The ideal dietary practice for weight loss
Eating patterns act as a catalyst in maintaining good body health
When it comes to diet and health, especially losing weight, most of the focus has been on what you eat and how much you're eating. While eating fewer calories than you're taking in is key to weight loss, another important factor is how you eat — such as how many times you eat a day. In recent years, much attention has been put on meal patterns. While some diets suggest that the key to losing weight is to only eat one meal a day, other popular diets suggest people should eat up to six small meals a day. Many of us have also been brought up to eat three meals per day — so which is best? Many diet plans also follow a three-square-meals eating pattern. Having such a rigid approach may leave people feeling hungry between meals. This can lead to people snacking between meals, potentially overeating in the process.
Subsequent studies which looked at the effect of eating between two and four meals per day have failed to show whether nibbling or gorging is more beneficial to weight loss. Some studies show that eating more frequently helps with weight loss, but this can also increase hunger and impair your ability to clear fat from the blood — an important factor in cardiovascular disease risk.
But the way we eat has changed over many decades, with more of us snacking or following other patterns of eating, such as intermittent fasting, which advocate decreasing the number of meals eaten or leaving more time between meals. It's thought that such eating patterns will help the body better lose weight.
Some people choose to intentionally skip meals, such as breakfast, while still following a normal pattern of eating (as opposed to intermittent fasting, where they may still eat three meals but in a shorter period, such as eight hours). While skipping meals may or may not affect how much we eat, it may have other metabolic benefits that come alongside an extended fast without adversely affecting appetite.
Another factor that might affect your weight is the time of day that we eat. Research has found that eating later is associated with eating more overall, which may hinder weight loss. Some research has shown that eating later in the day is associated with higher bodyweight.