Why Eating Every 2 Hours is Bad?
Sometimes I feel like the blind following the blind especially when it comes to eating every two hours, how many times have you heard that that in order to boost your metabolism you need to eat every two hours.
I don't know whoever came up with that but in theory, it makes sense but it clearly wasn't at all backed up I'm going to break down why eating every two hours essentially is a myth.
Let's get into scientific aspect of it:
The idea behind the “eat every 2 hours” rule is that frequent eating will keep the body in an anabolic state and keep your fat burning metabolism elevated by keeping you out of starvation mode
This myth is easy to buy into because it seems like it makes sense. By eating frequent, small meals, you're continuously stimulating your metabolism, and thus burning more calories
In reality, if you keep eating small amounts of food throughout the day, you'll never burn any fat – this is due to insulin. We have talked a lot about insulin in various other articles. Let me give you gist about it.
Insulin
How it Works
Insulin is a hormone, which means it’s a substance the body produces to affect the functions of organs or tissues, and it’s made and released into the blood by the pancreas
When you eat food, insulin’s job is to break it down into basic nutrients: protein breaks down into amino acids, dietary fats into fatty acids, and carbohydrates into glucose, which then make their way into the bloodstream.
These nutrients must then be moved from the blood into muscle and fat cells for use or storage, and that’s where insulin comes into play; it helps shuttle the nutrients into cells by telling the cells to open up and absorb them.
Whenever you eat food, your pancreas releases insulin into the blood. As the nutrients are slowly absorbed into cells, insulin levels drop, until finally all the nutrients are absorbed, and insulin levels then remain steady at a low, “baseline” level.
So when you're constantly eating, you're consistently releasing insulin, which puts your body into its "absorptive phase."
This means that the insulin in your body is storing sugar — and not letting other enzymes in your body release sugar to break down fat.
Fat Storage
Fat cells, for example, don’t take up or store glucose.
Instead, they respond to insulin by taking the fats that enter the bloodstream and turning them into fatty acids, which they store in large vacuoles.
Vacuoles - a space or vesicle within the cytoplasm of a cell, enclosed by a membrane and typically containing fluid
Thus insulin promotes the uptake and storage of fat in our adipose tissues. While insulin levels are high, our bodies don’t digest or use fats for fuel.
Instead, we rely on the glucose in our blood and tissues. So when trying to lose weight – your body simply won’t break down and use your fat reserves with insulin around.
To sum up things:
Insulin inhibits the breakdown of fat cells and stimulates the creation of body fat.
Means that insulin tells the body to stop burning its fat stores and instead, absorb some of the fatty acids and glucose in the blood and turn them into more body fat.
We have looked into Insulin and now let’s discuss Glucagon
Insulin, the fat-storage and blocking hormone, has a counterpart known as glucagon – a fat-burning and unlocking hormone
Glucagon essentially allows the nutrients that have been stored by insulin to a release out of the cell into the bloodstream to be used for energy.
Let me put it like this as simple as I possibly can, if insulin is to storage then glucagon is to release period.
So if we're constantly in absorptive phase how are we ever going to trigger the release of glucagon, therefore releasing the fats that need to be burned.
So carbohydrates that are sitting in your muscle cells, in your liver cells they're in the way of glycogen and they need to be released and converted back into glucose by glucagon fatty acids that are stored in a fat cell.
Glucagon signals the fat cells to release free fatty acids (a process called lipolysis), which signals the body to release stored fat to be used as fuel.
So it all makes sense now right every time we eat, there is spike in insulin and we have to wait four hours for that insulin to really come back down only when it's down low and only then is glucagon going to be released again.
So do the math if you're eating every two hours you're barely having these dips and insulin you're not having enough of a dip to really release glucagon and allow you to burn fat.
You can still burn fat but you'd have to be very low calorie diet.
STUDY 1
The Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology conducted a study in which researchers injected one group of rats with insulin and another group of rats with glucagon. And they both were made to same amount of work.
The rats that received the insulin gained body fat and ate more. The rats that received the glucagon lost body fat.
STUDY 2
So let's look at a study about meal intervals now so boom another research for you let's look at how this works this particular study.
Randomised crossover study which is an even more in-depth study took 54 diabetic patients.
The reason they're using diabetic patients is because it's more important when we're looking at carbohydrates, glucose monitoring they are the best bet.
They split these groups into two groups one group consume two larger meals per day breakfast and lunch the other group consumed six smaller meals throughout the day but both totalling the same amount of calories.
While they were measuring a few different things what the study concluded was that the group that had larger meals but only a couple per day had significantly lower levels of insulin significantly lower levels of blood glucose increased levels of ghrelin which is the hunger hormone.
Also increased resting metabolic rate yep metabolism actually increased by having larger meals split a little bit wider apart than eating consistently throughout the day.
If that doesn't really make my point then I don't know what will.
BOTTOMLINE
I'm not saying you can't burn fat by eating small meals throughout the day. But we have to listen to these big factors at play like insulin and glucagon big deciding factors that dictate how our body utilizes energy.
So I'm not saying go out and fast day in and day out and not condoning one particular diet over the other.
I guess the purpose of this article is to make sure that you're doing your solid research before you just buy into whatever the fitness community tell you to do.
The fitness community isn't always the healthiest community they may look like it but deep down their bodies are struggling just like a lot of very unhealthy people.
The take home message: Insulin promotes fat storage and it keeps you fat by blocking access to your fat reserves. Glucagon is essential for breaking down body fat and burning it for energy.
Always keep it locked in here on the articles and make sure you comment below and let me know exactly what you want to see in the future.