Mike has since SIGNIFICANT changes thanks to his improve diet and CF

So much has been made of meal frequency. Plenty of old school and new school trainers recommend eating small meals, every 2 hours in order to keep the metabolic furnace “stoked” and burning calories all day long.

Another oldie, but goodie is “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” If you want to lose weight, don’t skip breakfast because it gets your engine running right off the bat.

Research has shown that these strategies may be no more effective than 3 squares a day or waiting until lunch to get started.

Many in the fitness world are now discovering something completely new – intermittent fasting, or IF for short. Small scale and anecdotal research shows that IF may be an effective and powerful tool not only for burning fat but also for building muscle. A study from 2007 divided dieters into 2 groups – one eating one meal per day and one eating three with equivalent calories and showed that the group eating only one meal lost more bodyweight and body fat and gained more lean muscle tissue.

There may be other health and cognitive benefits as well, decreasing inflammation and increasing neuro-plasticity or the ability to learn and form new neural connections. This ARTICLE summarizes some of the practices and benefits that are currently understood.

There are caveats, for sure. Those with hypoglycemia may not benefit from reducing meal frequency, but all other things being equal, do you see a benefit for yourself?

Found from crossfitla.com

This entry was posted on August 3, 2010 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.