering, does meal timing slash meal frequency matter? And this question is a question that I think a lot of people answer, but they don't give a lot of context. And so like, for example, you'll hear people say, oh, it doesn't matter how many times per day you eat, it doesn't matter You know, how many meals per day you eat? Or they'll say, yes, it does matter. But they'll never give any context. They're just like, oh, yes or no? It's like, there's a lot more that goes into this question than just a yes or no answer. Which is why I'm choosing a platform like YouTube so I can go more in depth on the answer as to it might matter or it might not matter. And as you can see right here, when we talk about What does it matter for? Like, what does it matter for? The 2 main things we're going to be talking about are for fat loss or for muscle building. And as you can already kind of see right here, the answer is going to be yes and no, because in some situations, in some scenarios, and for specific reasons, it might not matter at all. But in other scenarios, other situations, and other reasons, it might actually matter a ton. And so we're going to cover all that here today. And just again, really quickly, meal timing and meal frequency— when I say those 2 things, they might seem very similar, and they are, but they could also be different. So meal frequency is just like, how many times per day are you eating? Whether it's meals, whether it's snacks, whether it's whatever it is, how many times per day are you eating? And then kind of coinciding right with that meal timing is You know, I think a few things. Number one, like, does it matter actually what time of day that you eat? So whether it's at 7 AM or whether it's at 8 PM, does it matter what time of day? And then also, does it matter how long in between your meals, right? Because, you know, you could have a meal frequency of— you could eat at, you know, 1 PM, 3 PM, 6 PM, 8 PM, 10 PM. Like, that's a different meal frequency meal timing both than if you ate at 7 AM, 10 AM, 1 PM, 4 PM, 7 PM. Like, those are 2 massively different things, right? So we're going to talk about all of that stuff here today in this video. So without further ado, let's dive right into the fat loss side of things. So first and foremost, it does— let me change markers— it does not matter for fat loss meal timing, meal frequency, what time of day you eat, all that good stuff. It does not matter for fat loss because so as long as you are in an overall calorie deficit, you are going to lose body fat. So, in here's where you're going to want to stick around for the whole video. If you take somebody who they eat 6 small meals a day, you probably heard that before. They eat 6 small meals a day and they eat 1,800 calories, and that is a calorie deficit for them, versus if you take somebody who ate 1,800 calories in, let's say, only one meal, but they still had 1,800 calories for the entire day. Since the calories are equated for both of those human beings— it could even be the same person, like one person you could do it for a month and then a month— but since their calories are equated for they are going to lose body fat because at the end of the day, if your calories are in check and they are in an overall daily but also weekly calorie deficit, because remember the entire week matters. And so the weekend matters, nighttime matters. It's not just one, like you eat in a calorie deficit for one day. You have to be in an overall weekly calorie deficit. Primarily people do that by eating in a calorie deficit, you know, a 500 calorie deficit every single day. But as long as you get to the end of the week, you, my friend, are in a calorie deficit and you will lose body fat. Now, we didn't talk at all about different health markers. We didn't talk at all about different digestion and so on and so forth. We haven't obviously talked about muscle building yet. So there's a lot more to that statement than just like, oh yeah, you could eat one meal a day or you could eat 5 meals a day and you would still lose body fat as long as you're hitting your overall calories. While that statement is true, Technically speaking, there is a lot that is getting left out of that statement which we're going to talk about a little bit here later in a second. But the reason I bring this up is because you can use this as somewhat of a benefit to you. For example, let's say you are somebody who— when we talk about meal timing, let's say you are somebody who like you have to eat dinner at 8:30 at night. Or if you like to have a snack at 9 PM, at night. It's not going to kill you because as long as your calories are in check for the day, you can still eat carbs or a treat at 8:30 at night. And once again, as long as you are in a calorie deficit, you will be able to lose body fat. There, you know, the myths of like, well, and this goes for like breakfast too. But you know, if you skip breakfast, you lose more body fat or If you eat late at night, you don't lose as much body fat. Those myths can luckily, and fortunately I guess is the right term, be dispelled in something like this because as long as your calories are in check, you can fucking eat breakfast and you can fucking eat later at night. And as long as you're in your overall calorie deficit, you will be able to lose body fat. So it's good for scenarios like that. And I'm, that's why I'm bringing it up because you don't have to overly freak out and overcomplicate things because your overall calories are what matter the most. But with that being said, yes, your meal timing and your meal frequency does matter for a few different reasons. And it kind of matters for more or less the same reason, your overall calories. And let me kind of explain. The one thing I'm gonna touch on right here is just simply talking about like hunger levels. As I'm sure you probably know, if you're somebody who is trying to lose body fat, you are probably dealing with a little bit of hunger While you are on your diet. What makes it very hard to stick to your overall calories and what makes it very easy to overeat on your overall calories, and in this case your calorie deficit? Being hungry. And what I have seen for a large majority of people, not all people, and really quickly, I'll just do this right now because I know I'm gonna get questions on it. People ask me about intermittent fasting and they ask me if I'm a fan of intermittent fasting. Me personally, no, I am not a fan of intermittent fasting. That doesn't mean that I don't know people who do intermittent fasting and they lose body fat and they're healthy and they enjoy it and they like it and it works for them. If that's you, fucking mazel tov. That's amazing. Although I will say over in the muscle building side of things, you might want to stick around for some more intermittent fasting thoughts. When it comes to building muscle. But from a fat loss perspective, if that's what you want to do and that's what you like, awesome. I have just seen for a lot of people what I'm about to cover right now is for a lot of people it backfires a lot of the time. And the reason it backfires is because when we talk about meal timing and meal frequency, if you are not eating a lot of food during the day, it is going to be that much easier to then overeat your food at nighttime. Whether this comes in the form of overeating in your actual meal, whether this comes in the form of, you know, you get home around 4 PM, 5 PM and you start snacking, snacking, snacking because like you just have this like pit in your stomach of— and you can't seem to get full. You know that feeling? You're like hungry and you just can't seem to get full. So you eat and you eat and you eat and then dinner time rolls around and you eat some more at dinner time and then after dinner time you just, you still can't seem to find yourself getting full. So then you're going into the chips, you're going into the cookies, you're going into some of the ice cream and before you know it you've completely overshot your calorie deficit in a span of a 4-hour window, but you thought you were doing good by like not eating any food throughout the day. You get to dinner time and you, You had like 400 calories. It's like, of course you're going to end up overeating because you're going into that period of time fucking starving. And not to mention, usually for us normal people, but you probably have kids, you have a spouse, you have a job, you have responsibilities, you're traveling to work, or whether you even work from home, might even make it harder because you're always in front of food. It's like during that 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 PM period of time, You're very stressed, your willpower is probably very low because there's already things that have been happening during the day. It's going to be a lot harder to stick to your diet on top of being hungry, on top of having more cravings. All of this just makes it exponentially harder to stick to your overall calories. And so while yes, technically speaking, it might not matter because as long as you hit your calories in your deficit, you're fine. It's going to usually make it very harder for you to stick to your calories. I know there's gonna be a lot of people who watch this and what I just said, you're gonna be like, yeah, yep, that's me. I can relate. Yeah, I get home and I just absolutely crush my pantry. Or yep, at 8:00 PM I'm fucking starving because you've only had 400, 500 calories, 600 calories by the time dinnertime rolls around. Because we as a society have this weird thing of like, oh, I haven't eaten all day. That's good. It's not a good thing to not eat all day, especially if you're trying to lose body fat. While you may think it is, it is not. And you're gonna have to get used to this concept of eating more food to actually eat less food in the long run. Because again, let's say as opposed to coming home with 700 calories eaten, eaten, eaten, let's say you come home with 1,300 calories that you ate during that day thus far, and your dinner is gonna be like 600, 700 calories, whatever it ends up being. Okay, cool. You end the day at your 1,800 calorie deficit as opposed to maybe you only ate 600 calories from the time you woke up to the time you got home, but then from the time you got home to the time you went to bed, you ate 2,500 calories, which, oh, by the way, very easy to do. So now you're at 3,100 calories. Even though you didn't eat all throughout the day, you're at 3,100 calories versus 1,800 total calories. Which one do you think is going to be more beneficial if you are trying to lose body fat? So when talking about meal timing and meal frequency, this is why I usually recommend people, you know, eating roughly every 2 to 5 hours. And it's not because of what you've maybe heard before of like, oh, eating really small meals frequently throughout the day is going to help boost your metabolism and burn fat. No, I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. Like, maybe I almost wanted to because I want you to maybe eat more food throughout the day, but I'm not going to lie to you. That's not why. The reason why I'm saying it, at least, is because that way when you get to later at night, you are not apt and prone to overeating and overshooting your calories. And just one quick side note on that as well. I know a lot of people— and this is another reason why I'm not the biggest fan of intermittent fasting is because a lot of people can get into this very unhealthy relationship with food aspect with it, where like you're saving calories for the nighttime. I hear this a lot too. People will say, well, Eric, I don't eat more food during the day because I'm always so hungry at night. Yeah, you're hungry at night because you're not eating more food during the day. If you ate more food during the day, You wouldn't be as hungry at night, so you wouldn't need to save as many calories for the nighttime because you're not going to be anywhere near as hungry. And then number 2, on top of that, just the mindset of like saving calories to have this one big meal at nighttime. It's just a very unhealthy relationship with food way to go about it because that kind of promotes your binge eating. It promotes you having this like massive meal where you feel very full and so on and so forth. And so I don't, Usually recommend you again not eating throughout the day for those reasons as well. And the second reason is gonna be because somewhat going right in line with the first reason is getting protein. How many of you, like, I know you're watching this video and you're like, oh my God, I struggle getting enough protein. Do you think that it's gonna help you or hurt you to hit your overall protein goal for the day? If you eat more protein earlier in the day or less protein earlier in the day. If your protein goal— which, by the way, if you want to figure out what your protein goal is, click the top left-hand corner up there. I have a video on YouTube, you can check it out. But if your protein goal is 130 grams per day and you get to the end of the night at 6 PM and you've had 40 grams of protein, do you realistically think you're going to have 90 grams of protein in one fucking meal? No. If you do, RIP to your digestion. You're either going to not be able to shit at all or you're going to shit your brains out. One of the two things is going to happen. So when you talk about getting protein, and remember, protein is the most satiating macronutrient. What the hell does that mean? It just means it's going to fill you up the most. So if you are getting to 4:00 PM, 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, And you've only had 40 grams of protein during your day, which is super common for a lot of people who are going to watch this video, of course you're going to be fucking starving. Once again, you're going to be starving because you've had no protein all day. So you get to the nighttime, once again you're starving and you end up overeating. And so you want to make sure you get your protein goals. So for these reasons, once again, it does matter how many times per day you eat and it does matter your meal timing and your meal frequency. When it comes to a fat loss perspective. It might not matter in terms of as long as your overall calories are in check, but it does matter because it affects, massively affects, your overall calories for that day. So again, my 2 cents, if you're somebody who's looking to lose body fat, is gonna be usually eating roughly around every 2 to 5 hours that you are awake. And again, I know some people are gonna watch this and say, oh my God, I don't eat breakfast, I don't like eating breakfast, I'm not hungry in the morning. I would, especially if you're someone like that, if you're somebody who's like, I'm not hungry in the morning, I would just strongly encourage you to try start getting something small. Could be something literally as simple as a protein shake. It could be something literally as simple as a protein shake and a piece of fruit or some overnight oatmeal or just like the microwave oatmeal with, you know, a protein shake as a side or Greek yogurt or whatever it is. But I strongly encourage you to eat more food during the day. And then to piggyback right on top of that, eat more food at your meals. You having coffee and a protein shake for breakfast is not fucking breakfast. You having 300 calories or 200 calories at your lunchtime, that's not a meal. That's a little fucking snack. A lot of the reasons why people tend to overeat as well is because of meal timing. But even on top of that, You're not having big enough meals, which is then causing you to over-snack and be over-hungry during the rest of the day. So have bigger meals. I'm a big fan of just having 3 meals and 2 snacks. It's very simple, it's very basic, it's very old school, but I have seen that work for literally thousands of clients that I have coached. And so I encourage you to try it out as well. And I also have a video here on YouTube for like creating your own meal plan. So if you want to check it out, feel free to go ahead. Now, let's talk about the muscle building side of things because this also matters and it matters because— It matters because of something called muscle protein synthesis. And just think of muscle protein synthesis as like the process, the function that your body does to actually signal muscle growth and signal muscle repair and all of those All of the things that need to happen in order for you to build muscle. Think of basically muscle protein synthesis does that. If you are somebody who is looking to optimize your muscle protein synthesis, you are going to want to once again eat every 2 to 5 hours, but specifically eating protein every 2 to 5 hours. And again, this is important because Most people struggle to eat enough protein, and they struggle to get their protein intake for the day. Again, I'll just ask you: Do you think if you gave yourself six? Let's just break this down. Your protein goal is 120 grams of protein per day, and you are eating six times throughout the day. That would mean just like roughly call it you're eating 20 grams of protein every single time you eat. Give or take, one meal could be 15, next meal could be 25. But for most part, roughly 20 grams of protein versus let's say you're trying to get 120 grams of protein and you're really only eating 2, maybe 3 times per day. So you have to get 60 grams of protein in a meal to be able to hit 120 grams of protein. Which one do you think is going to be easier for you to do? And also just give you a bit more, um, a better chance of hitting it because If you have to get 20, let's just say 15 to 25 grams of protein per meal versus getting 60 grams of protein per meal, and you only have 2 or 3 opportunities to get that protein versus if you have 4, 5, 6 opportunities to get that protein, which one do you think is going to allow you to hit your protein goal a bit more? Usually the one where it's more frequent and you give yourself more opportunity. So you're going to optimize muscle protein synthesis by eating roughly every 2 to 5 hours. And again, if you finish your last meal at 8 PM, you can do that, that's fine. But if you don't eat again until noon the next day, how long are you going without protein? So that is not going to optimize your muscle protein synthesis, which again, you can, you can watch this video And you can still decide to do intermittent fasting, and I'm not gonna give a fuck because what you eat doesn't make me shit. So I do not care about what you do or do not eat. I'm just letting you know the science and information and education behind it so you can make your own educated decision. So for muscle protein synthesis, that will be the first reason why it does matter. And again, the second reason is gonna be somewhat of what we talked about earlier, which is remembering that When we talk about building muscle, there are certain things that matter, like workout performance. For example, you want to be able to make sure your workout performance is high because if it's not, if you're not pushing yourself close to failure, if you're not lifting more weight, doing more reps, having progressive overload, you're not going to give your body a reason to build muscle. You're not going to give your body a reason to adapt when again you're eating Protein and maybe some sort of carbohydrates roughly every 2 to 5 hours, what's going to end up happening is you're going to be able to fuel your workout performance a lot better, which if you're fueling workout performance better, you're fueling muscle growth better because you're lifting more weight, doing more reps, all of those good things. So that would be important. Number 2, digestion. For example, eating protein and just eating a little bit more frequently throughout the day usually helps regulate people's digestion as well as opposed to, for example, Only eating 30 grams of protein during the day and then trying to get 90 grams of protein in at dinner. Like I said, RIP to your digestion. And having really good digestion is gonna help you in the long term through various different ways build more muscle. Number 3, it's gonna help you have more energy throughout the day because a more, uh, especially again if you have more protein throughout the day, it's gonna be more of a steady state of energy throughout the day. So you won't have these big dips and lulls in energy, which again, if you're training or if you're just again trying to stay on point with your diet or whatever it is, the more energy you have, the better you're going to stick to your diet, the better you're going to perform in your workouts. And then once again, fullness we already talked about, but since protein especially is the most satiating macronutrient, it'll help you stay a bit more full throughout your day. So you're not going to end up like, even if you are in a calorie surplus, you won't end up Overeating in your calorie surplus. You'll make sure, you know, again, you're already going to be stressed. You can't really— you can manage your stress, but most of us, like, we have some stress that's in our life, whether it's from work, spouse, kids, whatever it is. So you're already going to be stressed. Your willpower might already be low. So in order to stick to your nutrition, really making sure you don't get overly hungry and have too many cravings is really important as well for muscle building. In particular. So for all those reasons, yes, it does matter. It might not matter as much because, much like we said over here, it doesn't matter in terms of as long as you hit your protein goal for the day. That is technically what is the most important thing. Although again, if your protein goal is 150 grams per day and you got that in one meal, While yes, that's important, it still will not maximize muscle protein synthesis. That's why I talked about that earlier. But if you're hitting your protein goal for the day, you are in a good spot. But again, it's going to be— it's already hard enough to hit your protein goal as it is. And so if you're only eating 2 meals a day, if you're only eating, you know, 3 times a day— 3 times a day is maybe realistic, but that 3 to 5 range, maybe somewhere in between there. And again, I'm not And I'm not just talking about like actual meals, I'm talking about snacks, protein shakes, whatever it is. So eating around that 3 to 6 times per day is usually gonna help you hit your overall protein goal the best. And again, we already mentioned this, but just one last time, like if you're having 100 grams of protein in a meal and like you're wondering why your digestion sucks, like that would be why your digestion sucks, which is gonna make you not wanna stick to your diet, not wanna eat the things you're supposed to eat, so on and so forth. So basically no, but it actually matters a lot more when we talk about muscle building. So guys, that was the video for today. Hopefully it helped give you some more context and gave you some backing to all of this. If you enjoyed the video, please feel free to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. And if you're interested at all in anything coaching related from myself or my team, I will put all the links for our coaching stuff here below in the description of this video. Thank you so much for watching, and we will chat soon.