Numbers

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seadog83

New member
Alright, so I've read a fair bit about working out, and done it in spurts before, am currently getting back into it and smartening up my diet, but am very curious about a lot of trends or rules of thumb that I've read about. Hopefully someone here can quantify or put an approximate number to these things.

1) Its always been said that 6 small meals are better than 3 regular meal is better than 1 huge meal by virtue of a varied matabolism. How much does it change? Let's say at 3 meals your daily calory requirement was 2000 cals, at 6 it would be what? 2500? 5000? and at 1 it would be what? 1500? 500? How much does it matter?

2) I've read its better to do cardio first thing in the morning since theres no food in your stomach to burn so it burns fat. If you do it at the end of the day, wouldn't your regular daily activity burn off the food, then for cardio go to fat? or vice versa? If you take in 2000 cals a day, and burn 2500, no matter when you exercise, doesn't 500 have to come from stores?

3)Exercise burns calories and raises matabolism. How much? Burning 500 cals 3x/week translates to how many fewer cals at the end of the week taking into account raised matabolism?

4)Food doesn't directly translate to less cals because of digestion losses, and lower matabolism. If you cut 500 cals a day for a week, 3500 gross calories off, how many net cals does that equate to?
 
Any of those adjustments are so small that it's not worth messing with them. Measurement error (either in calories in or calories out) is going to be more than any of those.
 
Quantified:

1) Meal frequency beyond 3 a day does not matter. It might not even matter at 2. Especially when dieting.
2) Correct. Don't worry about when you exercise.
3) Resistance exercise raises your metabolism more than endurance exercise so it varies. Elevated metabolisms account for approximately (beyond the actual output of the exercise) 100-200 calories a day given an appropriate resistance routine.
4) Calorie numbers include digestion. It is part of the initial calculation. They burn the food and then apply a number to it. New studies say that protein is more like 4.1-4.2 cal/g instead of 3.7 or whatever the official number is. For someone who isn't a fitness model or a bodybuilder I wouldn't worry about it.

Diets that get to be around 1200 calories or lower for extended periods are what can affect a metabolism up to 30%, of which 90% of your metabolic capacity will be regained with 2 weeks of normal eating. The time required to reach this metabolic "starvation mode" is something like 3 weeks of consistent sub 1200 calorie diets (it varies by your weight/gender/age, etc)

Hope that helps.

Michael (If you dont believe any of this i can source it if need be)

Edit: and what ally said...The only significant source for most people are the metabolic advantages to resistance training, which can influence (if consistent) 1 lb/month of weight loss (all other things being equal)
Edit 2: Ive been up 18 hours working on a factum.
Edit 3: I take breaks from writing papers to writing on forums. I havent left my room in 3 days (minus to shower and eat)
 
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I personally think that there is no magic rule or number here. You have to try different things and see what works best for you. By that I mean try different diets and different time of doing cardio for a week or more. Doing it for few days will hardly show any results. Needs to be over a bigger period of time. People don't do and eat same things as others and their metabolism is on a different stage so that is why all these numbers vary. You just have to try many things other people tried and see what works the best. Commitment is a key here.
 
seadog83 said:
1) Its always been said that 6 small meals are better than 3 regular meal is better than 1 huge meal by virtue of a varied matabolism. How much does it change? Let's say at 3 meals your daily calory requirement was 2000 cals, at 6 it would be what? 2500? 5000? and at 1 it would be what? 1500? 500? How much does it matter?
Click to expand...

I explained this in another post but I'll try to summarize it again real quick. Supposedly, your body is much more efficient at digesting alot of food vs. a smaller amount. It may take 200 calories a day to digest your food if you're eating 2000 calories over 3 meals. But the problem is that due to the efficiency issue, it takes almost twice the energy to digest 6 smaller meals than it does 3 larger meals, even if it was the same food, same calories. Now, whether you want to call this a metabolism boost is up to you I guess, but eating 6 meals instead of 3 does burn almost twice the digestion related calories spent due to digestion inefficiency.
 
corndogggy said:
I explained this in another post but I'll try to summarize it again real quick. Supposedly, your body is much more efficient at digesting alot of food vs. a smaller amount. It may take 200 calories a day to digest your food if you're eating 2000 calories over 3 meals. But the problem is that due to the efficiency issue, it takes almost twice the energy to digest 6 smaller meals than it does 3 larger meals, even if it was the same food, same calories. Now, whether you want to call this a metabolism boost is up to you I guess, but eating 6 meals instead of 3 does burn almost twice the digestion related calories spent due to digestion inefficiency.
Click to expand...

This is not true. There are inefficiencies in digesting large meals that make up for the more frequent meal eating.

Michael
 
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