6 small meals a day? Really?

Q: I am aware of the requiremnets to eat 6 small meals but some days it is a real struggle to eat 3 meals per day.

A: There's very little scientific evidence supporting the "6 small meals" idea. Yes, it does work -- but not for everyone and in no ways is it natural for human beings. First, it works mostly for those on carbohydrate-based diets because these diets need to be hunger-controlled. Your problem is just opposite, right? Then, you might well benefit from the currently gaining recognition "a meal a day" paradigm. In fact, for the lay dieter, it started with The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler.

Let me explain. It's known for a long time that calorie restriction has great health benefits including longevity, however, it's not only hard to stay on any restrictive diet for the rest of your life but even in experimental animals having no choice, hunger sabotaged some of the health benefits. On the other hand, mice fed every other day had profound health effects which exceeded those seen in mice fed 40% less than normal every day. Analyzing the Ramadan fast practices, researchers came to the conclusion that what they named it, Intermittent Fasting, can be THE answer for people dieters as well.

I'm telling this to you so you wouldn't be worried too much about both eating too little and about not eating often enough.

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Part 2
Part 3

The Skipping Breakfasts plan of the Banta Diet explain one of the meal frequency aspects.

Tanya Zilberter, PhD