Nutrition basics-Number and timing of meals

    One of the most common advice nutrition wise is that you should eat a lot of small meals per day.Another one is that breakfast is the most important meal in the day and that eating at night should be avoided because you will gain more fat.There are a lot of other things like that.While most of them are justified logically they are not hard facts.A recently started trend in nutrition is people doing diets involving fasting and these diets go against most of these facts yet the people doing them see results.

     Fasting is the procedure in which someone abstains from eating for a period of time.It is used by many religions .The Muslim celebration of Ramadan is an obvious example.At Ramadan people cant eat or drink anything until the night comes.This celebration provided the basis for research on the fasting matter which provided the evidence to question the common nutrition habits.As I said there are a lot of diets that use fasting as a way to lose body fat and becoming lean.Some of them,for example the warrior diet,allow the consumption of some food while in the fast while others like the intermittent fasting (mostly known as leangains) 16/8 allows only water in it.Nearly all of them involve eating huge meals after the fast So for someone who enjoys eating large amounts of food at once and doesnt want to be bothered with preparing a lot of meals per day this way of eating is a blessing.

Martin Berkhan he fasts and eats cheesecakes.Definately not fat.

       By the common beliefs these diets would create a low metabolism and fat gain.But this isn't the case for many reasons.To conclude the number and timing of meals isnt as important as you may believe.The body energy expenditure and the kind of nutrients you get from eating are far more important.