How Many Meals Should You Eat Per Day?

HOW MANY MEALS SHOULD YOU EAT PER DAY?

The question “how many meals should you eat per day?” has been a prevalent question in the fitness and nutrition industry longer than I’ve been alive. 

There have been thousands of attempts at answering this question. 

Some say you should eat more frequently, some say you should eat less. 

Which is it? 

In the days of misinformation and mass information, how can you know the right answer? 

That’s what I hope to help you with in this article. 

My hope is that you not only walk away with an answer to “how many meals should you eat per day?” but also, a better understanding of the roles meal frequency plays so you can sniff out myths and distinguish right from wrong. 

Now, if you’re someone who just wants a fast answer without learning anything from it, here you go: 

There is no best meal frequency for every person. The ideal amount of meals per day depends on a few factors, but generally, I will make the argument that 3-4 meals per day is best for most people. 

Now, if you’re someone who wants to get an answer, learn something new, and figure out what’s best for you and your goals, keep on reading. 

What’s the context? 

Before we get into the nitty gritty of meal frequency, we need to make sure we’re on the same page.

Most people who are wanting an answer to this question are those who want to improve their body composition (build muscle and/or lose fat), improve their diet and nutrition habits, and as a result, improve their health and longevity. 

By the way, if you want a free fat loss guide to help you lose fat easily in sustainably, you can get that here.

Given that those people are the people I help, the remainder of this article will be speaking through that lens. 

In other words, I’ll be more directly answering this question: “how many meals should I eat per day if I want to improve my body composition and health?”

With that clarified, let’s dive in. 

Meal Frequency and Its Contributions

Meal frequency is tied to many things regarding our health and body composition such as 

• Weight management

• Hunger and Satiety

• Circadian Rhythm

• Muscle Growth and Recovery

as well as blood sugar control. However, I will be speaking to the first four, as your blood sugar and insulin sensitivity conversations should be between you and your doc. 

Weight Management and Body Composition

In order to better understand meal frequency, we need to understand body composition change and how it works. Specifically, we need to understand fat loss. 

Your body burns a certain amount of calories per day. That total calorie amount is called your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). 

TDEE consists of a few different things:

• Basal Metabolic Rate (calories burned at rest): this is often referred to as your metabolism

• Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): this is the amount of calories your body burns by breaking down and digesting the food you eat. Diet quality is the largest contributing factor.

• Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): this is the amount of calories your body burns from movement that isn’t formal exercise such as doing chores, typing on a computer, walking, etc. 

• Exercise Activity Thermoenesis (EAT): this is the amount of calories burned from exercise like lifting weights, swimming, cycling, etc. 

A snapshot of your total daily energy expenditure

If you consume more calories than you burn, your body will store those excess calories in the form of fat and/or muscle. This is called energy or calorie surplus. 

If you consume fewer calories than you burn, your body will lose stored energy from fat and/or muscle. This is called energy deficit, or calorie deficit. A calorie deficit is needed to lose stored energy. 

Put plainly, a calorie deficit is needed to lose fat. 

This is where we run into a very common meal frequency myth: the more meals you eat in the day, the more it “stokes your metabolism” making it faster. It’s often illustrated like a flame. The more meals (coal, paper, etc.) you put into the fire, the more the fire roars. This myth has led to the misleading idea that eating more meals makes fat loss easier due to a faster metabolism. 

But that’s not really what’s going on. 

As we just learned, the only part of your TDEE that increases from food consumption is your TEF, and TEF is largely dictated by food/diet quality. 

A diet of 4 meals per day with quality food choices can have a bigger impact on TEF than a diet of 7 small meals per day with average food quality. 

But you may be thinking “well what about a diet of 7 small meals per day with quality food?” 

Sure, that may increase your TEF by a teeny bit. 

But if you’re consuming more calories than you burn, you will still gain fat. 

And one thing we need to remember is that the more frequently you eat, the higher the likelihood you eat in a caloric surplus, consuming more energy than your body needs to maintain its current weight. 

There are two reasons for this: 

For starters, the more often you eat, the smaller your meals will need to be (assuming you’re trying to keep your calorie intake at bay on some level). The smaller your meals are, the harder it’s going to be to feel satiated. 

The lower satiety you have, the hungrier you are. 

The hungrier you are, the more you want to eat. 

The more you want to eat, the more the inner cookie monster in you is screaming to be released.

Secondly, and though it’s obvious, it’s still worth stating, the more often you eat, the more you expose yourself to opportunities to consume additional calories. 

Think of it this way: Imagine you had two versions of your day. Version A required you to look into the pantry every hour, and version B required you to look into the pantry every 3 hours. Odds are, version A would lead you to increased snacking and excess calorie consumption. 

Flipping those two things on their heads, let’s look at fewer, larger meals. 

Hunger and Satiety

Do you want to guess what the largest contributing factor to satiety or “fullness” is? 

It’s not calories.

It’s food volume. 

The volume of food you consume is the largest contributing factor to feeling full and satisfied throughout the day. 

This is the key to fat loss. I communicate this with my clients regularly and it’s what allows them to consistently lose fat, build muscle, and do so without feeling like they’re on a diet eating like the little bird that sits on their back porch every morning. 

Losing weight, keeping it off, and doing so without being a starving, miserable grouch comes down to an abundance of high volume foods that are lower in calories. 

Aside from selecting foods that are high in volume, having larger meals per day is a key to feeling fuller for longer. 

Imagine spreading 6 pounds of food per day across 3 meals compared to 6. 

I don’t know about you, but eating 2 pounds of food in one sitting sounds like a lot. 

When you eat large, square meals, you are going to feel fuller for longer. Especially when each meal contains at least 30g of protein and a few hundred grams of fruits and/or vegetables. 

Aside from having more high volume, low calorie food in your diet and enjoying 3-4 square meals per day, there’s another thing you can do to reduce hunger. 

Circadian Rhythm

Want to take a wild guess as to why you’re craving things a lot and feeling hungry more often than usual? 

You’re not sleeping enough. 

Research suggests that less than 7 hours of sleep can begin affecting ghrelin and leptin hormone levels. 

If you read those two words and imagined a couple of gremlins, I got you. 

Ghrelin is the hunger hormone, and leptin is the fullness hormone. 

Getting 6-7 hours (what some consider great sleep) of sleep, can begin causing mild increases in ghrelin and decreases in leptin; more hunger and less time feeling full. 

After 1-2 nights of 6 hours of sleep or less, significant changes in ghrelin and leptin can be seen. 

Long story short, less sleep turns you into a tired and hungry grump. 

Want to take a guess at what contributes to the quality of your sleep? 

Meal frequency. 

Meal frequency plays a large role in your circadian rhythm, the cycle that helps your body know when it’s time to be awake and when it’s time to be asleep. 

Your body has an internal clock on some level, and some “cogs” that help keep that internal clock regulated are the meals you eat, so sticking to regular meal times can be helpful. 

It doesn’t have to be strict, such as eating breakfast at 8am on the dot every morning. Think of your eating times as windows. 

For example, breakfast between 8am-9am, lunch between 12pm-1pm, and dinner between 5pm-6pm. 

In addition to having regular meal windows, it can be beneficial to avoid eating two hours before bed. It's been shown that eating closer to bed can affect the quality of your sleep. 

And we all know that there is a difference between getting seven hours of poor sleep and seven hours of great sleep.  

When you prioritize meal frequency and eating windows, your sleep will be better. And when your sleep is better, your mood, energy, hunger, and satiety is better.

Muscle Growth and Recovery

Meal timing may arguably have a more important role on muscle growth and recovery than meal frequency, but the way I see it, meal frequency and meal timing go hand-in-hand.. 

But I will be honest with you, meal timing is definitely one of those “don’t miss the forest for the trees” scenarios. 

Overall, your total daily protein intake is what matters most. 

If you’re consistently consuming 7 small meals a day but you’re consistently underconsuming protein, smaller meals won’t matter. 

If you’re consistently consuming 3 larger meals a day but you’re consistently underconsuming protein, larger meals won’t matter. 

Generally, aiming for a minimum of .7g per pound of bodyweight is best when prioritizing muscle growth, recovery, and preventing muscle loss. 

And yes, even if your main goal is fat loss and you’re afraid of getting “bulky” you should still be aiming for a minimum of .7g per pound of bodyweight each day.

If your goal is fat loss, an easy number to get is 1g protein per pound of goal body weight. 

So if you weigh 200lbs, but you want to weigh 150lbs, aim for 150g protein per day. 

The meal frequency you set for yourself will help you make sure you get enough protein each day. 

When you have a daily protein target of 150g per day, and you eat three meals per day, you know you need at least 50g protein in each meal to hit your daily target. 

This is called chunking, where you take something big and break it down into small chunks in order to better understand it.

It's far easier to get 150g of protein each day when you are only focused on getting 50g in the next meal, compared to eating throughout the day and hoping you hit 150g when the day is finally over.

And generally speaking, whole foods that are high in protein tend to be satiating. The more protein you have in each meal, the higher the chances are you feel satisfied and you’re not feeling ravenous going into the next meal. 

Now what if you’re consistently getting enough protein in? Does meal timing matter then?

Yes, it does. 

Your pre and post workout meals are arguably the most important meals to prioritize proper nutrient timing, especially if you train first thing in the morning. 

Ideally, your pre and post workout meals should have at least 15g carbohydrate and at least .3g protein per kilogram of bodyweight (lbs / 2.2 = kg). 

But if you’re like me, you don’t like the feeling of food in your stomach while you train. 

If you have to train first thing in the morning before eating, do your absolute best to have something light so you can get your pre workout nutrients such as a rice cake, graham cracker, or piece of fruit and protein shake in water (I know, the water won’t taste as good as with milk, but may be better to sip on throughout your workout). 

Now, if you insist that you won’t eat anything before your workout first thing in the morning, though I strongly advise against it to prevent muscle breakdown, I won’t fight you to the death on it. But, I will stress the importance of getting plenty of protein within two hours after your workout.  

And for those of you wondering.. No, your workout won’t be wasted if you don’t have a protein shake immediately after your workout. 

Just eat a high protein meal as soon as you can within two hours if you’re training fasted. 

With all of that said, meal frequency may have an impact on your body composition through meal and nutrient timing. 

In my opinion, this one isn’t worth spending a lot of time on, as getting your total daily protein intake is most important. But if you want to optimize your results a bit more, spend some time tweaking your meal frequency to prioritize protein intake pre and post workout. My client Eric and I focused on this and his results speak for themselves. 

Piecing it All Together

We’ve spent some time going over meal frequency in order to answer the “how many meals should I eat per day?” question. 

Generally speaking, meal frequency plays an important role in weight management, hunger, satiety, circadian rhythm, as well as muscle growth and recovery. 

Here’s the bottom line:

There is no one size fits all for meal frequency. Do whatever you need to do to get enough protein in, keep hunger at bay, feel satisfied after each meal, have regular meal windows, and most importantly, enjoy your diet. 

If that means you have 6 meals per day, great. If that means you have 3 meals per day, that’s great too. 

It is my opinion that 3-4 larger, more protein dense meals will be best for most people who want to feel full, hit their protein target, and have a rhythm to their eating without feeling like they’re eating all day long. 

I have been training and coaching people for over 10 years now, and I have only seen a handful of scenarios where smaller meals were better for the individual compared to 3 to 4 larger meals.

The only way you can figure out what works best for you is to be consistent with something, see how you feel, and tweak it if it doesn't work.

There's no teacher like experience

Thanks for reading. I hope this helped. 

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know below or send an email to adam@poehlmannfitness.com

Cheers,

Adam 

PS. If you want more information on coaching and what it’s like to work with me, you can learn more here.

Be a Better YOU

My wife and I watched “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix the other night. I usually don’t watch something and begin recommending it to everyone I know, but I did with this one. This documentary shed some light on the truth of the monster we have created in social media and what we need to do in order to raise our awareness and combat it.

If you have kids, have kids that are addicted to their phones, have social media yourself, whatever it may be, it’s worth the watch.

Anyway, the main premise of the documentary was that social media has become a place for fake news and false information to gain traction and influence our minds. This is heavily related to the division we feel in our country.

But as I was watching the documentary, my fitness mind came to the forefront. I began to look at what they were saying through a health and fitness lens.

Sure, social media has clearly allowed more hate, division, and fake news to spread rapidly, causing us to lose our grip on the reality of our world we’re actually living in.

But I would also argue that social media has clearly allowed more self loathing to spread rapidly, causing us to destroy ourselves from the inside out.

Young impressionable girls are subconsciously being taught that their self-worth comes from pleasing men and using their body to do so. They begin to use and expose their bodies for likes and views. And if they don’t get those likes and views, they fall into the trap of believing that their body is not good enough, therefor THEY are not good enough.

They begin this vicious cycle of comparison, self-hate through diet and exercise, and then comparison again.

“My breasts aren’t big enough.”

“My butt isn’t shaped like hers.”

“Her waist is so much smaller than mine.”

I’m not a father, nor do I have any relatives that are young girls. But as I sit and write this, I feel so, so sad. My heart sinks with grief and sorrow for young girls out there.

As they critique themselves, they begin working to change in order to be more like another person and less like themselves. They start going to the gym to have a butt like so and so person. They start saving up money for botox so they can have lips like so and so person.

It is so heart wrenching.

The same goes for young boys.

“Girls will only like me if I have abs like he does.”

“Girls seem to like his earring. Maybe if I get one like that I’ll finally get the girls to like me.”

“My arms are so small, I want my arms to be like his.”

So they begin lifting, taking unnecessary supplements, and possibly even begin exploring steroids to look less like themselves and more like the other person.

This is all subconscious, of course. They aren’t telling themselves this directly. But don’t be mistaken, this is exactly what they are thinking even if they don’t know it.

And the issue doesn’t only lie in the mind of young boys and girls. It is present in all of our lives. I’ll be the first to admit that I fall into this trap.

“He is playing professional baseball, he is far more successful than me.”

“He gets to pitch in front of thousands of fans and live his dream. I guess I’m just not good enough for that.”

I’m aware that these thoughts come into my mind.

I’m willing to bet that you have some toxic thoughts, too.

Look, I had a direction when I began writing this, but right now in this moment I feel my hear aching for myself, for you, and for all the other people out there comparing themselves.

I’m just going to continue to write what my heart is calling me to write.

We mustn’t give into this toxic trap of comparison.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with improving yourself. Where the wrong lies is in the intention of why you want to improve yourself.

Are you aiming to improve yourself in order to be more like someone else you saw on your screen? If so, I have news for you. You will never be that person on the screen because you are NOT that person on the screen. You are YOU.

So instead, focus on improving yourself in order be the best version of YOU.

I fully believe that we were created with unique talents and gifts that were intended to be used in order to make our lives and other people’s lives better. So why not work on improving yourself in order to refine those talents and gifts so that this world can be a better place?

Being healthier and having more energy throughout the day will allow you to create better culture in your workplace. Being more fit may allow you to be more present with your children when they want to have play time with mommy or daddy. Being stronger in the gym will allow you to better learn how to mentally and physically overcome adversity in your life and your household. Being more mobile will keep you from injuries, allowing you to be more adventurous with your spouse.

I know that this is cheesy, but this world literally only has one of you, and this world is so much better off with you in it, living to your full potential.

There is no sense in working to be more like someone else. The world already has one of them.

It makes all the sense in the world to become the best, healthiest, fittest version of yourself because dammit, this world NEEDS you.

You were created with love and a purpose in mind. Don’t you dare undervalue that by comparing yourself to someone else.

That’s my heart today. Take it for what it’s worth.

Much love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life.

WANT MORE FREE CONTENT?

Download any of our guides for FREE in the “free” tab at the top of the page.

What You Need to Know About Fasted Cardio

Fasted cardio still seems to be a popular topic in the health and fitness space.

Many claim it is entirely useless.

Others say it is the key to losing body fat.

So which is it? Let’s find out together.

FASTED CARDIO: WHAT IS IT?

Fasted cardio is exactly what it sounds like. It is cardiovascular activity in a fasted state. Wake up, don’t eat, do some cardio. That’s what it is.

A common misconception, though, is that fasted cardio is moderate to intense cardio in a fasted state. This is never a great idea. When you wake up and your body is fasted, it has almost no quick energy to tap into for something that intense, and that can cause you to pass out. Not good.

Most fasted cardio is done at a very low-intensity state like walking and climbing the stairmaster.

FASTED CARDIO: WHAT DOES IT PROMISE?

The idea behind fasted cardio is that when doing activity in a fasted state, your body doesn’t have any readily available energy, so it is forced to tap into stored body fat.

While this may be true, we’re talking about a very minor difference in fat burned. To add to that, research shows that although the body may burn a bit more body fat during a fasted cardio session, a fed cardio session burns more calories during and after the session, which may contribute more to fat loss. And that leads us to the next thing we need to discuss.

THERE ARE MANY MOVING PARTS

You see, the processes behind fat loss can be oversimplified at times. It’s super easy for us to say that it all comes down to calories in vs. calories out, which it does, but there are a lot of behind the scene elements that influence calories in vs. calories out.

Hormones, stress, sleep, and more all influence the amount of calories we store and calories we burn. The reason I bring this up is because although fasted cardio may burn a teenie bit more body fat during the session, it’s not the magic fat loss solution.

In order to lose body fat, you need to make sure you’re creating an environment where you’re burning more calories than you are taking in.

If you do fasted cardio, but you’re not tracking your food intake and you’re overeating, you’re not going to lose fat.

If you do fasted cardio, but you’re losing sleep and chronically stressed, your body will be more prone to storing fat and you won’t lose fat.

Fasted cardio is a tool that can be used to get the last bit of fat off when all other resources have been utilized. It is a tool, but it should be a last ditch effort tool.

So, if you want to do fasted cardio, that’s fine. Just make sure you’re taking care of these big rocks first. And I’m willing to bet money that you’ll hit your goal just by focusing on these big rocks.

• Lift weights. Lifting weights, building muscle, and getting stronger all send a signal to your body telling it to burn more calories throughout the day.

• Manage stress. This looks different for all of us. I like to pray. Some meditate. Some go for a walk. Find a healthy way to decrease your stress.

• Get quality sleep. Too many of us are wired and tired. Before bed, (at least 1 hour before) go through a nighttime routine to let your body know it’s time to wind down. Make sure your room is cool and dark.

• Track your food intake. You won’t know what’s going on with your calories in vs. calories out until you track your food.

Fasted cardio can be a beneficial tool, but only when the big rocks have been addressed. 99% of the time, fasted cardio isn’t needed at all to lose fat.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life.

WANT MORE FREE CONTENT?

Download any of our guides for FREE in the “free” tab at the top of the page.