A client of mine recently asked me a great question about meal timing and so I figured hey, why not cover it in a short article being that I’m sure that a bunch of other folks are curious about it too! The question was…
“Marcus, what are your thoughts on meal timing? I know you seem to be a calories in/calories out kind of guy, which makes complete logical sense to me, but there are all these apps out there trying to promote fasting hours, saying that if you eat all your calories within a certain window of time that that will help you lose weight. Is that true? Or is it true to at least not eat close to bedtime in order to promote fat loss?”
Okay, so there are a few questions layered in here and we’re going to address them all one by one. The first aspect of this question that I want to touch on is the ‘I know you seem to be a calories in/calories out kind of guy, which makes complete logical sense to me’…
I equate this to someone saying, ‘I know you seem to be a round earth kind of guy, which makes complete logical sense to me’…now, some folks still believe to this day that the earth is flat…similarly some folks still believe that calories in/calories out isn’t a fundamental law of thermodynamics i.e. energy cannot be created or destroyed, so…
Yes, I am a quote unquote ‘calories in/calories out kind of guy’ just like I am a round earth kind of guy.
Having said that, this DOES NOT mean that the quality of the calories that you eat doesn’t matter because it does, however…
Fat loss still does come down to calories in/calories out at the end of the day no matter how you spin it, even when we account for food quality…just like whether you are saving money, breaking even or going into the red comes down to how much money is coming into your account and how much money is going out. It makes complete logical sense as my client mentioned because it makes complete logical sense…she’s spot on!
The second part of the question is, ‘but there are all these apps out there trying to promote fasting hours, saying that if you eat all your calories within a certain window of time that that will help you lose weight. Is that true?’
The simplest way to think about this is via the following…let’s say that there are 3 identical versions of you with the exact same level of activity all eating 1500 calories per day from the exact same foods…
Version 1 eats 6 meals of 250 calories each.
Version 2 eats 3 meals of 500 calories each.
Version 3 eats 1 meal of 1500 calories total.
So all 3 versions are moving the exact same amount every day and they’re all eating 1500 calories in total from the exact same foods, the only difference is how the calories are dispersed i.e. 6 meals, 3 meals or 1 meal…who loses the most fat?
They all lose the exact same amount because…
It’s like saying, there are 3 versions of you that spend $1500 daily.
Version 1 spends $250 6 times.
Version 2 spends $500 3 times.
Version 3 spends $1500 all at once.
Who spends the most money?
They all spend the exact same amount, $1500 is $1500 no matter how ya split it up, point being…
It doesn’t matter how many times you eat per day for fat loss, what matters is how many total calories you consume, that’s the bottom line.
Now, if someone finds that having certain hours of the day where they eat and other hours where they don’t eat helps them reduce their total calorie intake from a lifestyle and adherence perspective, they will lose fat, but not because eating during specific hours has some sort of special fat burning effect because it doesn’t, the thing is…
That when most people reduce the amount of hours that they’re eating per day, they spontaneously reduce their total calorie intake and so they mistake correlation for causation being that the reason that they lost fat was because they ate fewer total calories, not because they had those calories between 8am and noon or noon and 4pm or 4pm and 8pm.
Taking this to the extreme…if you only eat 1 meal per day, so you fast for 23 out of 24 hours, but you still over eat calories in that single meal or hour, you will still gain body fat…the body does not care whether those calories were evenly spread throughout the day or eaten all at once…overeating is overeating, period.
Moving onto the last part of our question, ‘is it true to at least not eat close to bedtime in order to promote fat loss’…I am a fan of not eating too close to bedtime for sleep quality purposes being that eating too much and/or too close to bed very often reduces sleep quality via things like the night sweats or hot flashes as some folks refer to them, however…
Again, what matters for fat loss is total calories consumed and not what time of day that you eat them and so in our previous example like we touched on, you could technically eat all 1500 calories in 1 meal and go directly to bed and you’ll still lose the same amount of fat that the 6 meals per day version of you and the 3 meals per day version of you does.
Why is it that folks often find that when they stop eating close to bedtime, they lose body fat? Because this behaviour tends to reduce total calorie intake, also…
What types of foods do folks tend to eat later at night while they’re watching tv let’s say? Typically it’s super calorie dense snack foods and desserts and so if someone stops doing that because they have a rule that they don’t eat after 6pm for example, chances are their calorie intake is going to go down…this is another classic example of mistaking correlation for causation.
It’s like thinking that firefighters cause fires because when you see a fire, you also see firefighters.
Similarly, if you were to stop drinking alcohol after 6pm, your alcohol intake would almost certainly decrease because most folks drink the majority of their booze after 6pm.
If you want to lose fat, it’s all about creating a calorie deficit and whatever sort of eating pattern that makes that as doable as possible for you as an individual is a great way to go…whether that’s having 10 meals a day, 1 meal a day, intermittent fasting, time restricted eating or whatever…these are just different strategies to create a calorie deficit!
Food quality still matters a TON for health purposes, but also because high quality foods i.e. single ingredient whole foods are infinitely more filling than hyper palatable highly processed foods and so if you have say 1500 calories to work with per day, I would recommend getting the vast majority of those calories from single ingredient whole foods because you will feel full.
On the other hand, if you have that same 1500 calories to work with per day but you eat them from highly processed foods, you’re going to be hungry and if you feel hungry, good luck sticking to your calorie deficit because hunger is not sustainable…when your nutrition strategy is set up properly for fat loss, you should not feel hungry, you should feel super satiated!
How do I structure meal timing for my clients? However they want…most of my clientele tend to prefer to eat 2-3 meals per day with 1-2 snacks, but there is no right or wrong answer in terms of what time you eat or how many times you eat, so feel free to play around with this based on priorities, preferences, schedule, lifestyle etc. because…
As long as you’re in a calorie deficit, you will lose fat and if you are not losing fat, you are not in a calorie deficit…plain and simple.
Like I mentioned before and I really want to drive this point home…I still strongly recommend that you get the vast majority of your calories from single ingredient whole foods for health and for satiation purposes. Quantity and quality matter for sustainable and healthy fat loss.
