To eat frequently or to not?

(Summer) #1

I’m so confused!
I have heard both sides to the benefits of eating frequently and also only eating once a day, so you only “ spike your insulin” once.
While I don’t know what that means, I would like to know which method is more effective?
I exercise at least 3 times a week so not eating all day is difficult, but I have been doing it…
which is best? Thank you so much!!!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

What is your goal for eating a ketogenic diet. How long have you been eating this way?

In general, it is better to keep your blood glucose and your insulin levels as low as possible for as much of the day as possible, hence the recommendation to eat as few times a day as possible. But you can let it happen naturally.

Start by eating to hunger and keeping carbohydrate intake under 20 g/day. If you eat to satisfy your hunger, it will be a lot of food in the beginning, but as your insulin level drops, your satiety hormone (leptin) will start getting through to your brain again, and you will be able to go for quite a long time between meals. I often have my first meal a couple of hours after noon, because I’m simply not hungry. But on the days when I get hungry earlier, I eat. Ideally, you should be getting enough at each meal to go hours until you are hungry again, without snacking. But don’t force it, let it happen naturally.

(Cindy) #3

Listened to a FB Live by Dr Berry just a day or two ago. I think he made a good point about frequent eating. Small, frequent meals simulate starvation or “lean times” because that’s when people would have been searching for food. Find some berries, eat them…move on to find the next source of food. Trap a rabbit, eat it, then still look for something else to eat…never having enough to be completely full.

When there was plenty of food, people would eat until they were full…maybe even over-full. Think Thanksgiving Day and feasting type of eating.

So the recommendation of small, frequent meals is completely the wrong way to eat.

#4

I’ve been pondering this myself today, about 9 yrs ago a doc put me on an eating plan that was Keto (but they didn’t call it that) - with one EXCEPTION - they instructed to eat five smaller meals per day…I dropped weight effortlessly, like 13 lbs first mo, 18 next, and so on (pregnancy and gestational diabetes I believe were the only reasons I didn’t maintain that weight loss). Fast forward to my true Keto experience this time and following hunger/IF cues, so far negligible weight loss…makes me wonder two things, did eating that way before contribute to my Insulin Resistance issues OR was that for some reason what actually works better for my body and releasing weight?!? I hope it’s not the latter!!!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #5

It’s completely the carb way to eat, because we’re always hungry on a high-carb diet. That recommendation was totally making a virtue of necessity.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

Why not try that advice again, and see if it works for you? I agree with the logic of eating infrequently to avoid stimulating insulin, but sometimes what seems logical is still wrong. Arterycloggingsaturated fat is one of those ideas that seems logical but is wrong, wrong, wrong.

#7

Truly I am just scared to…what I was told back then was that I needed to eat frequently to keep my blood sugar/insulin steady all day BUT now I definitely question if that really achieved that, I was definitely hungry then every two hours and had some scary reactive hypoglycemia more than a few times. Currently, I definitely feel in control of my food choices and only get hungry once to twice per day and have no sugar cravings at all. I am approaching 6 weeks of Keto here and am just scrutinizing why I am not seeing other results with weight loss and/or inches. Is it possible to be in ketosis consistently with carbs under 20 every day but never become fat adapted?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

That advice makes a lot of sense in context, but should be unnecessary on a well-formulated ketogenic diet.

As for why you are not losing weight, I can’t imagine that you won’t become fat-adapted again, eventually. But many people who come back to keto report that the fat doesn’t melt off the way it did the first time around. I don’t know if anyone really knows why, either.

But I do know that female hormones play a great role in the pattern of women’s fat loss, and it may be that at this point you need more hormonal balancing for the fat to come off, than you did last time. Many women on these forums have posted that their fat loss took a month or two to gear up, so I wouldn’t give up just yet.

Another problem might be “hidden carbs.” If you’d like to start a thread about what you are eating and your meal schedule, people would be happy to critique it and help you spot items that might be hindering fat loss. Also, are your measurements changing at all? Sometimes body recomposition can confuse the scale, but since muscle and bone are not as dense as fat, it is possible to lose inches without necessarily losing pounds.

All just thoughts to ponder, and I hope you start seeing the desired results soon.

#9

I think I will go ahead an start a thread to get some extra input, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to know that my hormones are causing issues - and if balancing that out takes a little extra time I would be fine with that :slight_smile:

(Khara) #10

Back when your doc put you on keto 5-6 meals a day, were you quite a bit younger then? Age definitely slows down our results.

(traci simpson) #11

I just listened to that on Tuesday. He said it spikes insulin.

#12

I was quite a bit younger at that time, in my late 30’s now with hormone issues that doctors can’t seem to figure out with standard lab work and they’ve checked it all lol

(traci simpson) #13

I’m seeing a homeopath trying to go the more natural way. I just started a bunch of stuff so I’ll keep you posted.

#14

I wish my insurance would cover a homeopathic doctor, I would love to get that insight and opinion on my thyroid function, I’ve been symptomatic for years with a stable nodule past 6 yrs, but labs (even the in depth ones) are always just inside normal range).

(George) #15

I’ve been wondering this myself. When I started keto, I was having 2 real meals/days, plus 2-3 snacks, so essentially 5 feeding times per day. The more I read up on IF and whatnot, I cut out the snacks and only ate 2x/day in a 16/8 window. For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing OMAD 5 days/week, and 16/8 IF (just 2 meals) on weekends. My results (scale-wise) stayed practically identical, an average of 2.2 lb losses each week. with the exception of one week where I lost 6 lbs, that I really can’t explain how that happened. (total caloric intake for all methods were all low for my height/sex)

I still don’t know which option is best, and for fear of negatively impacting my metabolism, I’m planning on doing 16/8 IF 4 days/week, and OMAD 3 days/week starting next week, and track what those results are. My best advice is to keep doing what’s working well for you, then just change it up for a week or two, track those results, if they’re good, then just cycle back and forth between different eating windows and whatnot.

(Summer) #16

I also have a concern bc I think I have a hormone problem. What are the symptoms of an imbalance?

#17

The symptoms vary between women, but for me, my doc knew something was up when I started breaking out in my 30’s when I previously had really clear skin, I also get off the chart PMS symptoms not with TOM, but with ovulation (very short on patience, almost feels hypertensive even though I am not, spotting, intense pain from inflammation probably due to endo). My pain had improved with this second cycle of ovul since going Keto!

(traci simpson) #18

it doesn’t but I have a flexible spending account.

(traci simpson) #19

For me: brain fog, feeling of despair, some depression, fatigue, cravings, insomnia, hair thinness or loss, inability to loose weight… to name a few.

(Robert C) #20

High eating frequency is being pushed mainly (in my opinion) by two camps:

  1. Big food - with their profit motive - to get you to eat often as they get a percentage of everything you eat. Even to the point of recommending daily consumption of very high carbohydrate breakfast foods as the most important meal of the day (really trying to get you into a carbohydrate seeking blood sugar roller coaster for the day). They simply do not have anything about your overall health in their plans.
  2. Very athletic people / bodybuilders that want to keep glycogen stores topped up all the time because of some perceived benefit (or the likely unfounded worry that if they are calorie deficient for more than a few seconds - precious muscle will melt away). Bodybuilders are generally notoriously unhealthy and athletic people can burn off so much glycogen on a regular basis that the issues don’t surface for years (or until they reduce their exercise volume but don’t change their eating habits).

On the other hand - low eating frequency seems to being suggested by many people involved in the health and wellness field (a suggestion from which they make no profit).