Meal Timing & Frequency
Meal timing and frequency can make or break your diet. Eat to often and you will store body fat, don’t eat often enough and you will store body fat. Eating at the proper time and having meal portions that reflect your upcoming or past level of activity can take a basic diet approach and custom fit it to you and your day. This will give you extra energy when you need it, repair and build muscle when it’s most crucial, and burn extra fat. So much extra reward for very little extra effort.
The basic idea is to eat less food when you are going to be less active and eat more food when you are planning on being more active. Sounds easy enough, but we can go a little deeper yet. Not only do you need to know how
much food to eat, you need to know what foods to eat. The types of food you eat should also reflect the activity about to take place, this is where it gets interesting.
Regardless of the type of diet you are following your macronutrient ratios (proteins, carbohydrates and fats) should change from meal to meal. Someone following a Low Carbohydrate High Protein diet (Ketogenic) doesn’t have much flexibility with his or her macronutrient ratios from meal to meal. Generally, they are taking in very few carbohydrates with any meal, but such a diet can still be altered from meal to meal.
Some very important questions to ask yourself when planning your diet are:
So let’s answer these important questions:
How many meals should I eat each day?
You should try to consume at least 5-6 meals a day. That may sound high to some of you, but these should be smaller nutritious meals, not big meals. If it makes it any easier call it 3 meals and 2-3 snacks.
Try to eat every 2.5 –3 hours, you don’t want to go long hours (while you are awake) without eating for many reasons. Eating often helps you keep your body’s “famine alarm” in check. With a constant supply of food your body doesn’t feel that famine is around the corner so it will release it’s fat stores more readily. Studies have shown that eating often raises your metabolism, therefore, burning more calories. And when you consume smaller
meals, the food is more efficiently absorbed and process by your body than the typical North American “three squares”.
Depending on your diet goals (losing fat or building muscle), you may want to increase the amount of meals you are eating. If you are trying to gain weight and are consuming a high calorie diet, you don’t want to eat 5-6 huge meals each day. You would want to increase the amount of meals you consume so that your body can utilize the nutrients ingested with each meal and not store excess as BF. You might want to try eating 8 or more meals a day, consuming a meal every 2 hours.
Increasing the amount of times you eat in a day is awkward in the beginning and you may feel like you are forcing yourself to eat at times. Like anything though, you will adapt and eventually your body will let you know when its meal time and you will be looking forward to your next meal.
What size should each meal be?
The size of each meal is based on the level of activity you have coming up, or in some cases, the activity you just performed. This may sound a little confusing but you will see that it isn’t by the time you finish reading this section.
It is mainly a matter of adjusting the amount of macronutrients (mainly carbohydrates) up or down depending on upcoming activity levels. The more active you are going to be for the next three hours, the more food you will eat prior.
First off, I would like to give you a little fact about eating breakfast. When we wake up in the morning your metabolic rate is at its highest. This means it’s more likely that the calories we consume during breakfast will be utilized by the body and not stored as fat. You have been without food all night and you need to replenish your fuel stores. Skipping breakfast may result in a loss of LBM and a subsequent decrease in your metabolism, this is something you want to avoid.
Therefore meal 1 should be one of the biggest meals of the day.
If it’s time for meal 2 and you are going to be inactive until it is time for meal 3, then meal 2 shouldn’t be that big. If it’s time for meal 3 and you are going to be busy running around or participating in strenuous physical activity until meal 4, then meal 3 should be a larger meal to give
you enough energy to perform the upcoming tasks.
Generally the only time you factor in past activity for a meal is after you workout (post workout). We will talk about this meal next.
What time of the day should we eat?
On your average day you would get up and have meal 1 (breakfast, now that you know why) and follow the every
2.5-3 hour rule. This, like every other rule, is meant to be broken, especially on workout days.
On the days that we workout, two meals are very important, the pre and post workout meals. These meals change depending on your fitness goals, losing fat or building muscle and overall athletic performance.
If you are trying to lose fat, then the best approach to your pre workout meal is to have it 2 hours prior to working out, this way you use more of your fat stores for fuel. If you are trying to bulk up, you would have your pre workout meal about 45 minutes to an hour before working out. This will
provide you with plenty of energy for your workout improving athletic performance. The type of meal you eat is very important too. I will cover that momentarily.
If you are trying to lose fat, your post workout meal will be consumed approximately after one hour from completing your workout. If you are trying to build muscle, then I suggest you consume your post workout meal as soon
after you complete your workout as possible. However, this is a touchy subject.
As you know, when you workout with weights you are breaking down the muscle and your body releases hormones that have a catabolic effect on your muscles. Eating a proper post workout meal will put a stop to this catabolic state and start repairing and rebuilding the muscle. Putting off this meal for too long can have a negative effect on your muscles. Typically, I suggest that you consume your post workout meal ASAP. Preferably within one hour of working out, the sooner the better. Even if I were trying to lose fat, I would rather sacrifice a little fat loss over possible muscle loss.
When you wake up in the morning and after you workout your metabolic rate is elevated. This means that you can take advantage of this time to effectively shuttle needed nutrients to your muscles. Research shows that the synthesis rate of protein doubles after you workout and stays elevated for approximately 24 hours. In other words, you can use more protein and build more muscle. I will talk about that next.
What type of food should I eat?
The types of foods you choose are very important when planning your daily meals. Like the size of the meal the
macronutrient ratios per meal should change depending on future or past activity.
No matter what type of diet you are on (high carbohydrate low fat, low carbohydrate high fat, The Zone, Isocaloric, etc.), you can alter the macronutrient ratios from meal to meal, as long as your total daily ratios that your diet is based on remain the same overall.
For example, lets say you are on a 2,500 calorie Isocaloric diet, the macronutrient ratios for such a diet are 33% carbohydrates, 33% proteins, and 33% fats.
Now you have 189 grams each of carbohydrates and protein and 84 grams of fat that you can consume through the day. You can mix them up and increase one or more macronutrients with one meal and decrease them with another. This way you can make the most out of each macronutrient for every meal of the day.
Here are some examples of specific meals and how they would differ from the average meal of the day:
Pre Workout: Since you require extra energy for a workout, approximately an hour before you workout you would consume your pre workout meal. This meal should have an average amount of protein, a higher than average amount of moderate to low GI complex carbs and an average amount of fat to maintain your energy supply during your workout.
Post Workout: Now your metabolic rate is higher, you have depleted your muscles of glycogen, your synthesis rate of protein is higher, and you have all those catabolic hormones in your system. You want a meal to address these issues. This meal (like breakfast) is going to be a big one, you would consume double the average amount of protein and carbohydrates that you would normally consume in a meal. The protein should be of a high
biological value and easily absorbed such as a whey protein. The carbohydrate source should be a high GI simple carbohydrate to elicit the insulin response we want to shuttle the amino acids and glucose to your over
worked muscles. You want to keep fat low for this meal as it will lower the GI and blunt the effects of insulin.
This meal can take up to 1/3 of your total daily calories, leaving only 2/3s to spread out over the rest of the day.
Last meal: No, this isn’t a Biblical reference. The last meal is the meal you eat before bed. This meal should be low in fat and low in carbohydrates, you want a meal that is mainly protein based. An ideal food
choice for this meal is good old cottage cheese (1% or lower fat is your best choice), it’s high in protein and low in everything else. The carbohydrates that are in it are lactose based and low in GI. The casein protein that is in cottage cheese will slowly break down overnight releasing
the aminos that you need to repair and build muscle while you sleep.
So as you can see, tailoring your meals can have a large impact on the results you get from your diet. You can ensure that you optimize fat loss, repair and rebuild muscle, and maintain energy levels. Like I said earlier
in this section, so much extra reward for very little extra effort.
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