Boosting metabolism?

[Here2learn]

Over the years I’ve heard that eating many small meals throughout the day will increase a body’s metabolism and help with weight loss.
but fasting appears to be a very popular theory for those wanting to lose weight.
As these appear to be opposite In some aspects, can anyone explain which option is best? Or neither?

 

[Llama]

Eating many small meals across the day does NOT boost your metabolism. Neither does lemon water, by the way, and spicy food only does it for a very short time. Caffeine boosts your metabolism a little bit, just like anything else that gets your heart rate up, but there´s a limit to how much you can consume and still sleep - and sleep is one of the few completely uncontroversial weightloss aids. I´m no expert on fasting, because my body really doesn´t like it and I´m not willing to torture myself, but I´m sure @overlandflyer can tell you more about that part. In the end miracles don´t exist and you have to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight. All any diet/method can do is make the deficit more bearable.

 

[Here2learn]

Thank you

 

[Err2]

In my experience, eating many smaller meals throughout the day helps keep me from feeling hungry given the same amount of calories which helps me stay at a larger deficit. And there is some evidence that the human body cannot effectively absorb more than 30g of protein at one time which lends support to the old body-building rule to eat 5 meals spread evenly throughout the day. Studies on this have been mixed - especially for non athletes - but there is some limited evidence that increased meal count/frequency helps athletes maintain muscle when training while on a severe diet.

That said, the purported benefits of eating many small meals are minuscule compared to the benefits of simply maintaining an appropriate calorie deficit - especially for the average dieter.

 

[Trusylver]

While a number of older studies pointed towards a 30 gram protein absorption more recent studies suggest the body can make use of a lot more protein per sitting The anabolic response to a meal containing different amounts of protein is not limited by the maximal stimulation of protein synthesis in healthy young adults of course if your goal is to gain weight then eating like a bodybuilder is ideal. however unless you are an athlete with a fine tuned diet then eating a lot of meals is really only a real benefit if you are prone to binge eating if you get a little hungry.

Remember everybody is an individual there is no "one size fits all" diet that will suit everybody, take suggestion from a number of sources and weed out what works and does not work for you as an individual because good quality long term diet studies are expensive, difficult and rarely done.