I wanna know if we absorb more of what we eat doing IF or with your average 4 meals per day.
My intuition tells me our digestive system would be more efficient with higher meal frequency and smaller quantities of food.
But maybe we spend more calories keeping our digestive system active all day long?
I can’t imagine our organs being able to absorb all the food in one take but when you spread it out in smaller portions should be easier?
I’m not asking this from a dietary perspective, just from an efficiency point of view. Having a limited amount of calories to consumer per day, what would be the smartest choice to absorb most of it?
These claims of “efficiency” about your body processing calories differently based on meal timing or what your “organs can absorb” have been debunked and there is no data to support. Look up Kevin Halls studies at the NIH.
It doesn’t matter to your body, you put calories in, it’s going to use those calories for it’s needed purposes. You do not get “more” calories from food because you are fasted. Calories are the same for people doing OMAD and eating 6 times a day. The body can’t make up more calories out of thin air. Your body doesn’t digest them differently based on meal timing.
Want to increase how many calories you burn? Add to your TDEE - aka adding exercise (but even then, people WAY overestimate how many calories you burn through exercise - it’s not as much as commonly assumed.)
“Smartest choice to absorb” - I don’t even know what this means. Eat in whatever frequency works for you.
Your body does not waste energy, it always tries to be as efficient as it can. IF really has nothing to do with calories it is more focused on insulin and the hormones associated in a fed or fasted state. If you want higher insulin which makes it easier to access carbohydrates then eat often, if you want less insulin and to be able to burn fat easier in a calorie deficit eat less often and less carbs. Either way your body will make sure it gets all the energy it can from anything you ingest.
I read in the Fit for life book, www.fitforlife.com, that our digestion has 3 stages. These are on a time schedule.Morning, midday and early evening. The functions of the body are reliant on these functions being fed certain nutrients to process for the needs of the body. Elimination, appropriation and assimilation. When we feed our body at certain times and combinations of foods, the enzymes that are secreted are there to digest that particular food substance. Alkaline and acid have great purpose in our body. But when they are in the stomach at the same time, they are unproductive and do nothing to breakdown our food. Eating watery fruit as a cleansing food in the morning enhances our digestion, elimination, by cleaning out yesterday’s undigested food. Afternoon our body needs energy, appropriation, to keep going, that comes in veggies and grains. Alkaline is present to digest this combination. In the evening, we go into rest and repair function, assimulation, here we need protein and veggies as nutrition to build our broken down muscles and tissues back into wellness, acid is the enzyme present now. Snacks in between times could be nuts and seeds or veggies. Processed foods interfere in the digestion process too. The body doesn’t know what enzymes to send to the stomach, because the food is no longer recognizable. I do believe in intermittent fasting, but those terms are a trendy way to say, I’m not hungry yet, because my body is still digesting yesterday’s undigested food. Lol 11 to 12 is when I first start my digestion process. My elimination has completed and now it time for appropriation, distribution and energy enhancing. This is when I start with a fruit smooth. About 2 hours later I have veggies and grain, that holds me over until about 530. I try to finish eating all food by 7pm. That way my body is still vertical and moving around, and gravity helps the digestion process function more efficiently. I hope this helps.
This is an “appeal to cavemen” argument but if you are having a hard time imagining it just think about the cavepeople. A successful omnivore when food is difficult to find is likely to be damn good at holding on to an unexpected calorie bonanza. When people don’t get to choose when they eat, it’s a clear evolutionary advantage to be able to take on an unexpected surplus when it comes.
High calorie hasn’t always been a sign of junk food, calories used to be an essential nutrient people were deficient in. (And still are in some places.)