Vhi - Fiction ????????

Brown_Eyed_Girl

Fiction: Eat three meals a day

Fact: No doubt your jaws are dropping on this one. Despite what your mother told you, and even what her mother may have told her, the number of meals that your body needs is not arbitrary. Nutrition experts say you should eat only when you are hungry. Because we all have different body types and different calorie requirements, one person may need to eat more meals to satisfy their hunger, while another person may need less. It just depends on your metabolism. So how many times a day should you eat? Doctors now say you should eat only when you’re hungry.

Just took the above extract from the VHI newsletter issued today, it certainly calls into question the 6 meals a day strategy ........... what do yis think ????

Dragan

It effectively calls into play every eating strategy. For me, the simple argument of "everyone is different" holds no weight, and doctors advising people to eat when they are hungry makes very little sense. The problem with people being overweight is that they are unable to interpret when they are actually hungary and so just eat as a pass time.

For me, the 5 to 6 meals a day strategy makes sense. Sure, we need different calorific amounts depending on our weight and body composition but once you figure that out you just work out your meals from there.

Multiple small meals goes a long way towards dealing with unplanned snacking which is a major problem for most people. I suggest the VHI goes back to paying for peoples trips to the docs, and stop putting out stupid leaflets that don't really offer any help at all.

t-ha

Brown_Eyed_Girl wrote:

Doctors now say you should eat only when you’re hungry.

This reminds me of the thread detailing Paul McKenna's dieting advice (stop eating once you're not hungry anymore etc.). It reminds me of that because it does have some merit & could concievably be the right thing for a few people in certain situations.

It certaintly is nowhere near as good advice as the kind of optimised nutritional strategies that get discussed here and elsewhere on other fitness boards. Using myself as an example, if I eat sugary crap and lots of simple carb sources, I get constant hunger pangs even though I might have eaten 5,000kcals or more that day (this is due to blood sugar levels rising and then dropping ot below baseline). If I eat a big plate of vegetables I feel full even though I've likely only eaten a much smaller amount of calories.

That's just a simple example of how satiety (how satisfied you are after a meal) and calorie content can vary dramatically depending on what you eat. There are also other issues that can affect appetite, such as over-training, not sleeping enough, fibre intake & gastric emptying rate, hydration level etc. As a consequence, someone looking for the best results from their diet would be foolish to leave it to hunger alone to decide when, what and how much to eat.

I'd also like to add that the '6 meal a day' thing is kind of overdone too. What I mean by that is that people seem to have latched onto it, even making it a dieting dogma, without really understanding why you would have 6 meals a day instead of 3. Personally the amount of meals I have on a given day varies.

g'em

t-ha wrote:

This reminds me of the thread detailing Paul Daniels dieting advice (stop eating once you're not hungry anymore etc.).

Paul McKenna perhaps?!?!?

g'em

Brown_Eyed_Girl wrote:

So how many times a day should you eat? Doctors now say you should eat only when you’re hungry.

There is some truth to that, but the reality of it is, not many people are actually able to differentiate true hunger from thirst, or boredom eating, or habitual eating. Like t-ha said, eating the wrong kinds of foods will lead to cravings from fluctuating insulin levels. Daily exercise and physical effort will also play a part. I eat consistently and of reasonably large volume, but I'm eating clean foods. If I have a heavy training session that leaves me particularly hungry I'll feed my body with what it needs.

The target audience for a statement like that though probably aren't heavy gym go-ers, and would probably be better advised on how to eat healthy foods in the first place. You generally find that in order to get to grips with what proper hunger is, you need to wipe your palate clean and show your body what real food is. After a short time your body will thank you for it and you learn when you can eat and when you just need to drink a litre of water to stave off a temporary craving.

t-ha

g'em wrote:

Paul McKenna perhaps?!?!?

Damn you. Damn you all to hell.