HOW MANY TIMES SHOULD WE REALLY EAT IN A DAY?

family eating

There are different schools of thoughts regarding the number of times to eat in a day. The traditional one which we are all used to is eating three square meals; a lot of people have what they even deem three square meals – which could be eating three large meals daily.

A lot of people snack up three times daily, while many mix it up with foods. Also, if you observe most times, you don’t get to follow the traditional eating pattern and you notice that you get to eat 4, 5, 6 times a day. Is it healthy? What does science and health experts have to say about this?

Ordinarily, the body is accustomed to being fed at regular intervals as evident in new-born babies who need to be fed constantly. According to Rujuta Diwekar – a nutritionist, eating at regular intervals reassures our bodies that nourishment is readily available and that it no longer has to convert every meal into future fuel i.e. fat.

There is this belief that eating less frequently is a good way of losing weight, but research has shown that eating just two meals a day isn’t a sustainable strategy for weight loss. According to Hana Kahleova, MD, PhD, of the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague: “When you cut back on calories, your metabolism slows down. But in this case, when people ate just two meals a day, their metabolisms didn’t decrease as much as they did when they ate more often—perhaps because their bodies worked harder to digest the bigger meals.”

More surprisingly, previous research has shown that eating regularly throughout the day helps regulate your blood sugar to keep your appetite under control; meaning you’re less likely to be tempted to overeat, which can help you maintain weight loss in the long run.

Pooja Makhija, a consulting nutritionist and clinical dietitian believes that digestion is the best way to burn calories and in turn easier to burn fat this way. According to Makhija, for every calorie you ingest, your body uses some to burn what you are eating. He suggests 6 to 8 times as the healthy number of times to eat a day. He cites that when you constantly provide fuel to your body, it means you are also tickling your body to work, keep working and keep burning.

Dr Shikha Sharma, a doctor and Wellness Expert also plies the same school of thought as he believes that eating six to eight meals a day and not three, is better because it boosts metabolism, controls blood sugar levels and helps in weight management.

According to Dr Shikha, “if we follow a six-meal-a-day plan and have a small meal around noon and another meal around 3 pm, our blood sugar level would be more stable, providing us with more energy for our workout. Cortisol, a hormone, breaks down body fat. However, if we eat a large, high-calorie meal, cortisol is produced in large quantities, but transports the fat from under the skin to deep within the abdominal cavity. This increases the risk of chronic diseases including abdominal obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Incorporating a six-meal-a-day plan into one’s routine decreases the magnitude of cortisol production.”

Though they all still maintain that it’s important to follow the rhythm of our body and not eat anyhow, exercising is just as important.

S.O.Z

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