The Diet Myth

Myth: Eating more often during the day will help you lose weight faster.

If you want to lose weight, your amount of calorie intake must be less than what you burn in a day.  Eating more frequent meals during the day does not make you lose more weight, contrary to popular belief.  There have been numerous studies where participants were given a restricted calorie diet but were instructed to eat at different times, frequencies and amounts during the day.  The weight loss did not change between participants.

That being said, eating more frequently during the day does help some people fight off binging.  If you are getting a small meal every 3-4 hours, you may be less likely to snack on high calorie foods and you may not feel hungry most of the day.  This will not have an effect on your metabolism however.  If you eat the same restricted amount two or three times a day, you will lose just as much weight.

What speeds up the metabolism then?  Exercise.  Getting your heart rate up and sustaining that for a period of time will burn calories.  Exercise also builds lean muscle which burns more calories.  If you go on an extreme diet, you tend to lose muscle tissue and the metabolism slows down.  Eating protein helps sustain lean muscle tissue and rest between periods of exercise helps to build muscle.

Basically, weight loss comes from the changes you make, not some magical metabolism speeding up routine.  If you make changes to eat less calories in your diet and exercise, you will lose weight.