Can You Lose Weight by Eating More Often?

Is six meals a day the secret to losing weight?

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A lot of people believe that eating more frequently boosts your metabolism. I debunked this in the first year of the Nutrition Diva podcast, which was (can you believe it?) ten years ago. The research that I reviewed back in 2008 for my episode on Metabolism Myths simply didn’t support the notion that you could burn more calories simply by dividing your daily intake into smaller, more frequent meals.

But our understanding of human nutrition is constantly evolving and it’s always worth revisiting those stances in light of newer evidence. In The Abs Diet, author David Zinczenko claims that eating six meals a day will help you reveal that six-pack you’d like to flaunt. (Due to inflation, we now strive for an eight pack, but back then, an abdominal six-pack was considered sufficient.)

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“You have to eat more if you want to lose more,” he writes, “[And] there’s science to support the fact that more meals work.” He then describes two specific studies to prove that eating more frequently will help you burn more fat.

What's the proof for six meals a day?

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