The Truth About Six Small Meals Per Day - Why It's Bro-Science

The idea behind the “eat every 2 hours” rule is that frequent eating will keep the body in an anabolic state and keep your fat burning metabolism elevated by keeping you out of starvation mode

This myth is easy to buy into because it seems like it makes sense. By eating frequent, small meals, you're continuously stimulating your metabolism, and thus burning more calories

In reality, if you keep eating small amounts of food throughout the day, you'll never burn any fat – this is due to insulin.

Insulin - How it Works: Insulin is a hormone, which means it’s a substance the body produces to affect the functions of organs or tissues, and it’s made and released into the blood by the pancreas

When you eat food, insulin’s job is to break it down into basic nutrients: protein breaks down into amino acids, dietary fats into fatty acids, and carbohydrates into glucose, which then make their way into the bloodstream.

These nutrients must then be moved from the blood into muscle and fat cells for use or storage, and that’s where insulin comes into play: it helps shuttle the nutrients into cells by telling the cells to open up and absorb them.

Whenever you eat food, your pancreas releases insulin into the blood. As the nutrients are slowly absorbed into cells, insulin levels drop, until finally all the nutrients are absorbed, and insulin levels then remain steady at a low, “baseline” level.

So when you're constantly eating, you're consistently releasing insulin, which puts your body into its "absorptive phase."

Fat Storage: Fat cells, for example, don’t take up or store glucose. Instead, they respond to insulin by taking the fats that enter the bloodstream and turning them into fatty acids, which they store in large vacuoles - a space or vesicle within the cytoplasm of a cell, enclosed by a membrane and typically containing fluid. Thus, insulin promotes the uptake and storage of fat in our adipose tissues. While insulin levels are high, our bodies don’t digest or use fats for fuel.

Instead, we rely on the glucose in our blood and tissues. So when trying to lose weight – your body simply won’t break down and use your fat reserves with insulin around.

In summation, insulin inhibits the breakdown of fat cells and stimulates the creation of body fat. Meaning that insulin tells the body to stop burning its fat stores and instead, absorb some of the fatty acids and glucose in the blood and turn them into more body fat.

Glucagon - Insulin, the fat-storage and blocking hormone, has a counterpart known as glucagon – a fat-burning and unlocking hormone. About four to six hours after you eat, the glucose levels in your blood decrease, triggering your pancreas to produce glucagon. This hormone signals your liver and muscle cells to change the stored glycogen back into glucose.

Glucagon signals the fat cells to release free fatty acids (a process called lipolysis), which signals the body to release stored fat to be used as fuel.

Insulin and Glucagon Study: The Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology conducted a study in which researchers injected one group of rats with insulin and another group of rats with glucagon. The rats that received the insulin gained body fat and ate more. The rats that received the glucagon lost body fat.

Train Smart,
-Thomas

[sixpackshortcuts]

Remeber that time someone told you that eating every 2 hours is necessary to condition your metabolism? To help you burn belly fat? To build muscle better? Well, I'm glad you're here today because I'm going to debunk this myth for you and break down eating frequency with some science.

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-Thomas

[KenWang]

I lost weight and gained muscle with 6 small meals a day. I don't get it why this guy is saying it doesn't work.

[jazzerson]

The most important thing is that you have energy to accomplish what you want in the day. I disagree that eating smaller meals more often slows you down, quite the opposite in my experience. I used to eat three big meals in one sitting and afternoon and early evening I'd always feel tired, find it difficult to get anything done, lose focus. Since I've been splitting my meals into smaller chunks rather than eating them all in one go my energy has increased five fold. I believe its because I'm keeping my blood sugar fairly steady which is the key. Losing weight isn't the goal as I'm in shape anyway but I feel much much more in control since I've been eating smaller meals.

[scott.macdowell]

What about eating every 3 hours consisting of protein and vegetables ( no insulin hit )

[jaymcluvin]

How do you sustain a strength workout while fasting?

[hthclash]

Well, it is better for fat loss but not for the muscle growth 😥

[carltonbanks]

My lofts and foams were minimal while intermittent fasting... Stopped fasting and made more progress in 3 months than I did over a year of fasting....

[nitroflyer]

Okay This i know is true..I get it I intermittent fast and love it..BUT! tell me this because it drives me crazy all my life I've believed that if you feel hungry for to long then your body goes into a fat storage mode.survival thing..Is this true.???

[navyaofficial]

Tnx for bursting my myth sir . Luv from India 😍.