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Two years ago I wrote a post under the category of fitness myths titled "Fitness Myth - Eating Once a Day to Lose Weight." Almost everything I have read in terms of diet has always been to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with 2 snacks in between. Most popular fitness sites will say the same thing - eat 5 to 6 small meals a day.
Well, I never thought that the article I posted 2 years ago would get so many comments and mostly of people saying that eating once a day is GOOD for losing weight. Surprisingly, most of the comments state that eating once a day was the only way to lose weight. Even with all of those comments I still have to disagree just from my own experience. I don't like starving. I get moody and I get headaches if I haven't had enough to eat.
I do believe that eating more throughout the day (of the right foods) keeps you fueled for exercise as well as keeping you functioning in general. Besides, how can you get all of the vitamins and nutrients you need from one meal a day? Supplements are fine but they are to supplement - not replace food as your main source of nutrition. I just thought I'd bring this up again since the topic continues to generate comments on the post.
What do you think? Is it safe to eat once a day?
Yours in Health,
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There is nothing to think about. Any well done text book and coupled with real life experience form people who know what they are doing will tell you exactly why it not a good idea to “lose weight” on one meal a day. There are many ways to “lose weight.” Drastically cutting calories doesn’t work, never has worked and never will work.
1. Severely cut calories or skip meals.
2. Body perceives starvation
3. Lean body mass is reduced causing rapid weight loss
4. Appetite and sugar cravings increase, while energy levels drop
5. Over consumption of carb and fat rich foods
6. Weight gain accelerates and body fat escalates
If you want to continually hammer away at programming your endocrine and nervous systems this way then be my guest. While you are at it why don’t you also try (for those of you who don’t know a wrench from a pair of pliers of course) repairing your on car instead of taking it into a good mechanic. Basically that is hat you are doing when you think you know what you are doing in your nutrition. Sorry if this seems to attacking but in my world of fitness training and nutrition it is a mess an makes me want to throw my hands up in the air.
Once again eating once a day for so called “weight loss” is a bad idea. No matter what some people might tell you.
I agree with Robert. Eating once a day is one of the worst things that you can do. It slows down your metabolism and effects your bodies ability to cut calories.
If you eat 5-6 small, healthy, meals a day, you will speed up your metabolism and your body will be able to process healthy food quicker.
Eating once a day is effectively starving your body of the nutrients it needs to be healthy and fit. You won’t have energy to exercise, you’ll be tired and irritable and you will have trouble sleeping.
6 meals a day is the way to go. Not 1.
Good post. And I agree – eating once a day MUSt lead to crashes in energy and ability to perform at one’s best. I’ve heard of even very good athletes doing one meal a day, but I don’t know how they can keep up.
Eating only 1 meal per day in the hope of losing weight will just worsen things up. Starving your body will not only deprive your body from vital nutrients which it needs for proper functioning but will also create hunger pangs that will only make you eat more after.
As a result, overeating after will only build up fat and excess weight because your body can only assimilate a certain number of calories per meal. The excess calories will be stored as fat.
Decreasing your daily meals drastically will slow down your body metabolism a lot which isn’t good. Your energy levels will drop and you will feel weak, tired and moody.
Your body needs foods to function properly and the right type of foods will fuel energy and make you fit to do your daily activities.
4-6 small meals per day eaten like every 3 hours is ideal. Coupled with exercising and eating the right foods, there is no reason why you won’t shed the excess pounds off. Many people think that more meals = more weight, that’s the reason they cut down on their number of meals but it’s not necessarily true. It also depends what you eat. The starvation mode is really a no no.
Say all this to the Theravada Buddhists that practice eating one meal a day.
Meal times in general are an artificial construct made necessary by the demands of modern society. People should simply eat when they are hungry, when their body is demanding fuel.
Eating one meal a day to lose weight is crazy and probably extremely unhealthy.
That being said, in response to this craze about “eating 6 meals a day is great for your metabolism.” I have yet to see ANY proof that eating 6 meals a day is better or worse for your metabolism than 3, and I’ve stated so in my blog.
I have no idea how this rumor started, as I have yet to see anyone link to any reputable study proving this. People should do what works best for them while keeping it healthy, period.
-Rafi
Great Post! I feel that people these days have no idea what losing weight is all about. No wonder American is rated the #1 obese country yet contains a multi-billion dollar weight-loss industry.
There is not hard and fast number that says 6 meals a day. Secondly trying to get information that is real on the web, about a subject as complex as biochemistry is very questionable at best. It all comes down to controlling blood sugar. Typically (if the previous meal was a good balance of the three macronutrients) and if the person is regularly exercising a meal every 3-4 hours consisting the same balance of macronutrients keeps the blood sugar in that magic and optimal range. See my post above for what happens when there is either a drastic cutting of calories OR a long gap between meals.
Depending on the persons history (nutrition and exercise), genetics, age, weight, etc this can be in different degrees, but make no mistake that everyone is affected to some degree and the real bugaboo is the repeated abuse of this. It actually “programs” your body. The only way to really learn this stuff is from real medical texts and then from the experience you learn applying it.
I agree… if i only ate 1 meal a day, I would be light headed, mad, shaky and overall just feel nasty. When it was time for that one meal I would go crazy and prob consume more calories in one sitting that I would all day eating my normal 6 meals.
Weight loss is not about starvation. Eating the right kind of food and exercise is more of what I do. We only have to learn the right way towards living a healthy life.
When I lost 100 pounds, I went from not eating breakfast and hardly eating lunch to having breakfast, lunch, dinner, and three snacks–between each meal and before bed.
As I became a runner, I found that I had to keep fueling the system or I could crash. Due to some cruddy life situations and a hideous transcontinental move, I backslid about 30 pounds, and guess what I did? Yup. Didn’t eat breakfast, stopped eating snacks, and stopped running.
I have found that if I don’t eat consistently, whether I’m busy or by design, I get overly hungry and start to eat everything. I set alarms on my training watch to remind me to have a snack before I get too hungry, and have started running again. The weight is coming off…slowly, but it’s coming. It’ll take me a number of months, but that’s OK. It’s still better than I was to start with.
One meal a day is stupidity, in my experience!
I am of the opinion that once a day is not the way to go, but there will always be people who think something like that could possibly work.
Eating one main meal a day really does work. It can free people from orthorexia and allow them to eat like naturally slim people. I’m a martial artist and I eat one meal a day. I never bonk in class or during teaching a class. I have so much more energy and my blood sugar stays level. I eat good fats, so it’s easy to get 1500 – 1600 calories a day. Notice I said one main meal. I snack on bits of protein throughout the day, maybe 300 – 400 calories at the most. I was worried about not eating enough at the main meal but that hasn’t been a problem. I wouldn’t say I follow the Warrior Diet, per se, because I do not buy organic and I eat as many starches as I like. But I’d take advice from someone like Ori Hofmekler versus the overweight dieticians who are pushing unproved science.
Here’s a blog you might be interested in:
http://fitnessblackbook.com/dieting_for_fat_loss/lose-body-fat-by-eating-just-one-meal-per-day/
I have been a vegetarian for over 20 years and even eat less than one meal a day. I won’t shock anyone, by disclosing exactly how much I fast, but instead I will share with you my life experience and my parameters. I am 5’8” 140 lbs which is right on target for my age, height and body build. I have a muscular build and have been working out since I was 18 thanks to the Marines. I have not suffered any of the ill effects indicated in some of these post or traditionally attributed to fasting, vegetarianism and working out at the same times i.e. B12 deficiency, iron deficiency, protein deficiency, decreased metabolism, dizziness, fatigue, lethargy etc. In fact I have experience just the opposite. That is, better health and well being overall and am in much better condition than most of my contemporaries. In my over 2 decades of theoretically and empirically exploring diet, nutrition and exercise, I have always been fascinated by the people who give definitive opinions and advice on realities they have never tried or tried in a perfunctory or reluctant manner. Meat eaters swearing that vegetarians suffer protein deficiencies; people who have never missed not even 1 of the 3 meal standard stating that fasting even for one day is unhealthy. In reality, most of these opinions are a manifestation of cognitive dissonance (The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors), ignorance and reluctance to think outside of what we’ve been told or to even question it. Some extreme examples of this are smokers and manufacturers of cigarettes who say smoking doesn’t cause cancer, or a pork meister who says fat back is not bad for you. Milder cases are those who love their way of life and seek information that validates it or deny information that denigrates it regardless of the veracity in either direction, i.e. ”I want to eat every day all day so fasting is unhealthy and I know this because I read it on the internet.” My advice to all is to simply explore and gain knowledge, try and think outside of the norm, experiment safely and earnestly to discern the realities for yourself and stop taking information in like pig slop and become more discriminating and experimental. Well over 90% of data available on diet is bullshit. Some of it is by sincere authors who mean well and some is utter nonsense and actually may harm you. In the end, it is an honest intelligent assessment of reality by what should be your favorite source filter and source of information you and your body which will dictate what direction you should go. So happy feasting or fasting. But whatever you do, do it intelligently. The choice is yours.
eating once a day is almost sure to lead to weight loss as it’s very likely that this will lead to a calorie deficit – but as other posts have pointed out, this is not a healthy, long term solution to managing your weight. Poor energy levels, concentration levels and hunger pains are likely to follow. weight loss should be about finding a balance and going for a long trm goal, not a quick fix…
“Our ancestors consumed food much less frequently and often had to subsist on one large meal per day, and thus from an evolutionary perspective, human beings were adapted to intermittent feeding rather than to grazing.”
(Mattson, M.P., PhD, Lancet 2005; 365:1978-80)
I’ve gone back to my old ways of eating once a day at night and already my mood’s better, my energy levels higher and I have lost a few pounds – I only have a few to go, and that’s mainly vanity. Best of all, I’ve stopped obsessing about where my next meal is coming from, and what it will be, etc etc.
I agree completely with Oscar, people are fond of spouting “expert” advice when they themselves are neither in perfect shape, nor are all the millions having “three meals plus two healthy snacks” a day getting noticeably thinner.
To each their own, but for heaven’s sake avoid knee-jerk responses based on dogma not fact.
Again as I read a few of the posts from people that use the ancient ancestors argument and say they are losing weight and say how much better they feel well…..here is what I have found in many hours of.
1. Reading and researching medical texts etc
2. Applying information to myself (with great results BTW)
3. Applying it to clients (with great results IF they comply of course)
First of all when someone says they feel better on one meal a day it is MUCH MUCH too simplistic a statement. Individuality is important here. Anytime most people change their diets they will feel very different. At least for a while. They can feel better, sometimes they can feel worse.
Much of that goes back to the lifestyle and other factors that are NEVER considered when people make statements like this.
What is the nutritional history?
The genetic propensity?
The age?
The weight (body fat % and lean mass % too)
What is the exercise history (if any?)
Stress levels? Does the person handle stress well?
Meds they take?
Medical conditions?
etc, etc.
Based on the history one person can have a very different reaction, BUT long term it never plays out well.
Will you lose weight by drastically cutting calories? Of course you will! That’s not the issue. There are many ways to “lose weight.” Doesn’t mean it is healthy. Doesn’t mean it won’t eventually lead to illness.
Weight gain and weight loss are not the end to the means. They are SYMPTOMS of the big picture. Every time you eat something it is basically a drug. Food at its molecular level is energy. When it is consumed it is broken down and is used in chemical reactions. The type of energy that is consumed, the amount and the state it is consumed in ALL can lead to very different effects. Is it evident at the first meal? Probably not? At the 500th meal? Probably not so much. After the 10,000th meal? You bet it is. By that time the programming is wired deep inside of you. The weight gain or loss finally show up as a necessity for all the other stuff. Much like a fever that forms to battle viruses.
By the way our ancestors lived a VERY long time ago. They were programmed much differently than us because of their lifestyle. To compare us to them is like comparing apples and oranges. It doesn’t really fly. Plus there are all the unanswered questions. What was there illness rate? How active were they (probably much more active than us). What kind of food ratios? etc.
I know from experience that people often tell me what they are doing based on their own perceptions and I have to dig to get at the real truth. The internet certainly has opened the lid on that one. So…..this based on fact for sure. Not dogma.
“…other factors that are NEVER considered when people make statements like this”
While I have no desire to begin a time-consuming debate on this, I have considered those factors at great length with regards to my choices, so without posting my medical history online (it’s pretty uneventful anyway) I am reasonably fit, exercising around 5 days a week, and without any long-term illnesses.
It’s this assumption that anyone who diverges from the current norm is uneducated and foolish that’s rather irksome, as it reflects poorly on the level of dialogue – if your argument is heavily ad hominem, it immediately weakens your case I’m afraid.
I spent several years in my mid 20s eating once a day, with occasional exceptions based on hunger or social requirements, and I fell into that routine by chance, from following my body’s cues, being too busy to fuss about artificial schedules – throughout that period I stayed in the optimum height/weight ratio, with good endurance and cardio-vascular fitness.
A change of career and yes, I’m afraid, the steady trickle of “expert” advice got me eating breakfast and then lunch, even trying snacking in between, and sure enough despite keeping up my fitness, I packed on the extra pounds, and started having cravings and mood swings.
I gave it a few years, trying high fibre, USDA pyramid straight, variations on high protein, three meals, five, even six small meals, calorie counting, you name it – nothing made me feel liberated and healthy, except this schedule.
I’m sure you’ll agree that you can’t endeavour to “diagnose” me online, any more than I can tell everyone how to eat, but don’t you think that it’s possible some people have metabolic or genetic factors that mean they do better grazing on many smaller snacks, while other people benefit from fewer, larger, balanced meals?
The recent re-discovery of the ketogenic diet to successfully manage epilepsy in some children after conventional drugs have failed shows that we are a long, LONG way from knowing everything about the interactions of individuals and their diets and needs.
Nutrition is a relatively new science – in my youth, pregnant women for example were often advised to eat large amounts of liver, advice that’s now been totally reversed, and the recent exposure of the fallacy that all caffeinated beverages dehydrate you is another example of popular myths that have no basis in empirical fact.
What bothers me is the outright hostility shown in some quarters to people like me who don’t have eating disorders and are not on some manic, meal-skipping frenzy, compared to the absolute promotion of almost constant eating, ie six small meals a day, or even twelve mini meals in one diet I happened to read about – eating on that schedule is every bit as prone to appeal to people with compulsive-overeating disorder, as the one-meal schedule may to anoretics.
With obesity at an all-time and lethal high, we can’t afford to ignore the fact that many people have an unhealthy drive to over-consume, and that they’re evidently deeply divorced from the “wisdom of the body” regarding when, and what, to eat.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to lay the blame solely on the current popularity of frequent meals, I don’t imagine it’s helpful that frank hunger is almost demonised and constant refuelling actively promoted, meaning that the current pop-culture tune is to never experience anything other than satiation.
In short, one man’s meat is probably another man’s poison – I’m convinced that’s so with meal scheduling, every bit as much as dietary choices.
As for how this’ll play out long term, hey – I’ll bookmark your site, and if we’re all still around in 40 years, I’ll keep you posted!
Meanwhile I’m enjoying the renewed energy, stable moods (and blood sugar – I no longer get shaky or feel weak, unlike the previous mid-morning post-breakfast crashes) – oh, and best of all the relative release from thinking about food (which should support life, not be the centrepiece of it, surely) so plan to continue unless my own body indicates otherwise.
Well regarding whether there are enough nutrients, I tried supplements. Admittedly i wouldn’t get ALL the nutrients supplemented for there’s bound to be something i’d miss out, but i had vitamin, iron, calcium, magnesium tablets.
So i had 500 calories a day, with those tablets. in 1.5 months, i lost 20lbs. and i’ve kept it off. while on that once a day diet, i exercised once in a while, around 30min jogging every 3-4 days. i also went to the gym twice a week to ensure that some muscles stay.
well, it worked…at least for me. to me, i wanted to get it over and done with…and low calories for 1.5 months, along with supplements, probably wouldn’t do much to hurt my health. that’s how i reasoned with myself. i’m glad i did that because i got to my goal weight fast and am so happy about it. it’s been months since and i’m fitter than ever
http://rachel421-intermittentfasting.blogspot.com
like chloe im going in the midst of a year long wait and see approach. its been six months so far with many wonderful benefits. this is the first thing to work for me, ever. nothing but fantastic things to say about it. lots of fear needs to be overcome. i believe that will come with time and communication, and courage!
Anything under 1,200 calories for a female is worryingly low, and I would recommend extreme caution. Read up on the Minnesota starvation study, there’s a lot of info about it online and you’ll get an idea of how prolonged under-nutrition can actually affect the personality, and lead to all kinds of compulsions – including to diet further.
Long term effects of semi-starvation on females can include osteoporosis, and believe me, you don’t want that in your future ladies – you’ll risk being hunched over like a crone as your disks give way, and painful and potentially lethal spontaneous fractures at your major joints.
You could also irrevocably damage your heart muscles, leading to heart failure: a side-effect of which is edema, swelling of the lower limbs and abdomen with large quanitities of fluid, which aside from anything else is disfiguring and extremely uncomfortable.
Not trying to leap on any bandwagons here but just be careful, and above all, educate yourselves.
My singular meal is in the region of around 1600 – 2200 calories a night, depending on hunger, what fruits are in season, and so on. It’s comprised of at least four veg and one piece of fruit, plus protein, dairy, and starchy carbs, some of which include the occassional handful of cookies, or piece of cake.
There are another 300 or so calories that get taken in during the day with coffee (organic cream), maybe a few ounces of cheese if I’m feeling peckish, etc. I’m not primarily doing this for fast weightloss, more to contain my appetite and feel clear-headed.
That said, extremely low caloric intakes are by no means the preserve of people who eat only one main meal a day, any more than excessive intake is the reserve of people who eat many meals…
What strikes me about this idea of 1 meal a day is that the weight loss is not selective.
Much of the weight loss will be in the form muscle mass, which when lost leads to metabolic decline and thus potentiating the liklihood of increased weight gain should “normal” eating be resumed.
I have read information that suggested weight could be lost and metabolic rate maintained on a diet of 800kcal per day – but this included the use of resistance training and was suggested for relatively short periods of time.
Either way, it doesnt matter as optimal health and wellbeing comes from a state of balance, and i would hardly label eating 1 meal a day as balanced.
Not the way forward IMO
What works for one person might not work for another and vice versa. My mom was very heavy for a long time and went on a diet-deciding to eat once a day, whatever she wanted until she was satisfied. Any you know what…it worked for her. Meaning she lost the weight and has maintained it for a long time. I think the reason she is able to do that is because that is something that she can still with all the time. I know that for some people it would never work. I am in the process of doing this and it seems to be working. I can eat what I want until I am fun and don’t have to worry about consuming too many calories. I am satisfied and very healthy. I dunno. Just my thoughts.
Look. Of course it worked for your Mom. Less calories and you will lose ALL weight. Good and bad. Its the long term health effects that are a problem. Protein robbing will eventually catch up with you (for example). There are many ways to “lose weight”. Nature will take “something” off. Always. It doesn’t make excuses for ignorance (not ignorant people) just people who don’t know that they don’t know. So it certainly doesn’t mean it’s in the person;s best interest to do it that way.
I’m genuinely puzzled at the assumption that someone who only eats one substantial meal a day would lack the know-how to make that one meal balanced and adequate, yet that eating several (usually smaller) meals a day would automatically guarantee sufficient protein, minerals, healthy fats, etc?
I’m fairly sure that many overweight people are technically malnourished, and we’re almost never looking at someone with a perfectly balanced (but excessively caloric) diet switching to a poorer diet, solely because of the number of times they choose to eat per day.
Understanding the basics of good balanced nutrition, free from fads or excesses of restriction (OR intake) is the responsibility of all of us, dieters or bodybuilders, whatever.
That we choose different schedules means nothing in that context. And someone who doesn’t understand how to make their one meal complete is unlikely to become enlightened just because they have more mealtimes to play with: most people stick with a small range of preferred foods, unless they understand the need for balance and variety.
i eat about 1700 aver. in one or two sittings a day. 5-2hr window. im good. healthier than ive ever been. i actually crave nutritious foods now. funny the egotistic need to make what works for yourself work for every single other person on the planet. i started IFing. dropped 25lbs. stalled. now im , gasp, dropping some extra grain carbs at night. my fat is falling off again! lions, and tigers and bears…oh my!!!
http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/search?q=feast+fast+dichotomy
my fav post explaining the low calorie, grazing effect of high insulin diets on amino loss. when you fast and release GH, the Gh protects the aminos in the organs and muscle tissues.
low calories diets where you eat grains off and on all day switch off Gh, thus stopping the protective nature of the hormones. so obvious why 2000 cals of all day grazing used to leave me exhausted and depleted.
I’ve also theorised that constant grazing makes at least some individuals who are susceptible crave yet more food, as their body never gets a few hour’s break from the cycle of feeding, digesting, relaying nutrients to the cells, insulin release, etc.
If I eat three meals a day, my appetite increases for high-carb foods at the expense of veg in particular: I experience frequent hunger and I wake positively starving, yet my weight also rises, albeit only slightly.
The psychological effect of being constantly focused on the next meal or snack may also be damaging to some people, as it reinforces a notion that satiety is the only healthful state, and keeps one’s focus firmly on food.
Interesting input Rachel, thank you: nutrition is still a relatively young science, despite the confident pronouncements of many current “experts” in the field, and I doubt whether the final picture will be the one-size-fits-all regimen that dieticians are always so eager to portray.
I do not believe it is healthy at all to eat once a day. If you only eat once a day make sure it is breakfast so it will at least boost your metabolism right away. Eating throughout the day keeps your metabolism going through out the entire day which will in turn help you lose weight. Also, the more muscle you have, the more your metabolism works. Great post!
Matt, what if I don’t wish to “boost my metabolism”?
I’ve been following with interest the latest research on caloric restriction and longevity – while I’m not sure I’d be willing to be too extreme, a recent study in monkeys showed a clear longevity & health benefit from lowering caloric intake, and therefore the rate of metabolism.
I think eating once per day is ridiculous. How many studies have shown benefit of eating 5-6 small meals per day? If your goal is weight loss/management, this is the plan that you should stick with. My entire staff at Studio Element Personal Training in St. Louis recommends this method to all of our clientele.
40+ years of my own life in my own body is the study I’m using, to decide what’s best for my own health. Don’t worry though, I remember when experts were frantically advocating the use of trans-fat heavy margerine, based on the “latest studies” – basically, we can either be a slave to experts, or listen to our own body’s wisdom.
What baffles me is most is no-one here is trying to tell everyone on the planet to eat once/day, yet many people are trying to act as though their many-meals/day plan is the only one.
Given that many advocates of the 3 – 6 meals/day plans are in the business of helping people lose weight… well, I’ll leave the reader to draw their own consludions. Suffice to say that if commercial diets and fitness plans worked 100%, they’d be out of business in around 24 months, as even the largest customer achieved, and maintained, a slim body.
Since I’m not eating once a day primarily for weight loss, but rather to vanquish cravings, which it has now succeeded on doing for over several months, it mystifies me why anyone would want me to bring them back?
Eating six meals a day seems like a superb way to program oneself to stay focused on food, and the potential problems with that when discipline and portion control inevitably slip seem fairly obvious.
http://rachel421-intermittentfasting.blogspot.com
some people will never be able to get thier minds around the concept of biochemical diversity. you try to explain the myriad of points in between a full blown diabetic and a completely insulin sensitive person, and their eyes glaze over since they don’t even understand the insulin response pathway. its all calories in, calories out, hunger is the devil, my muscles are so tenderly fragile that eating every two hours is essential, ect ect
john wayne would blush at such food dependency.
its the oprahized version of bob green/dr.oz health. about 25% of the population do well on high carb, about 25% do well on very low carb. that fact alone says it all on how diverse and complex we all are.
at least it makes for great theater and posturing on blog and websites. i get kindof get tickled to hear so many young, fit people echo how i used to sound like back in earlier, more insulin sensitve days. lol. hear hear,
:)
This is bull, nobody cares about health. It’s all about being thin. It’s always about being thin. Is it going to kill you if you eat one meal a day? NOO Will you get headaches and stomach pains in the beginning because your body is not used to the change? YES Will you lose weight and suddenly fit into that size 9 top you saw at the store the other day. Your whole life change and you receive more acceptance because this world is so damn visual?? Yes. The bottem line is the end result. Celebrities have been doing it for years!!!!
I care about health. I care about not being a slave to cravings, not slowly gaining weight, even if it’s only 5 or 10lbs, I have NO interest in “celebrity” culture (which incidentally advocates 6 or even 12 meals/day) and I care most of all about being the best I can be, at the gym, at work (which has a physical component, on sites) and in life.
Increasingly I’m realising that personal experience with food, nutrition, and health gets ground down in the face of trends and so on. As a well-built guy I have no interest in “dress” sizes, and I’ve finally reached an age where I care more about what works for ME, than anything else (hence my comments about the trend for trans fats, etc).
The only reason I find a gruesome interest in posting here is that the “one size fits all” bloggers, with URLs to their products, are talking at best well-meaning BS, and it’s amazing how much ingnorant evangelism goes on, in the name of health, weight loss/maintenance, and nutrition.
Whatever!
Ok, I’ll admit. Some
people care about health. Bit it’s not really the celebrity culture I am speaking of here. It’s western society and wesrtern society’s standards. I would not expect a man to agree but on the same note you (meaning most men) wouldn’t look twice at a woman over a size twelve. So of course you’re not worried about your “dress size” but I’m sure you’d like the woman sharing your bed
side to be worried about hers. It’s more than about Jennifer Aniston waist circumfrence or Megan Fox’s Jean size. Years from now the world will continue to turn and women will continue to choose salads over cheeseburgers not because of health but because of acceptance
Interesting digression: “western” society is at least a society where women aren’t expected to eat after the male at every meal, like an afterthought. Would you care to launch such a broadside against any other sector of society, or ethnic group? Or do you reserve your comments for the fashionably vague notion of “the west”?
Also, why do you care so much? All comments on here have been pretty honest to date, so I would like to know your specific reasons and experiences before I can get too invested in this stuff.
Hey Charlie we’re not hanging up draperies here. I am just commenting on a blog. Hello? LOL. I think you’re turning a mole hill into a mountain here. My experiece and reasoning is just life itself, what I witness with naked eyes regardless of whether I turn on the television or not. I was just posting my opinion and saying that given that you have a dick that I would not expect you to see or sympathize with hardships that women face in society..western society. . Yes, men suffer them too, but they can technically go a day without eating and lose five pounds and pressures aren’t put on them they are on women. Every ethnic group within western society (including mine) has to conform to the ideals that are so imbedded in our nations mind for the past 100+ years. That’s why you’ll never see Sherri Shepard grace the cover of Cosmo. To be perfectly honest, this is getting a bit out of hand. You have your opinion, I have mine. It will not change. Plus were on the same side anyway!! Dueces
Eating once a day works and it extremely well. I know beacuse I tried it. Lost over 30 pounds in about 3 weeks and beenkeeping it off for months. I also tried 3-6 meals per day and lost about 5 pounds in two months working out like a slave. I came to realise that eating once a day let my body burn more fat when I work out ( half the time over 6 meals) working out let me build more muscle) . When I started it was hard but I was focused and over time my stomach shrunk and now I cant even eat more than tiwce a day and I am good. I am healtheir now than ever. I look ever better, whish i had done this years ago.
well to be honest, when i started toying with IFing and low carbing, i was getting dangerously close to disability status. i had no bikini dreams in mind, just desperate to stay out of a wheelchair. have lots of issues i won’t teadiously bray about here, but no, not everyone is fantasizing about being attractive and accepted by the “beautiful people”…not in my case any way. granted, if you’ve been as sick as that, its a hard thing to imagine or take into consideration. i hope most never find out what its like.
Now I’ve heard some people say that eating more than once a day can cause too much stomach acid build up because of the time lapse for the body to digest a meal. But when it comes to this rule, it’s gotta be WHAT you eat.
Don’t like starving huh. I believe you cannot starve if you miss a few meals…….heck not even a few days or weeks of meals. Starving comes about when you have used up your glycogen stores, your fat stores and then starving takes place. I weight over 200 pounds and it could well take me 4 weeks of not eating anything at all to start starving.
This is an update to my story. So I did the once a day thing for about a month and lost about 30lbs. I am now adding additional meal lunch( grill lean chicken apprx 300cal). I did add that meal beacuse I had reached my goal and did want to be too small. I am kinda muscular recently started ketogenic diet. I know the so called expert so it’s no good, you cant argue with the result…..I have abs defination for the first time in my life. I am proberly up to about 1800 cals a day and happy.
I would like to add to this post by saying that I kinda stumbled on eating one meal a day after just being so busy that I didn’t really think about it, I had been trying for months to lose weight starting at the beginning of this year I was (210)and after vigorous workouts of 5-6 days a week and eating 4-5 meals a day for 4 months straight I only dropped down to a stable 196 (without being able to drop any more), kinda layed off the excercise due to frustration but still been busy and sometimes too busy to eat until I get home (did this for the last 2 weeks and dropped down to 175!! It made me curious about eating once I day and research if other people do this, because I feel better, have more energy, and even mentally clear in my thinking. I feel like this is what works for my body, not eating 4-5 meals a day like others suggest. What works for me may not work for another but this is something I can stick with because I don’t feel deprived and can eat whatever I want and still get the results I need.
There is a reason why so much research backs up eating 5-6 small meals throughout the day. Your metabolism keeps going and your energy level is consistent. We remind our clients of this all the time.
I think there’s also a good reason that throughout history (by which I mean untold millenia of human experience, not a few months of “research”) eating too frequently was frowned upon by our ancestors in every single culture, all of who had far more physically demanding jobs than the majority of us, including the women who had to scrub a full week’s worth of laundry each week, using little more than elbow-power, water and primitive soap.
I continue to believe that six meals a day is designed to lure in people who are already food-addicted, not to the nutrition that keeps them alive but to the physical pleasure of eating, and that anyone promoting what amounts to a lifetime of nearly constant obsessing about food and the next mealtime is playing into that addiction, which is killing and crippling millions in the developed world.
Then again, I don’t make my business out of people desperate to lose weight, so I can talk from personal experience and the facts of history, and not some selected pieces of “research” (which, incidentally, the next person to mention had better link to if they want to retain ANY cred – there’s a link for “website” above if comment links aren’t permitted in this blog. Interesting to see if the “six meals a day” crew here will sacrifice that nice big linky to their own sites, in favour of helping all us poor misguided people…).
The metabolism thing is a sort of catch all phrase. At it’s most basic it is about blood sugar. “Metabolism” only works as well as your blood sugar levels are. That is where the real science is. Very difficult to regulate blood sugar in an efficient manner when certain regulators are not provided.
Sure…….. bodies adapt to eating once a day. They can adapt to many things very well. Does that mean because it has adapted that it is a healthy adaptation? Time will tell about that one.
Oops. I don’t usually do this, but this seems right up the alley of this post. If you want top see a humorous take on drastic calorie reduction take a few minutes to see this episode. It’s kind of a hoot. If you enjoy satire of course!
http://fusionfitnesstv.com/episode16/
My great-grandparents had heavy manual-labour jobs in their own farm, and ate three meals a day, of which the evening meal was little more than a snack. My grandparents (before and after WW2) had semi-manual indoors jobs, and ate one big meal a day at midday – breakfast was tea and two bits of toast, supper (the third meal) being a few biscuits, and 2 cups of tea.
Throughout history, most people have eaten (when they could get them) two large meals and one smaller meal a day, and that was in jobs requiring caloric output few of us can compete with.
Now, Robert, I appreciate I inadvertantly “invited” you to link to – well, it’s your own business site again, isn’t it, nice bit of self-promotion there – but I want to see some INDEPENDENT research, evidence based, re five or six meals a day being the ABSOLUTE gold standard of nutrition before this goes any further, because we’re really going in circles here (though it is quite funny!).
Meanwhile I’m going to assume that anyone promoting constant mealtimes FOR EVERYONE is unaware that they are promoting eating disorders, since compulsive over-eating IS an eating disorder, and one that’s killing and crippling more people with every passing year to boot.
Six mealtimes, spread out evenly over the average person’s 16 hour waking period, means eating around every 160 minutes – if that’s the absolute optimum for our bodies, it’s a miracle nature even allows us to sleep for longer than 2 hours at a stretch, without waking URGENTLY for a snack…
Please let me remind anyone following this saga, neither me nor anyone else who has chipped in on the “eating once a day” side has attempted to suggest this is a suitable way for anyone else to live, least of all, EVERYONE – speaking at least for myself, I’m simply tired of the disinfo – doubly so when it comes from people whose income relies on the existence of overweight punters.
I agree that eating once a day makes no sense at all, but since I have met people that have lost weight this way, I will play devil’s advocate. If you eat once a day you don’t have to think about what you are going to eat, you eat nothing at all. That one meal is basically anything you want because no matter what you eat you will probably have a deficit for the day. For some, eating nothing at all is easier then thinking about what to eat for 3-6 meals.
If you eat one meal a day you can still have a social life without telling your friends you are on a diet. You can drink, eat dinner and dessert and still lose weight. For people that eat with family you don’t have to make a separate plate for yourself. I think most people do this because they don’t want to impact their friends and family.
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