How do 1000cal affect the body depending on how/when they are ingested?

emsi

Hi,
another one of my random thoughts:

Say my normal daily intake is 1000 calories.
Scenario 1: I eat them in ONE meal at 12pm.
Scenario 2: I eat them in 2 or 3 meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Scenario 3: I eat them between 8am until 10 pm, snaking throughout the day.

What are the differences? What is best for a body, or will it depend individually? How does it affect weight loss? After all, it's always the same amount of energy coming in.

Thanks

Susan_RD_101

@emsi This is an interesting thought and I'm happy to chime in!

The first thing I want to emphasize is that there will always be individual variation in how people feel best eating throughout the day. However, eating all your calories at one meal is not ideal, based on what we know about digestion and metabolism. Food will start moving out of your stomach as soon as you eat it; the larger the volume of food consumed, the more your digestion is involved. As a result, you may feel sluggish for awhile after such a meal. In addition, we do know that eating more often does result in a faster metabolism. As such, scenario 2 or 3 would be my preferred options. I personally advise clients to not go longer than 3-4 hours without eating because hunger is the number one thing that can interfere with weight loss goals. In fact, this is why so many diets fail; people will only tolerate feeling hungry and restricted for so long. In my experience, people tend to do the best with weight loss goals eating 5 or 6 times per day.

Hope this helps!