Intermittent Fasting: A Nutritional Strategy for Maximal Results Without Worry
Our daily nutrition is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to building and maintaining a lean, muscular physique. It doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete, fitness model, or the regular who simply trains for aesthetics and health improvements.
In the past, we’ve always been told the foundation of a solid nutritional program most always begins with a hearty breakfast, followed by another 4 to 5 meals throughout the day to achieve a lean, muscular physique. To many, the benefits to be had by adopting such a diet were paramount and not to be questioned.
A few of those previously claimed benefits were a kick-start in metabolism (by breaking your nightly fast upon waking), improved fat burning with many frequent feedings of smaller portions as opposed to a few large portions, and a constant supply of nutrients for our energy needs.
With further research, it seems what we used to believe about nutrient metabolism, how energy is stored, released, and used for fuel is more complex than what we might have thought. To put it plainly, meal frequency, outside of a 24-hour period, is largely irrelevant as long as macronutrient requirements are met.
As long as you hit your protein, carbohydrate, and fat totals for the day, and maintain your calorie goal (whether you’re in a deficit or surplus), you’re in the clear. It can be 2 meals or 8 meals and in the end, it doesn’t really matter from a body compositional standpoint – the results are the same.
So what about all the talk and craze about eating 5-6 small meals per day to stave off fat gain, stoke the metabolic fire, improve energy levels, and constantly fuel our body with nutrients? Is it all wrong or misleading?
There’s no real data suggesting that frequent feedings improve our body’s ability to utilize nutrients. There used to be an old idea that the body cannot process more than 30-40g of protein in one sitting and all the rest would be wasted or stored as fat, but it’s false.
Our bodies are much more efficient and due to rates of digestion, a large intake of protein will merely take a longer time to digest as opposed to a smaller feeding. When you sit down to eat a large steak containing over 100g of protein and a butter-laden baked potato, you can be sure those aminos will be spilling into your bloodstream for many hours post consumption due to slowed digestion from the protein, carbohydrate, and fat mixture.
The Basics
Intermittent fasting is a diet method that alternates periods of no food (the fasting part) with periods of feeding. The fasting period can be anywhere from 8 hours (normal eating for most who eat breakfast) up to 22 to 23 hours without food.
How you set it up is largely up to you, but the facts still remain that you must hit your macronutrient goals by end of day. A very popular method is known as the 16/8 approach, which stands for a 16 hour fasting period followed by an 8 hour feeding window. In short, you usually fast from 10-11 p.m. (bedtime) until about 2-3 p.m. the next day (feeding time). In that 8-hour window (2-10 p.m.), you consume all of the calories you’d normally consume for that day. This approach was made popular by Martin Berkhan at leangains.com.
Ideally, you’ll consume anywhere from 2 to 4 meals in this period. Breaking your fast at 2-3 p.m. serves as your pre-workout meal. Dinner serves as your post-workout meal and then one final meal before bedtime makes up for the rest of your daily calories.
Another method is to shorten the eating window to about 3-4 hours, training fasted and then consuming your daily calories in those 3 to 4 hours. For many who have a less demanding energy expenditure, this can often be a novel solution because the volume of food will leave them content with feelings of being full from their 1 or 2 meals.
The Research
There’s research on both sides of the fence, actually. If you look hard enough, you can find abstracts supporting a high meal frequency and then you’ll find more research showing the same results with fewer meals.
You’ll find people all over the world getting results on 6 meals per day and you’ll find others eating no more than 1-2 meals per day and getting similar results – they’re lean, strong, and muscular. There’s also plenty of anecdotal evidence of those eating fewer meals getting phenomenal results.
How to make it work
Once you get over the hurdle of realizing that meal frequency is irrelevant when building your physique, the next step is making your meal patterns and timing work for, not against you. In brief, life is too short to worry about minutiae that are most always a waste of time and mental energy.
Perhaps, eating 6-8 times per day fits perfectly with your schedule. If so, that’s great, stick with it. For others, that’s not always the case. Many people have jobs, studies, and other priorities that keep them from being able to pay super close attention to their diet and exercise schedules. For many, eating so frequently is not only very daunting, it’s just not possible in some cases.
Here’s the good news. Since meal frequency is a non-issue with regards to fat loss, muscle gain, improved performance or maintaining your weight, you can build your diet around your lifestyle and training schedule – not the other way around. In the end, all you need to worry about is hitting your macronutrient and calorie goals before you lay your head at night. As long as training and rest periods are under control, you’ll be in great shape.
Conclusion
Intermittent fasting is only limited by your schedule and willingness to make it work for you. If you’ve found yourself preoccupied with eating every few hours or tired of packing 2-3 meals when you’re traveling, adopting intermittent fasting may be a breath of fresh air.
If you’re prone to overeating when dieting because 5-6 small meals just doesn’t keep you full, cutting it back to 2-3 meals per day might be the magic potion you need to reclaim your compliance. Even if you’re just a big eater and would rather sit down to a very large meal of 1000 to 2000 calories in one sitting than one of 300 to 400 calories, this might be the approach for you.
In the end, the only diet that works is the one you’re willing to stick to. As long as you meet your macro and calories requirements by the end of the day, the rest is fairly irrelevant.
Author: J.C. Deen
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