Why eat 4 6 meals a day

According to a small study presented at the September annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, a six-meal diet has been shown effective at controlling blood sugar in people with obesity who had prediabetes or type II diabetes.

In the study, half of the 47 participants with obesity who were suffering from diabetes or prediabetes followed a special diet for six months that had them eat six smaller meals per day for three months and transitioned to three standard-sized meals a day for another three months.

The other half of the participants started with the three standard-sized meals for three months and switched to six small meals per day for the last three months. The six-meal diet group had significantly better blood sugar control compared to those eating three meals per day.

Therefore, frequent, small meals consisting of roughly the same number of calories consumed at regular intervals may help you be more successful at dieting. More research is needed to confirm these findings, though. You're better able to avoid binges and poor meal choices when you eat frequently. You never hit that starving feeling where you eat anything and everything just to fill your belly. Plus, your blood sugar doesn't take wild swings that affect your energy and food preferences.

According to the U. Dietary Guidelines for , the average adult woman needs between 1, and 2, calories per day and the average man 2, to 3, Your exact needs depend on your weight, activity level and age.

When you know how many calories you should eat daily to maintain, lose or gain weight, divide that number by six. For example, if you aim for 2, calories per day, each meal should provide about to calories. And we know you've heard it before, but we'll say it again: For the best chance at ongoing good health, remember to exercise.

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Some studies have found eating as often as six times a day helps to reduce hunger, which certainly makes sense. Research has also suggested that eating regular meals at the same time each day can boost your metabolism.

My hope was that if I wasn't waiting until I was ravenous, I'd make healthier choices and stop eating when I felt myself hitting the "full point" rather than eating well past it. I resolved to test my theory for a month.

Here's what I learned. I started out with the best of intentions, thinking that I'd prepare fresh, homemade mini-meals as I needed them throughout the day.

It was a noble plan, but I soon realized that even small homemade meals take time to prep, and the reason I'd fallen into such bad eating habits was precisely because I don't have a lot of spare time right now. I work at home, which makes a run to my kitchen more feasible than it is for most. Still, the 10 minutes it took to cook an egg or throw together a salad was time away from work. I quickly realized that I had to start making more of my food ahead of time, whether it was early in the morning or the night before.

If I didn't pre-plan, I found myself grabbing a frozen pizza or raiding the candy jar—anything I could make and eat with little fuss. When I started this experiment, I thought I'd still eat traditional meals—just in much smaller sizes. But that wasn't working out too well. I was often too tired at night to prep for the next day, and sometimes I'd oversleep and not have time in the morning, either. I quickly realized I'd be better off thinking about my mini-meals as snacks, provided they were healthy ones.

I hit the grocery store for items that could easily be eaten over a computer keyboard, like pretzels dipped in hummus, slices of cheese, and bowls of grapes.

Curb cravings with these 12 easy-to-make snacks that nutritionists love. My rules for what I bought were simple: Can I eat it and continue to work?

Will I feel good about having eaten it half an hour later? If the answer to both questions was yes, it went in my cart. I expected that I'd experience fewer hunger pangs , since I was no longer letting my stomach get totally empty.

It took about a week for me to notice the difference, but when I did it was pretty major. In fact, I sometimes woke up feeling too full for breakfast, which presented me with a conflict: Forcing myself to eat didn't seem like a good idea, but if I didn't have something early it would be hard to fit in six mini-meals without having my last one right at bedtime.

Determined to stick to my plan, I initially forced myself to eat a few bites, but it made me feel over-stuffed and seemed to defeat the point of a healthier eating regimen. If I wasn't trusting my own body, what was I doing? So after a few days of not feeling it at breakfast time , I decided to loosen up the rules. If I I had an "I'm not hungry" morning, I simply waited until my stomach told me it was ready to go.

On those days, I cut back to eating five meals rather than six.