You’ve been reading online that it’s good to eat 5 or 6 times per day. You know, because it “keeps your metabolism up” or “it keeps your blood sugar stable.” And it’s overall healthy for you. After all, you want to have a fast metabolism, have good energy levels, and be healthy overall.
Original source: here.
In this article, we’ll look at:
- Myths about snacking
- When it makes sense to snack, and when it doesn’t
- What to snack on
Myths About Snacking
Myth #1: It Keeps Your Metabolism Up
No it doesn’t. Simple as that. This myth was started by people who failed grade 2 math.
The theory that snacking keeps your metabolism up is based on something called the “thermic effect of food.” What is it? Whenever you eat anything, you don’t store all the calories from that food. Some of those calories are actually used to give you energy, and some are used in the digestion and assimilation process itself.
So let’s say that you eat 2000 calories per day, and of those, 200 calories are burned. Well, that doesn’t change, regardless of whether you spread 2000 calories across 3 meals, or across 5 meals, or across 1 meal. The thermic effect of food is the same regardless of how many meals you eat.
Myth #2: Snacking Keeps Your Blood Sugar Stable
I shouldn’t really call this a myth, because it really does keep your blood sugar stable. But that may or may not be a good thing.
Whenever you eat a carbohydrate-containing meal, your blood sugar goes up, and over the next 2 hours, it comes back down to baseline. This is what happens in a normal, healthy person.
In the person with low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), what will happen is they eat a carbohydrate-filled meal, blood sugar rises, and then falls well below baseline (it might drop below 4.5 mmol/l), so they get irritable, shaky, a bit disoriented, etc. For these folks, it makes sense to eat snacks to keep their blood sugar from going too low.
But in a person whose blood sugar is just fine, there is no reason to snack all the time. In fact, in a person whose blood sugar is normal, yes snacking will keep their blood sugar stable. Stable at a high level. And we don’t want stable, high blood sugar levels (it’s normal for blood sugar to rise as high as 9.0 mmol/l after a meal, but we want it to return to 4.5-5.5 mmol/l within about 2 hours). We want stable, normal blood sugar levels (that’s 4.5-5.5 mmol/l).
Should You Snack
So now you know that snacking isn’t necessary for good health and body composition. It’s not harmful, but it’s not required, either.
In my mind, there are 3 cases when it makes sense to snack:
Case #1: you have low blood sugar
If you have proven low blood sugar, as alluded to earlier, yes, it makes sense to snack to keep your blood sugar stable.
Case #2: You Are Trying to Add Muscle
Certain people have a very hard time gaining muscle. An example is our client Oren, who I did a feature on a few months ago, about how he gained 20 lbs. of muscle. If you’re super-skinny and have a super-fast metabolism, it’s hard to get enough calories to gain weight in just 3 meals. In their case, it makes sense to eat 5 (or more) times per day to gain the necessary calories.
To put things in perspective, a guy with a very fast metabolism might eat 2000 calories per day. If he wanted to gain muscle, he’d have to eat about 2500-3000. That’s if his job is more or less sedentary. If he’s in an active job (like a car mechanic), he might need to eat at much as 4000-5000 calories per day just to gain muscle. It’s very difficult to get that many calories across 3 meals.
Case #3: You Prefer Eating More Frequently
The truth is that meal frequency has very little influence on your body fat percentage or your health. The ultimate things that determine body fat percentage and health are the quality of food, total calories, hormonal balance, etc. Meal timing and meal frequency appears to make very little, if any difference.
So if you just prefer to eat 5 times per day, go ahead. If you prefer to eat 3 or even 2 times per day, go ahead with that as well. You have my permission.
What to Snack On
This depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re at the ideal weight and body fat percentage, and want to maintain good health, snack on vegetables. They’re all fair game, even things like carrots.
If you’re underweight, and trying to increase muscle mass, I would snack on more calorically-dense foods, like nuts (almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts, etc.), and dried fruits (raisins, prunes, dates, etc.)
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