A good reason not to eat multiple meals a day:

Hey Fitness Friends,

Today we're going to open up a can of worms and talk about the top reason why you shouldn't be eating 4-6 meals a day. Now, I know, over the past few decades it's been the in vogue thing to recommend constant grazing. I've done it myself. In fact, back in my bodybuilding days I tried the grazing method for a long time and it never worked. I never had the energy that it promised, instead I felt sluggish all the time (hey, digestion takes up more energy than anything else that you can do, if you're constantly digesting things how can you have huge amounts of energy?). It never really leaned me out. And, it lead my to some very serious hypoglycemia problems. Then I spent close to a decade following Ori Hofmekler's once a day eating and I had the opposite effect. I competed as a professional athlete with great success, I was full of energy, I never got sick, I never was sluggish, I walked around at a 5-7 percent body fat without trying and more. Now a days I stick to eating 2-3 times a day and I'm stronger, fitter and healthier than ever.

With that in mind let's talk a little bit about multiple meal a day grazing.

First let's look at one of the main arguments for grazing all day. You'll often times hear advocates saying, "Horses graze all day and, in the wild, they are lean and free of extraneous fat." And that's true. But, the last time I checked humans weren't the same genus let alone species as horses. In fact, we're way different. You know what other animals graze all day long? Rhinos, Hippos and cows. And none of them will ever be described as lean. Along with that, predatory animals such as tigers, wolves, jaguars and cheetahs eat once a week and they are lean and fat free in the wild as well.

Second, you'll hear a lot of grazing advocates talking about how you don't want to skip a meal because it'll throw your metabolism down the shitter. Guess what? You have to fast for around 72 hours, that's three days, for you metabolism to start slowing down. In other words, if you only eat once or twice in a day, it's not going to screw up your metabolism.

So, where did the multiple meals a day method come about? Most humans throughout history have eaten between 1-3 times a day, so why did the multiple meals thing come up? The answer lies in the name, John Parillo. John was competing in both powerlifting and bodybuilding and he noticed that, even though they carried a little more body fat, the powerlifters he knew had more muscle, better quality muscle and where a shitton stronger than the bodybuilders that he knew. So he took the powerlifting method of constant eating and mixed in the theory of making sure that every calorie ingested was natural and clean, then threw some pharmaceutical help into the mix in an effort to help bodybuilders get as gigantic as they could. And, viola. All of the sudden bodybuilders that used to walk on stage at 220 pounds with a three percent body fat could now walk on stage at 265 pounds with a three percent body fat.

Now, if you're looking to get as huge as possible and are willing to use some drug help, go ahead, the multiple meal a day plan will probably give you some great results.

But, here is the biggest reason why I'm not a fan.

Now, I could go on and on about many reasons why I'm not a fan, but I'm just going to talk about one today. For that one reason we have to delve into how the body works.

When you eat a typical meal you'll send messages to your pancreas that it needs to start releasing insulin into the bloodstream. this insulin will shuttle nutrients from your food into the cells of your body. As insulin finishes it's job, your brain will send a message that your body needs blood sugar. Blood sugar is released and it finishes up insulin's job and wipes up any left over insulin. From there you'll hopefully have a few hours of no digestive activity, this allows your insulin and blood sugar receptors time to recharge, as well as the receptors for leptin, ghrelin, epinephrine and norepinephrine. This is how it's supposed to happen.

Now, when we load up on multiple meals this is what happens. You release more and more insulin into your blood system, wearing out your insulin receptors and leading to insulin resistance (which leads to tremendous body fat gains). This means that in order to get the same results later your boy will have to release even more insulin, which will continue to wear out the insulin receptors, causing you to have to release even more amounts insulin later to do the same job. This also means that your body has to release more blood sugar to do the same job as before, thus wearing down your blood sugar receptors. This leads to your blood becoming more syrup like, rather than water like, which can lead to stroke and heart attack. As your body releases more and more insulin and more and more blood sugar and continues to wear the respective receptors down this leads to body fat gain, hypoglycemia, heart disease and stroke.

Along with this, having blood sugar and insulin resistance, and fighting to keep them stable is known by a pretty well known name. That's right: diabetes.

This is one of the main reasons why the completely preventable forms of diabetes have skyrocketed in the past few decades. And it's also why you see a huge amount of non-obese people getting these forms of diabetes.

Constantly pumping up your insulin and blood sugar levels while wearing out their receptor sights is a huge health risk. Not to mention wearing out the adrenal receptors, the leptin receptors and the ghrelin receptors.

So, stick to eating 1-3 meals a day, make sure that they have some time in between them and I can guarantee that you'll feel better, perform better, look better, and be better. Now, go out and train smart, heavy and hard and create your greatness.

Yours in strength and health,

Brett