Eating more often can help you lose weight. When you eat large meals with many hours in between, your metabolism slows down between meals. Having a small meal or snack every 3 to 4 hours keeps your metabolism cranking, so you burn more calories over the course of a day.
Meal timing
This means that your metabolism is less likely to switch to that dangerous survival mode. Lunch should fall 4-6 hours after breakfast. Snack 2-4 hours after lunch, especially if dinner isn't right around the corner. Dinner should be another 2-4 hours after your snack or 4-6 hours after your lunch.
A second study found that switching from three daily meals to six did not boost calorie-burning or fat loss. In fact, the researchers concluded, eating six meals a day actually made people want to eat more. And a research review reached no conclusions about whether meal frequency helps or hurts with weight loss.
A simples answer to this question is NO. Eating smaller meals throughout the day does not increase your overall metabolic rate or help you burn more calories. Honestly, metabolic rate is nothing but the number of calories burned by your body in a given period.
Hunger indicates that you are running low on nutrients and energy, not that your body is starting to burn fat storage. Furthermore, long-lasting hunger induced by the drastic calorie restriction is an indicator of starvation, which will only slow down your metabolism and weight loss.
Some dieticians recommend eating every 2 hours (that's 6 to 8 meals in a day) for boosted metabolism. At the same time, others insist that you should eat 2 meals a day – without any snacks in between – to attain and maintain a healthy weight.
With an eating pattern that involves eating two meals a day, this would work out to an average of 900 calories per meal. Because you are restricting your eating only twice a day, the two meals a day diet can be a good way to control your caloric intake to facilitate weight loss.
Eat a variety of healthy foods that fill you up without filling you out. Myth #4: Eating small meals during the day increases your metabolism. Unfortunately, there is little scientific evidence that eating small, frequent meals boosts metabolism.
Metabolic confusion—also called calorie shifting diet or calorie cycling—is a restrictive diet that alternates between "low" and "high-calorie" days in an attempt to artificially speed up metabolism and burn more calories. During a low calorie day, you'll eat fewer calories than you typically do.
If you don't eat enough, your metabolism switches to slow-mo. Severe diets, especially when you also exercise, teach your body to make do with fewer calories. That can backfire, because your body clings to those calories, which makes it harder to take weight off.
If your goal is to boost your metabolism and lose weight, studies show that whether you eat or skip breakfast has no bearing on the number of calories burned.
A slow metabolism has many symptoms, and you're likely to have one if you find it difficult to lose weight and easy to gain weight. Other symptoms include fatigue, poor digestion, constipation, low mood, and a colder than average body temperature. All of these are caused by the lower production of energy and heat.
While there isn't one magic food that will melt away belly fat, studies have reported certain foods have special belly-fat-burning benefits, such as avocado, artichokes, whole grains, kefir, green tea, eggs, peanuts and chickpeas.
Bottom line: skipping meals rarely results in weight loss for the long term and it can negatively impact your metabolism.
But some research has shown that eating smaller, more frequent meals may have added health benefits, as well. Smaller meals are less likely to cause a big bump in the blood sugar levels that follow a big meal. Cholesterol levels also tend to be lower.
As we reach our 30's, our bodies usually need less energy, meaning we may not be able to eat the way we did in our 20's. Then, as you move past 40 and head to middle age, changes in muscle, hormones and metabolism all make it harder to stay trim. But it's not a lost cause.
Safety Concerns
For most people, there are no serious dangers involved in eating one meal a day, other than the discomforts of feeling hungry. That said, there are some risks for people with cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Eating one meal a day can increase your blood pressure and cholesterol.
What is the Three Meals a Day Diet? The three meals a day diet is exactly what it sounds like to be. Eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, and eliminating snacks. I propose, that rather than grazing all day, having a clear 'stop and start' to each meal can help you lose weight without much effort.
There's no set time you should stop eating to lose belly fat, but, as a guideline, you should avoid eating two to three hours before bed to stop it from disrupting your sleep and body clocks, which can cause belly fat gain. Studies show early dinners can help people lose weight.