Sorry for the title, I really don’t know how to explain it propertly so here’s an example - if I burn 2000 kcal / day, if i were to eat ALL 2000kcal on my breakfast, and not eat anything else for the rest of the day, would i have different results compared to eating 4 times 500kcal?
I couldn’t find anything on this kind of approach and i assume eating 2000 would lead to body converting it into fat which in the end would result in having harder time digesting it? Rather than eating 500 and digisting it on the go, then getting another part, and so on.
The diet protocol you’re talking about is called OMAD, which is a form of fasting.
The data piled up this decade (and years before) have consistently pointed towards one thing: if you equate proteins and calories (per day) across diets, the results are the exact same. There is NO (significant) metabolic advantage to any diet.
(Although, one thing that matters is the protein distribution throughout the day. Eating that much protein in a single meal is not likely to be the same as eating it in, say, 3-4 meals. OMAD may not be the best out there to maintain muscle mass, let alone building muscle.)
Of course, OMAD is a valid strategy. Intermittent Fasting is a valid strategy. But the diet zealots really like to say that “______ diet has ______ benefits”, like low inflammation, autophagy, low insulin resistance, “improved metabolism” (whatever the hell that even means), etc. ALL of these proposed “benefits” are directly/indirectly tied to fat loss.
The ONE thing that makes a diet better than the other is individual preference. Is it possible for you to eat a 2000 calorie meal in a sitting and not eat for the rest of the day? A lot of students do it already.
(Some data on Intermittent Fasting in general: 32986097, 32363896, 34733895)
Short answer yes, the timing of eating affects metabolism. I believe that the nutrition field used to broadly agree with your idea that eating small meals more often was healthier, but that has been challenged more recently. The concept of intermittent fasting actually goes in the opposite direction, encouraging a smaller feeding window. It has been shown in mice, whose genetic makeups were identical and diets could be tightly controlled, that eating the same number of calories spread over the day lead to far less healthy outcomes. Here is a review showing that eating all of your calories in a less than 12 hour period is associated with decreased obesity, cardiometabolic disease, liver disease, and improved sleep and quality of life:
https://academic.oup.com/edrv/advance-article/doi/10.1210/endrev/bnab027/6371193
My understanding is, on the one hand, yes – many people practice intermittent fasting, time-restricted feeding, or OMAD and swear by it, and there are clinically proven metabolic benefits to ensuring that all your eating is done in a small enough time window so that you’re in a fully fasted state for at least part of the day. u/HansMoleman4prez listed an article that Satchin Panda, a well-known researcher in the field, has contributed to.
On the other hand, the benefits are probably a little oversold in the case of humans. The most robust evidence comes from animal studies, especially those involving mice and rats. Rodents on a daily 16:8 fasting/eating schedule essentially don’t gain weight despite unlimited access to food – something about the extended fast seems to improve their leptin sensitivity and prevent fat accumulation.
But humans aren’t mice or rats, which have much faster metabolisms. An equivalent interval for humans would be like fasting multiple days per week, which isn’t sustainable.
The Okinawain(spelling?) and other “Blue Zone,” Humans often practice forms of fasting.
Give that term a Google in combination with “Fasting,” and or “OMAD,” and enjoy the rabbit-hole.
Here’s a link to get you started
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/okinawa-diet
It matters what time of day your calories are in because the body is more ready for food during the mid morning - early afternoon. Doing OMAD with one meal at 10 pm won’t work nearly as well as one meal earlier in the day.
https://youtu.be/aAIA7M87IK4
^ this researcher also has an update somewhere on the same podcast
so, one meal a day (OMAD) isn’t intermittent fasting (IF), as others have explained. but here’s an interesting paper from nature comparing continuous energy restriction (CER, traditional dieting) to IF.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-020-0525-7
Results: For the 109 individuals who completed the 12-month follow-up (82 female, 15 male, mean BMI 33 kg/m2), weight decreased over time with no differences between week-on and week-off and continuous energy restriction or 5:2 and continuous energy restriction with −4.5 ± 4.9 kg for continuous energy restriction, −2.8 ± 6.5 kg for week-on, week-off and −3.5 ± 5.1 kg for 5:2. Total cholesterol reduced over time and glucose, HDL, LDL and triglycerides were unchanged.
Discussion and conclusion: Intermittent energy restriction was as successful in achieving modest weight loss over a 24-month period as continuous energy restriction.
yes, you would have differerent result. Every time you eat you produce insuline and store sugar as fat. To lower insuline and open the fat cells to release the fat takes time. around 12 hours. So if you eat once a day you are half the day in fat burn mode. If you eat 4 times a day you are not at all. so yes, it matters. Its called omad, one meal a day and its intermittent fasting technique. Digestion is a bit harder but you can build it up, the body can have it. Keep the carbohydrates low as possible and avoid vegetable oils. Good luck.
For weight loss, nope. It doesn’t matter. Whether you eat 2000kcals in one sitting or space it out throughout the day into 4-5 meals and/or snacks, there is absolutely no drop or increase in metabolism, and no difference overall in weight loss, weight maintenance, or weight gain independent of energy balance.
Consuming 2000kcals in one sitting can be difficult, depending on what foods or beverages are consumed (they would have to be hyper palatable, energy dense foods/beverages).
There is such a thing as windowed eating (i.e. intermittent fasting) and this can have a favourable outcome on weight loss. But this is not through any “magical” mechanism or metabolism “hack” - weight loss often occurs as the timeframe in which you can eat all of your meals/calories is shorter, (e.g. only eating from 12noon to 8pm) so more often than not, you don’t end up eating as much throughout that time as you feel more satiated.
The only time meal frequency has any effect on body composition is when you are looking to gain lean body mass, so an overall higher protein intake, and multiple protein feedings spaced throughout the day will aid your body in building lean tissue.
What you are talking about is the difference between spaced meals and intermittent fasting.
Your assumptions are actually backwards. OMAD (one meal a day, or a 4 hour eating window) actually has decreased chances of going all to fat.
You want to research and look at the information surrounding intermittent fasting.
Eating multiple times a day and spacing meals as far apart as you can means you keep your insulin levels elevated throughout the whole day, which decreases fat burning and fat usage for energy and it impacts hunger regulation as well. The more often you eat the more often your body wants to eat. Regardless if it’s full.
I have done OMAD involuntarily as a kid when i was in scout camp session for 29 days during summer holidays where people were primarily meat eaters and the cuisine was non veg, even the veggies were fried in the fat leftover from the meat,
i was a strict vegetarian (not even eggs) at the time and would only drink 500 ml milk sachets they had at the shops in the nearby village, would drink like 3 liters of full fat milk a day (6 sachets coasted for 90 rupees), i liked milk as we had cows back home and i had no lactose problem.
other sources were, some raw veggies like carrots, capsicum, etc and 2 bananas banana we got,
i still gained weight, i was a 56 KG turd at 5’6 and after 16 days, i weighed like 60 kgs.
Metabolism change from calorie timing change? sure but the numbers matter, maybe 30-40 calories at most.
Eating 2000 kcal at once and not eating during the day will put you in a catabolic state. After a few hours your cortisol will go up, and after a few more your glucose levels will rise due to cortisol. This state is dangerous because you can get diabetic in the long term and it will affect your sleep quality by a lot. It will also decrease your metabolism, so you will lose weight even slower. What you need to focus on is food that is easy to digest and don´t have much volume, like sugar. Having a diet full of sugar with low fat, which is simply converted to glucose with a lower glycemic index than starches, will increase your metabolism.