Way too many people, in my opinion, are regaining weight after what had been a successful weight loss program. The problem is not the old myth of eating too much or of exercising too little. The main flaw is more likely to be poor meal spacing.
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What is Proper Meal Spacing?
The phrase ‘meal spacing’ simply refers to how much time elapses between meals or snacks. The elapsed time between meals seems to be one of the most important, and yet underestimated, features of a healthy eating style.
Take a look at the graph below. It shows the timed responses to a meal of three of the most important ‘players’ in a proper eating cycle: blood glucose, insulin, and growth hormone (hGH).
What does this tell us about proper meal spacing? As I explain in detail in my Fat Loss Biology book (see link at the top of this page), this graph shows the peak post-meal responses in glucose, insulin, and growth hormone require about 6 hours.
Insulin, of course, is the famous protein hormone that most people know as the key to metabolizing blood glucose. It is secreted from the pancreas, starting as soon as a meal is anticipated and spiking within the first hour of eating. Insulin, however, is much more versatile that most people realize. It is the most important starting point for understanding what you must do for maintaining a healthy metabolism.
The reason that insulin occupies such a central role in a healthy metabolism is because it guides glucose into the liver, into skeletal muscles, and into fat tissue. It is like a ‘master decision maker’ on where glucose goes. It has to remove excess glucose from the blood, which would otherwise become toxic. In doing so, it has to put that glucose somewhere. Wouldn’t you just love know how to control what your insulin decides so that you get more glucose into muscle tissue and less into your fat cells or your liver? BINGO! That’s like saying, “OK, insulin…today I want you to build more muscle for me.”
That is exactly what you do, in effect, when you follow the right eating pattern. This is because of the relationship between insulin and another of the key protein hormones, hGH. As the graph above shows, response to a meal can be viewed in three phases. The first phase, which is well-known to the public, sees a rise in blood sugar and a responding spike in insulin over a time span of about 2 hours after the meal.
During the second phase, from about 2 to 4 hours after the meal, levels of blood sugar and insulin start to drop and levels of hGH start to increase. This is the period of time after a meal when the combination of insulin and hGH acts to build up muscle protein.
The third, or fasting, phase begins about 4 hours after the meal. During this phase hGH remains at a high level, while insulin almost disappears. This is the phase when hGH acts solely to direct the metabolism of fat as fuel.
THE LESSON
Proper meal spacing should entail a fasting period that starts at about 4 hours after you eat. This period is crucial for taking advantage of the anabolic (muscle-building) effects of insulin and the anabolic and fat-metabolizing effects of hGH. The ideal strategy is to allow 5-6 hours between meals, without snacking
If you do a little math here, you may immediately realize that spacing meals that far apart doesn’t always provide for enough time in the day for three meals. Surprise! Human physiology is not adapted for handling three meals per day. The whole notion that you should eat three meals per day is a modern creation. Moreover, it is a false premise.
Isn’t it interesting that the entire mega-industry built on breakfast cereals and other non-foods is based on this false premise? Once again we have a common belief – that is, you must eat three meals per day – a concept that is fueled by the sales and marketing departments of food manufacturers. This concept is designed to benefit their financial bottom line, not your waistline … or any other aspect of your good health, for that matter.
Keep in mind that several other hormones besides insulin and hGH are also put into play once you have a meal. The graph and explanation above about what happens when you eat is just a starting point for understanding what to do for a healthy metabolism.
By the way, guess what happens when you follow the common advice to eat several small meals per day, supposedly to ‘fuel your fat-burning furnace’? Just take a look at the graph again and you will see that a high-frequency of meals will interrupt the muscle-building phase (phase 2) that you should be getting from the combination of insulin and hGH. Eating too often also prevents you from ever reaching the fasting phase when hGH directs the metabolism of fat, at least not during waking hours. The typical recommendation to eat breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, dinner, and an evening snack is a recipe for a metabolic disaster.
Also consider the negative impact of eating too often. When you eat sporadically throughout the day or eat a series of small meals, your liver has no time to use its stored glycogen (glucose storage polymer) to generate energy. The resulting state of prolonged insulin response completely shuts off the metabolism of fat (i.e., puts you into permanent fat storage mode) and stops weight loss in its tracks. This is also a fast track to insulin resistance and diabetes. Furthermore, one of the responses of such an overburdened liver is the synthesis of excess amounts of cholesterol, even when the diet contains no cholesterol.
Is it any wonder that diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol have reached epidemic levels in modern western society?
Is That All?
No, of course not. However, in chatting with frustrated folks who constantly suffer yo-yo weight regain, one diet after another, proper meal spacing is one of the two biggest issues that most people are either misinformed about or even completely unaware of. (The other one is food composition – i.e., what to eat – a topic that I will revisit soon.)
Stay tuned!
Updating meal spacing research,
Dr. D
I have struggled with my weight my entire life at the age of 13 I was a size nine which is great but I still felt fat and looked bigger than the other girls so that started my struggle to look like the skinny girls which to this day has not happened. This and other blogs I have read recently are really helping a lot to wrap my brain around proper diet.
I was just watching The Talk TV show and one of their guests was the doctor who published the shredded diet book. He talked about meal spacing and emphasized the importance of snacking between meals and keeping your metabolism at a high rate. I like to eat an apple or celery with perhaps a piece of cheese. Both are surprisingly satisfying because of the fiber.
Mainstream advice says we need to eat 5-6 small meals throughout the day to keep our insulin levels low and keep our metabolism going strong. I wondered if this is true. This article helped me answer that question, but there are many who recommend eating small, frequent meals (nibbling) vs. eating less frequent, much larger meals. There are endless ways to investigate the matter and more than just one way to lose weight.
I had absolutely no idea that insulin played such a critical part of weight loss. Like most other people, I always just assumed that insulin was bad and the enemy of the body, but I guess it serves its purpose. Still and all, following the HCG Diet, with all of the critical timing constraints, seems like a complex project, but maybe it isn’t all that difficult because you actually eat less frequent meals.
This makes perfectly good sense however I can’t seem to get my mind away from the idea that your body goes into starvation mode if you fast therefore keep everything you eat the next time you eat because it doesn’t know when you will eat again. How does that burn fat if you are retaining every calorie you eat?
Keep posting this stuff I love reading about it because I have learned a lot here and will keep checking back to see if you post anything new. I am going to school to be a dietician and this kind of information is going to help me a great deal. Thank you so much for the work you have done here keep up the good work.
I would say that this does against conventional teachings about health and nutrition. Call me obtuse but I always associated fasting periods with being a Muslim. Now I understand the science at the cellular level and see how it can prove to be a great benefit in weight loss. Losing fat is not easy. It is a marathon and you must stay committed.
Hi, Robert: The doctor you mention misses the point of between-meal fasting for regulating insulin and growth hormone levels. Frequent eating undermines the benefits of this regulation. There is no such thing as easting ‘to keep your metabolism at a high rate’. That harks to the old, and inappropriate, comparison of the human body with a furnace.
Cheers,
Dennis
Hi, Kenneth: Think about this for a minute: eating causes an insulin spike. Therefore, eating frequently could not possibly keep insulin levels low. Unless, maybe, you eat pure fat, which has the least effect on insulin levels.
Cheers,
Dennis
Hi, Tammi:
Yup, insulin is the key to a cascade of hormone and metabolic responses. It is only harmful when there is too much around for too long. A healthful eating pattern must allow for enough time between meals to allow insulin levels to return to ‘zero’ – i.e., normal fasting levels.
Cheers,
Dennis
Hi, James:
The whole notion of starvation mode is over-hyped. True starvation mode, as when you fast for days at a time, directs your body to eat up muscle mass and preserve body fat. You can literally waste away and not lose significant amounts of fat in starvation mode.
Cheers,
Dennis
Ulysses…carry on the good word into the dietician community. Good luck! You will be able to help a lot of folks.
Cheers,
Dennis
Good points, Julio. Also consider that fasting was the norm for our ancestors. We are adapted to periodic fasting, and our health benefits tremendously from it.
Cheers,
Dennis
Dr. Clark,
I’ve also seen a lot of good results from the Eat, Stop, Eat Diet that follows an intermittent fasting schedule that Dr. Michael Mosley has also written about in his latest book on intermittent fasting. This method prevents the ‘Starvation’ mode you speak about and it’s great for me because I can just eat normally the rest of the week without counting calories, carb restriction, etc..
Great info Dr. I am 64 struggled with my weight for 50 years . In the past 2.5 years gone from 260 lbs 38% body fat down to 160 lbs 14% B.F..struggling too get to 10%. Still have some belly fat. gym 6 days a weakley. Cardio 4-5 days when do you advise eating my meals? and still 6 hrs apart. Mussel gain is of importance too me. Thanks
Spot on, Jose! That is exactly what I do, too. In addition to weight (fat) management, Intermittent Fasting offers a whole slew of other health benefits. Keep up the good work!
All the best,
Dennis
Hi, Glenn:
It sounds as though we are on the same track. Regarding when to eat meals, my strategy is just to eat late in the morning or early afternoon, then early in the evening. I usually get in two meals that way, rarely three unless I have an early tee time and take something with me for snacking (tuna, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, etc.). The 2-3 days of fasting really help, too. I hope you are not going too low on body fat. Regarding exercise, though, I strongly advise you to pick up a copy of Body by Science by Doug McGuff and John Little. You are clearly exercising too much, causing inflammation that you are not recovering from between workouts. The Body by Science guys will give you some excellent pointers on what and how much to work out, even for us seniors. They even have a set of videos on YouTube, all of which I have listed on my fitness blog here: http://personalfitnessresearch.com/body-by-science-videos/. One more thing that might interest you is the only supplement that I have found that works regardless of age. See my post here: http://personalfitnessresearch.com/hmb-best-of-muscle-building-supplements-for-senior-fitness/. Keep up the good work, just not so much inflammation!
All the best,
Dennis
This was surprising because you are taught so many different ways to eat by so many different people for so many different reasons. I think you should learn to listen to your body and only eat when you are hungry then that takes care of the over eating part and it might put into play the interval eating that was talked about before.
Thank you for this post I can’t believe how long we have all been lied to about eating and how much and when we should eat. It is no wonder we have such an obese population in America. You have broken those lies and I am going to follow what you said here because this just makes more sense to me when I think about it. Thank you so much.
I am so glad that you mentioned this, I have never felt comfortable eating as much as they were saying you are supposed to so that your body stays fueled. That is just not right you are eating all day, how can you lose weight eating all day? This post fits my plan better because I can manage three meals a day but I just don’t get hungry enough to eat more than that.
Many people are stuck in the three-meals-a-day mindset. Many people get hung up on the misconception that eating anything beyond their allotted three meals per day constitutes a failure of dietary willpower. It’s true that eating empty calorie snack foods between meals is no recipe for health, but limiting yourself to the traditional breakfast-lunch-dinner feeding format may not be doing you any favors, either.
Right on, Miguel! Thanks for your input.
Cheers,
Dennis
It is such a relief to finally read something that I have believed for quite sometime and that is we don’t need to eat this many times a day to keep our bodies fueled up and burning calories. We need to eat the proper foods to do the fueling and then it won’t be an issue. This is a great blog post thank you for doing this I appreciate it.
Does time of day really matter if you are spacing your meals like you are supposed to. I mean the norm is to eat breakfast at 7 a.m. lunch at noon and dinner by 5 p.m. but what if you are a 2nd shifter? That schedule is messed up so will it still help you lose weight or does your body react differently at different times of day?
Hi, Jorge…You are right that spacing is most important. This includes the time between dinner and breakfast (minimum of 12 hours), regardless of when in the 24-hour period that you have meals each day.
All the best,
Dennis
Meal spacing, intermittent fasting what is the best thing to do, eat all the time don’t eat, I am so confused by all the information that conflicts with each other out there. Keep posting the truth and maybe someday the rest will go away. Thank you for this article it seems to fit my lifestyle better anyway. Keep up the good work.
Meal spacing has never been made so important to me. I was under the impression that you were supposed to eat five to six times a day and I had a problem with that concept when I am wanting to lose weight and tone up. To me that is a diet for a football player or body builder or something where they are going to expend a bunch of calories.
After reading your post about what effect food has on the body I think that meal spacing is a critical part of any diet. If you eat to soon when you aren’t really hungry the excess turns to fat but if you eat to late and your body is starving it will turn to fat as well right because your body is going to store it away for a rainy day.
Don’t you have to watch what you eat for sure when the forth session starts because if you don’t the sugars will turn to fat right because there is very little insulin at that time? You have a great article here and I love the way you have the chart that shows what your body does at certain times. Keep up the good work I enjoyed it a great deal.
So many people are setting themselves up for failure when it comes to eating to lose weight, I am sure that eating five or six times a day helps those that are trying to build muscle but any one trying to lose fat has to watch their calories and things like that so eating that often is just not going to work. Thank you so much for the work you have put into this.
I am trying to practice intermittent fasting for the first time in my life. I have been working out since my teenage years, so I come from the 3 meals and 3 snacks type of dieting philosophy. I would like to lose about 5 to 10 pounds of body fat and that is what caused me to try something new. I find the HCG diet a bit too complex, but maybe it is just my initial lack of understanding it.
That is a good question that Jorge asked. I was wondering something similar. I was wondering if meal spacing is relative. In other words, by the term relative I mean it doesn’t matter the time but what is more important is the spacing between meals. Or does the body react according to what the article describes at certain hours of the day. I ask because I work at night and take 2 or 3 short naps during the day and evening.
The only reason I am now understanding the benefits of spacing your meals properly and fasting for short intervals is because I bought the much touted natural supplement, Garcinia Camogia, and it has enabled me to eat less without feeling hungry. Now I can fast without any cravings. It really helps to follow this diet.
James that is encouraging I haven’t bought those yet because of the fact that there are so many products out there that claim to do the same thing and they don’t work so I haven’t been wanting to spend my money. But with your comment it makes me think that maybe this stuff does work. I don’t have problems getting hungry but I do have problems with cravings.
I can’t believe that there are so many things out there that tell you that you are supposed to be eating so much during the day but this at least shows you what happens in your body when you eat and why it is a good idea for the spacing meals idea. If the others could show you scientific evidences or charts like this then maybe it would be more believable.
This way of eating allows for your body to make adjustments to the food and eliminate it the way it is supposed to. There are to many people trying to eat to many times to allow their body the proper function. Thank you for posting this alternative you have done a great job with this post keep up the good work.
Every diet and exercise program that I read popular or not even heard of says that you should eat five to six small meals a day, how do you argue with all of them? They can’t all be wrong can they? I mean don’t get me wrong I like the idea of going without because I just don’t get hungry that much but in order to lose weight is that really a good plan?
I have learned a lot from both of your posts you have a great blog here, my only problem is the fact that so many people disagree with you. How are we simple minded people supposed to figure out who is telling us the truth? Is it true that each one might work but it depends on what you want to accomplish and the persons metabolism in the first place?
The only think surprising about this post is that fact that so many others are instructing people in the wrong way. Are they not thinking about what the body does to the food? This is very interesting and it is going to be a task to prove who is right and who is wrong. Keep up the good work I enjoyed your post a bunch.
I never seriously considered the importance of the timing of your meals. I was like so many who just believed in the 3 meals and 2 snacks per day philosophy that bodybuilders were such proponents of. This is a more precise approach to dieting and it seems to have the science behind it to back it up.
So the basis of this whole meal spacing concept is to wait 4 to 6 hours between meals. Well, I have already done this unwittingly, but if I am to do this consistently, I think I am going to need some kind of energy boosting supplement for when I begin my workout. That is not a big deal for me. It just requires some getting used to.
I really don’t find this to be surprising it’s the people that are telling you to eat more than you actually need to eat that surprises me. I understand the concept but it is a myth to me. I’ve learned that I not only have to watch my carbs in order to lose weight but I have to watch my calories as well and if you are doing that you can’t eat all day long.
I am a huge follower of your recommendations, IF, meal spacing, no snacks etc. However I struggle with binge eating that derails me. I know it’s a brain/serotonin issue. I have been reading about saffron extract and wondering what your thoughts are. Secondly the latest diet doing the rounds is the Fast Metabolism Diet which is getting huge successful reviews at the moment. However the author does a complete backflip to what we do – breakfast MUST be eaten 30 mins upon awakening, 3 meals and 2 snacks spaced every 2/3 hours and the addition of grains. She claims this fixes the adrenals and thyroid and kills bingeing in it’s track. I’m scared to go backwards like this. What do you think? Kindest regards
Hi, Brendam:
Binge eating is sort of the name of the game for me, too. However, I focus on eating as much as I want of the right stuff at the right frequency … usually 2 meals per day and never more than 3. Does this sound like what you do? Regarding the Fast Metabolism Diet, it flies in the face of how human metabolism works, especially our hormonal responses to eating. We are not a furnace. We are a complex array of hormonal signaling pathways that is easily undermined by eating too often. Stick to the IF and proper meal spacing as much as you can. Blow up days once in a while won’t derail you.
All the best,
Dennis