Has anyone tried this?
They say it is very effective, but I have found that it is no fun at all.
Eating a 1/2 cup of brown rice and beans with a piece of wheat bread, or a half a turkey sandwich with no mayo, or a cup of cereal with skim milk every two hours, takes a lot of the fun out of eating.
Gimme a big salad, a bunch of friends and an hour to chat. That's my idea of "eating".
What say you? Has anyone found the 5-6 meal plan successful and doable?
There are a couple benefits to spreading out your meals.
As someone has already pointed out, breaking up your meals spreads your nutrition and calories out over the day, which can help with exercise recovery and muscle-building. Basically, it keeps you from going "catabolic" during the day, and losing muscle mass. And you don't have to be a bodybuilder to benefit from this effect, since anyone who wants to be more fit and "toned" wants to preserve lean tissue while reducing body fat levels.
It also keeps you from consuming more calories in a single meal than your body needs to fuel your basic bodily functions and activities in a 2-3 hours window. Energy from food doesn't get "pooled" in reserve like amino acids (well, it kind of does, but it get's stored as body fat), so most people don't need 800-1000 calories in a sitting. Anything beyond what you're body will utilize in the next 3-4 hours will get stored as body fat.
So spreading out your calories into 300-400 calorie meals is more efficient.
Eating more frequently also keeps blood sugar levels nice and steady, which can keep your energy up and prevent crashes or over-eating/hunger later in the day. Blood sugar spikes also can contribute to fat accumulation in the body, so minimizing them can help keep you leaner.
Finally, you do get a slight metabolism lift from more frequent eating, although the research around this shows it to be fairly marginal -- maybe a few dozen extra calories burned a day.
The biggest mistake people seem to make with the 6-7 small meals approach is that they don't balance the meals out properly. Every meal, whether it's a snack or lunch, needs to all three macro-nutrients: a complex carb, some healthy fat and lean protein. Often, people will eat an apple for a snack and then complain that they feel unsatisfied an hour later. You really need to add some protein and fat to the snack (like some natural peanut butter) to make this approach work.
I generally eat about six meals a day, and personally never found it to be difficult. The trick is to keep plenty of healthy foods around at your desk or in your laptop bag or around the house -- things like oatmeal, fresh fruit, dried fruit, nuts, whey powder, vegetables and even low-sodium soups that you can make on the fly. If you keep these things on hand, it's not terribly difficult to make this work.
matt