Fast-5 Diet and Lifestyle: Re: [fast5] Article on meal frequency

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Re: [fast5] Article on meal frequency

Hi Rick

One of the problems I have with the mass of articles that play off one study against another is that anyone can all too easily cherry-pick research that supposedly supports or negates almost any viewpoint on nutrition and weight control. One reason for this is because it is almost impossible in practice to control all the critical variables that bias outcomes (e.g. particularly the almost universal reliance on self-reporting of food types and intake, and amount and intensity of exercise). Take for example the point in the piece about total insulin secretion being lower over multiple meals versus fewer larger ones. Is it really possible - wishing apart - to control all the multiple factors over a long enough period to assess this with any accuracy? How does it compare with the experience of those, like many on this forum, who have made a long-term adjustment to fasting, for example? The many conflicting studies tend to argue that a confident "objective" assessment is hard to come by. By contrast, any individual can discover for themselves what applies to their own case.

For me, the main interest of the article is the point about hunger - i.e. whatever the pattern of eating that is adopted over the long term, it must be one in which it is a response to genuine biological hunger, not just ingrained habit or entertainment value (like the super-sized tubs of sugary popcorn that surround me on every visit to the cinema). Of course this is the really difficult part in modern consumer societies, and in any case - as this forum shows - individual motivation to change and adjust behaviour patterns, and a willingness to suspend judgement until a sufficiently long adjustment period has elapsed, is absolutely critical. This highly individual aspect is inevitably also lacking - by design - in almost all purely clinical studies

On a separate issue, the article also quotes figures on the resting calorie consumption of muscle versus fat which, I believe, are mistaken. The myriad citations of this kind are typically based on original studies which assessed the metabolic costs of total lean body mass (LBM), which includes muscle but also bone, as well as all the major organs, such as liver, kidneys, heart etc, which are highly metabolically active (far more so than either resting muscle or fat). Muscle mass alone is generally not more than 60% of LBM, but the error that most quoted estimates of the calorie-cost of muscle commit is to treat the average metabolic activity per pound of total LBM as applying to every pound of muscle added. This is flat wrong, and gives a misleadingly high estimate for muscle alone. Similarly, estimates of the calorie cost of exercise nearly always quote total calories burned (TCB) as opposed to net calories burned (NCB). NCB, which deducts the (non-negligible) calories that would have been consumed by the typical normal activity which the exercise period replaced, is both lower and more realistic, but is almost never quoted. Bigger, apparently, is always better, even when wrong.

Sorry for the geekiness (sadly, I'm a geek), but in general I'm rather wary of most studies for the reasons mentioned, and place more reliance on careful assessment of long-term personal experience, and that of others like those on this forum. That's why I follow these discussions and post some of my own experiences, for others to compare with theirs.

David

On 13 April 2010 12:49, RickS <rstewart@iaff.org> wrote:

Here is a pretty good article on meal frequency. While it's main thrust is 3 meals vs. 6 meals, there is some good information about leptin woven throughout. For those like myself who love reading anything nutrition related, this article contains nuggets of info which, if taken to the next logical conclusion, can be applied to Fast-5.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/13/should-you-eat-many-small-meals-each-day.aspx

-Rick Stewart