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The Meal Frequency Myth

Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Meal frequency isn’t really a topic that comes up too often when talking about optimal nutrition as it seems that these days no one questions the fact that six meals a day is optimal if you’re serious about your physique goals. But is it?

My answer would be, optimal for what?

This tends to be one of those long-held-to beliefs that says that the more often you eat, the more fired up your metabolism is. In that context – no. It’s not.

Metabolism is determined by the total energy intake, not by how many meals you get it in.

2000 in 4 meals vs. 2000 in 8 meals is still 2000 calories and your body still has to spend the energy to process that same 2000 calories.

Myth! Myth! Myth! (and one with much research to show it – 24-hr indirect calorimetry, etc.) Some of the intermittent fasting guys, such as Brad Pilon and his Eat Stop Eat program for example have gone into more scientific detail explaining why meal frequency doesn’t hold any magical fat-loss benefits.

The idea stems from something called the Thermic Effect of Food (one part of total metabolism), which is basically the energy cost to digest incoming energy (this differs for the various macronutrients). So the idea is that the more often you eat, the more TEF goes up and the more the metabolism goes up. The problem with this is that it’s a bit of a misrepresentation as TEF is actually correlated with the amount of calories in the meal, and therefore total calories at the end of the day.

Rather, it seems that an inconsistent meal frequency is what has potential negative effects.

So from a direct fat-loss standpoint, there isn’t really an advantage to 8 meals vs. say 4-5. There are however other advantages you could potentially argue for:

  • More stable blood sugar
  • Possible health benefits
  • Control of hunger
  • When calories are very high (easier to get them in with more feedings rather than less)
  • And subsequently, dietary compliance, which is the key to any diet.

There’s no disadvantage to a high meal frequency that I can think of, so if you prefer it, stick with it. If you find it hard, you can cut back on the meal number and just make your meals a bit bigger.

(Note – that doesn’t mean all your calories in one meal per day.)

I still eat 6x/day and I use 5-6/day with clients as well. The only time I go lower is if they complain that they can’t eat that often. For me it’s just more convenient to eat frequently. I work from home and have access to food whenever I want, so it’s a no brainer for me. For others, who are very busy, and simply don’t have the same amount of available time, less meals is likely going to mean better dietary compliance.

Meal frequency should be assessed on an individual basis and meal number for the day should be decided based on what best fits into a person’s lifestyle.

By Erik Ledin

www.leanbodiesconsulting.com

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Posted in Nutrition | 4 Comments »

Muscle Building Nutrition Q&A – Part 4

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Ok, so we’ve established answers to the following questions in the first three parts of this series so far:
1. Would I have to do a bulk?
2. How long would I bulk for?

Alright, how about some practical steps? We’re not going to get into the training aspect of this right now as it’s a rather varied topic, so we’ll just keep the focus on nutrition – which really is what will be the final determinant of gains. By that I mean, I don’t care how hard you’re training, if you’re not eating enough to support muscle growth, you’re not going to be gaining size. Period. (exception to the rule – newbies and those new to ‘effective training’)

To go back to another point made in one of the previous posts – expect to gain at least some bodyfat. If you expect to stay lean, expect to stay the same. I’ll give you a few case examples:

1. I was emailing back and forth with a client prospect who has been solely focused on muscle gain for many, many months. She works with another trainer. In our communications, she ended up sending me her pre- and current ‘bulking’ pictures for review. First thing I noticed? Nothing. Literally, I couldn’t tell a difference at all. I asked her what the difference in weight was. The answer? One pound. I believe this was over the course of about nine months. ONE POUND. Now, it’d be great if there was some massive recompositioning here but there wasn’t – no visible changes. I questioned her on this and she said her trainer wants to her stay lean while gaining size.

The results show how effective that strategy is.

2. A client of my own who I worked with for a little over a year. We did a few cut/bulk cycles and yes she gained some body fat during the bulks. But she had a great mindset for all of it (vital necessity in my opinion) and had the big picture in front of her the whole time. The numbers will make my point for me.

November 19/07

Weight – 110 lbs

Waist – 30 1/4

Hips – 33 3/4

Thighs – 17

Chest – 31 1/2

Arms – 9 1/2

Calf – 10 1/2

Contrast that to her final biweekly:

September 16/08

Weight – 109.4 lbs

Waist – 24 1/4

Hips – 33 1/4

Thighs – 17 3/4

Chest – 32 1/4

Arms – 10

Calf – 11

The most glaring point there is that she weighs basically the same as her starting weight – but her waist is 6 inches smaller. Now that’s a recomp.

A successful bulk is obviously determined by the results gained – hopefully you’ve added some muscle and not too much fat. It’s fine to gain, gain, gain, but if you end up the same bodyweight and the same bodyfat – basically you look the same as you did pre-bulk – it doesn’t seem like you did very well. Now if you end up the same bodyweight, but you’re even leaner (see Case #2 above) then you definitely had a successful run. Gaining 20lbs only to lose 20lbs and look no different – that’s not a good bulk.

How much do I need to eat?

Enough!

You need to definitely have more energy coming in than going out. Again, insufficient food intake = no gains. Look around the gym – most people there are trying to gain some muscle, get stronger, etc. Are they? They appear to be working pretty hard and yet, a year from now, chances are they’ll look no different. Something isn’t working. Could it be what they’re doing/eating outside of the gym? Could it be that they train hard for 45 minutes (trying to build muscle?) and then they hop on the elliptical for 30 minutes PWO (trying to get the cuts?). It doesn’t work.

So how much food? I generally recommend that you start at an assumed maintenance intake. I say assumed because all of the predictive equations are just estimates. They’re not going to necessarily be 100% accurate, but it’s a starting place for us. If you’re not coming off a hard diet, around 15x total bodyweight is a good ball part. Pay attention to results though – if you’re gaining (beyond water and glycogen) then clearly this is not maintenance. If you’re coming off a hard diet, start a bit lower as metabolism will be slightly depressed. Stay there for two weeks and reassess. Did the scale go up? Go down? Stay the same? Adjust accordingly. Assuming you were at maintenance, start adding calories. Again, we’re trying to avoid getting too sloppy so take it easy and just systematically raise them. Start at 10% above maintenance, stay there for a bit, and reassess. What’s happening? Nothing? Add another 10%. You basically continue to add calories until you start to see an upward trend on the scale, but not so quickly upward that it’s clear (in the context of expected rates of muscle gain) that you’re gaining too much fat per given pound of weight gain. If you are gaining too much fat, scale the calories back a bit. It’s all about a simple outcome based approach. Base your adjustments on your results.

Erik Ledin
www.leanbodiesconsulting.com
 

 

 

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Low Carb Diets vs. Low Fat Diets

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Let the debate between low carb and low fat diets end – science has determined the winner! In a four-month study conducted at the University of Cincinnati, 50 obese test subjects were divided into two calorie-restricted groups: 1) low carb and 2) low fat. The low-carb dieters followed an average protein/carb/fat ratio of 28/15/57 for the first two months and a ratio of 24/24/52 for the last two months. While subjects following the low fat diet had a macronutrient ratio of 18/53/29 for the first two months and 20/48/32 for last two.

What’s important note is that there was no significant difference in total calorie intake between each group. In spite of this, the difference in macronutrient breakdown showed a significant difference in overall weight loss and body fat reduction. By the end of testing, results showed that the low-carb subjects lost more body weight (21.6 vs. 13.5 pounds) and fat (13.7 vs. 7.1 pounds) than those following a low-fat diet!

J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2005 Mar; 90(3):1475-82.

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Posted in Body Science, Nutrition | 1 Comment »

Muscle Building Nutrition Q&A – Part 3

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Continuing on with the answers to the following questions …

How long should I bulk?

How long do I have to bulk?

(again, I am just using the term ‘bulk’, which I dislike to indicate a primary focus on gaining muscle)

The first ‘it depends’ answer was to counter with the question of how much muscle do you want to gain?

To that we add the following:

2. How much muscle do you gain when eating in a caloric surplus and how much fat you gain when eating in a caloric surplus – or basically your muscle-to-fat-gain ratio. This basically refers to one’s partitioning ability – simply where the extra calories go. Does it wind up in muscle cells or fat cells? Ideally all of it would go to muscle, but sorry, not gonna happen. You might as well accept it now.

Now ideally at least more of the extra calories are partitioned towards muscle than they are towards fat. What affects this? First and foremost, genetics. Some people simply partition more calories towards muscle than others do. The less fortunate partition more calories towards fat cells than they do muscle. So on the one hand you might have someone gaining more muscle for a given weight gain and some gaining more fat than muscle (sucks!) for a given weight gain.

So we have things like the aforementioned genetics, higher-than-normal testosterone levels and other optimally ranged hormones (lower cortisol responses, healthy thyroid levels, etc) as well as good insulin sensitivity in the muscles.

Scientists refer to something called the p-ratio when discussing the partitioning of calories. The p-ratio is again, largely influenced by genetic factors and varies little within a person. Diet, training, etc (basically lifestyle factors) have the potential to influence it about 5-15% – not very much.

So, that tells us there’s not a lot you can do to shift your own innate muscle-to-fat-gain ratio (or even your fat-to-muscle-loss ratio when dieting) beyond the relatively small (yet not insignificant) effect nutrition, training (and drugs) has on it.

So we obviously get that diet and training should be on point during a bulk. From a dietary standpoint, you obviously need to be certain you’re eating enough to sustain not only the growth of new muscle tissue but the maintenance of it as well. This is one of the biggest pitfalls of those seeking out more muscle – they don’t eat enough. You can’t build a house out of sweat people. No raw materials? No muscle. Ample caloric intake is the biggest factor to be aware of.

Training of course is important as well, but the supporting growth factors – hormones, caloric intake, etc. – determine how much you can gain and support. Training is just a stimulus. Many think that because they’re training heavy and hard, the muscle is just going to come as a result. Again, it’s just a stimulus – if the supporting growth factors are not there, it’s just not going to happen.

Ok, so this ties into the next point:

3. How much fat are you comfortable gaining? This is going to be determined by one, how much over maintenance you’re eating and two, the aforementioned muscle-to-fat-gain ratio or how well your body partitions extra calories. For those with better partitioning ability, more of their new weight is going to be muscle and less is going to be fat, so they’re probably going to have an easier time of it. For those less fortunate, it’s going to be a different story. They’re going to gain more bodyfat for a given weight gain. How much are you comfortable with gaining? Remember, you’re going to gain some. Expect not to and I guarantee you that you’re going to look exactly the same at the end of your bulk.

These three points are really the determining factors of the length of your bulk – how much muscle do you want/need to gain, how much muscle/fat do you gain when consuming calories in excess of maintenance (a requirement), and how much body fat are you comfortable gaining along the way.

By Erik Ledin

www.leanbodiesconsulting.com

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Posted in Nutrition | 2 Comments »

Muscle Building Nutrition Q&A – Part 2

Monday, March 2nd, 2009
So in the previous post about bulking we touched on what determines whether or not you should consider doing a ‘bulk’ (I really dislike this word by the way), or not.
Again, let me just say to drive the point home, that bulking is not an excuse to get fat, get sloppy, etc. The point to a bulk is to simply gain muscle – obviously. However, a free-for-all caloric onslaught is a quick way to unnecessary fat gain.

An effective bulk is characterized by an attempt to maximize the muscle-to-fat-gain ratio, all the while understanding and accepting that yes, some fat is going to come.

I get asked questions like these quite often:

How long should I bulk?

How long do I have to bulk?

My previous answer was a simple, ‘it depends’, and the truth is, it does. How long a person bulks is going to be influenced by a number of things:

1. How much muscle do you want to gain? Clearly this is going to one of the big determining factors. The more muscle you need or want, the longer it’s going to take. To put that into context, the following are some generally accepted average rates of muscle gain for both males and females:

Males

Year 1 – 20-25lbs

Year 2 – 10-12lbs

Year 3 – 5-6lbs

Females

Year 1 – 10-12lbs

Year 2 – 5-6 lbs

Year 3 – 2.5-3lbs

You can see two things from the above quite clearly:

1. Males obviously have the potential to gain at a quicker and more substantial rate, all else being equal. (women averaging out to half the gains of males)

2. Muscle growth is a very slow process.

Don’t believe the hype behind those who say they’re packing on pounds and pounds of muscle – and staying lean or getting leaner at that – month in and month out; at least not drug free. They’re not. They may be packing on the weight, but I guarantee they’re gaining more fat than they should be. Yes, there are some who can gain at a quicker rate than others, but the above represents the average.

Now 10-12 lbs in either a male of female is going to result in a very significantly improved physique, no question about it. I have a client who gained 11lbs of competition weight in one year, and the results were very obvious. So much so that it helped take this competitor from an ‘also ran’ to a top contender.

I’ll use the middle-of-the-road male numbers to illustrate a point. 10-12lbs of muscle sounds awesome doesn’t it? But look what it averages out to – about one pound per month. Doesn’t seem very significant anymore does it? But the reality is, it is.

More next time …

 

 

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Muscle Building Nutrition Q&A – Part 1

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

I get asked a variety of muscle-building/bulking-type questions a lot, so I thought I’d just cut and paste a common question and answer it here. My opinions here would not be gender specific and apply both to males and females.

Q: Would I have to do a bulk and how long would I bulk for?

A: Ok, just to put some context to the term “bulk” here, it simply means eating at a caloric intake that is above your assumed maintenance calorie requirements for an extended period of time – with the obvious goals of adding some size and strength to your physique. It is not an excuse to get fat or sloppy.

To address the first question – would you have to do a “bulk?” This is entirely dependent on three primary things:

  • What do you look like now relative to what your goal physique generally looks like? For some, it will be obvious that yes, you definitely need more muscle if you’re going to hope to be competitive. Developing a great physique isn’t just about fat loss. Males or females with great physiques are well-developed with strategically emphasized muscle groups, in addition to carrying low levels of body fat… and yes, the developmental aspect takes time.
  • Do you want more muscle? What are your own goals and preferences for your physique? Some people like the idea of being more muscular than they are now; some people don’t. It comes down to your goals first and foremost. Only you can determine if you want more muscle.
  • Are you willing to gain a least some body fat? Or, are you presently lean enough right now that you can stand to gain a little body fat and not lose your mind?

To the issue of how long, the short answer is it depends. But that’s about as helpful as well, not answering the questions at all. I’ll be back to answer that question next.

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Whey & Casein Combo Increases Lean Body Mass

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Whey and casein are proteins both derived from milk. While each type of protein offers a different amino acid profile, they’re also digested at different rates in the body. Whey is digested fast, while casein takes a lot longer, and therefore, considered a slow-digesting protein. Research has shown that whey can spike protein synthesis (muscle building), but only for a short time. On the other hand, casein has been shown to inhibit protein degradation (muscle breakdown) over a long period of time. This has led many bodybuilders to combine the two for better results in muscle growth – a practice that recent research also supports.

In a 10-week study conducted at Baylor University, researchers split 36 males randomly into 3 groups, who were given a different supplement prior to weight training. Group 1 received a placebo; Group 2 consumed 40 g of whey and 8 g of casein; while Group 3 ingested 40 g of whey, 3 g of branch chain amino acids and 5 g of glutamine. The results showed that Group 2 had the greatest increase in fat-free mass.

J Strength Cond Res. 2006 Aug; 20(3):643-53

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Nutritional Discipline

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

As odd as it sounds – you shouldn’t trust your gut when sticking to a meal plan. No matter how strict you may think you’re being, nothing keeps you as honest as sticking to a nutrition journal. A daily account of not only what you plan to take in, but what you actually did take in is one of the best ways to stay on track. Not only will you have the ability to plan your meals ahead of time, it is an easier way for you to track calories, proteins and carbs in advance. Just like keeping a journal of training, with a solid record of your diet you can retrace your steps to see where you went right and where you went wrong. Then from there you can make the necessary tweaks to take your progress even further.

Don’t want to carry a big fat notebook around with you? No problem, now there are no excuses when your cell phone or your PDA both have calendar functions that can be synched to your online schedule. Plan out your six meals a day in advance and you’ll have access to them at any time. You can even set alarms to keep you on track during busy times at work. The key to success is to be honest with yourself; if you know that you need a snack after every workout, write it down. It’s tougher to cheat if everything is accounted. It will make it easier for you to be disciplined and it will make your shopping list that much more accurate.

Got a few tips about sticking to the meal plan? I’d like to hear them. Just post them up in the comments section.

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Posted in Body Challenge, Body Science, Nutrition | 3 Comments »

Your Nutrition Must Support Your Goals – Part 2

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

If you’re seriously after optimal progress in either direction – fat loss or muscle gains – you’ll do far, far better if your nutrition supports those goals. If you’re chasing fat loss, again, you need to be eating in a deficit (we’ll go into more specifics on how to set up a fat-loss diet shortly). If you want to pack on some beef, you really need to be eating a lot.

There’s an old saying that says if you’re not growing, you’re not eating enough and honestly, for the most part, it’s true. The biggest reason more people don’t get bigger and stronger is that they simply do not have enough calories/energy coming in to 1) sustain them, and 2) support the growth and maintenance of new muscle tissue.

So let’s say you want to get in shape for the NxLabs Hardcore Bodybuilding Challenge and need the full six months to transform your physique and reach your goals. I suggest you take a look at yourself, do a hard assessment and determine what you need to do first. With 24 weeks, you have the time to split up those weeks into different sub-goals to reach your overall goal. Maybe you start out trying to add some size, while minimizing fat gains and then you transition into trying to get ripped while maintaining some of the newly earned muscle. Or maybe you have a lot of fat to lose in which case you want to jump right into a fat-loss program. Maybe you’re in desperate need of more muscle. Regardless, the bottom line is that your training, your cardio, what you do in the gym, while important, is going to end up being secondary to ensuring that your nutrition supports your physique goals.

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Your Nutrition Must Support Your Goals – Part 1

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes people – both males and females – make in their pursuit of physique improvements, whether that is fat loss or muscle gain, is not ensuring that their nutritional program supports their goals. Sounds logical – doesn’t it?

If you want to lose fat, you have to eat in a way that supports fat loss. If you want to gain muscle, you have to eat in a way that supports muscular gains. Yet look around your gym. How many people ever really look much different? I’d say not too many. It’s not for lack of trying in the gym, as I’m sure you see many of the same people week in and week out and they certainly appear to be working hard. They’re lifting weights, they’re doing their cardio, but for some reason, they don’t look much different. Why? Nutrition! Their diet doesn’t support their goals.

Now if you stopped and asked any one of these individuals what their goals were, they might say they’re trying to get bigger … and leaner. That’s what most of us tend to want, but the problem is trying to do both at the same time. I’ll keep this simple, but basically, to lose body fat you have to be in a caloric deficit at the end of the day. You can get there by dietary restriction (eating less calories than your body requires to maintain its current weight); by exercise; or by some combination of both – the latter being optimal.

Contrast that to the goals of gaining muscle. You need to be in an energy surplus to gain muscle. That begs the question – how can you be in a caloric deficit and a caloric surplus at the same time? You can’t. They’re mutually exclusive positions. Now maybe you’ll argue the point of simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain with me – what we affectionately term a “recomp” – but let me try a little logic. First the easy one: does it make sense that the body would be forced to call on fat stores (an energy reserve) when it’s getting a lot of calories? There’s no reason to.

On the flip side, when you’re eating in a deficit, your body is trying to survive. You’re not providing it with enough energy to sustain itself, hence the need for it to call on fat reserves to maintain metabolically active tissue and bodily functions. Ok, pretty straightforward. But to bring some logic back into the equation, does it make sense that your body would go through the trouble of adding more metabolically active tissue – muscle, which needs to be grown AND sustained – when it already doesn’t have enough energy/calories to sustain its present self? The process of adding size to the body is an energy costly process. That’s a huge strike against those who state their goals as being simultaneous fat loss and muscle gains. More often than not, you’re going to be disappointed.

Now does that mean that one can’t ever gain muscle while simultaneously losing fat? No, it doesn’t. However, it is very unlikely unless you fit into one of the following categories – you’re a “newbie” just starting out, you’re coming back from a lay off and as such are basically in a de-trained state, or you’re new to “effective” training.

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