Best Diet Plan: 6 Mini Meals or 3 Squares a Day?

[Marat]

we need a stronger "fed" signal in order to feel it.

SKIP TO ABOUT 2:16

YouTube Video

 

[Jodi]

I've been doing the 5-6 small meals things for a good 15 yrs and had my stomach alarm going off w/ me skipping "being hungry" and going straight to "completely depleted". Recently I took a couple months off from training for a number of reasons, and also let the diet go because I've been basically competition dieting for the last 2 yrs. Not training led directly to no real "fuel demands" and eating more out of boredom than anything else. The result - not really hungry in the morning.

So this was a great time to slide over to an Intermittent Fasting (IF) approach - since I train at night, this schedule is essentially:

Meal 1 (1 pm): 20% of total cals
Meal 2 (5 pm): 20% of total cals
Meal 3 (9 pm): PWO / 60% of total cals

Lower cals, higher fats, lower carbs on cardio days, higher cals, higher carbs, lower fats on training days. Still averaging out to my usual 1700-1800 cals for cutting.

Haven't had any issues w/ being really hungry and havent' noticed any impact on energy levels or training impact. I'm still sorta formalizing my diet, still need to tweak it a little, and start upping my cardio so this will get more optimized in the coming months - my immediate goal is just to cut to bikini body for a planned trip to Florida in June. Due to a recurring shoulder injury, I've had to drop back contest prep this year and going back to basics w/ my training - squat / push / pull.

Sassy, please keep us posted on how this works for you. I'm very interested to hear the results as well

 

[sassy69]

Sassy, please keep us posted on how this works for you. I'm very interested to hear the results as well

To update you guys - I bailed on this because my various injuries & tendonitis are making it so I can't train at the moment - thus no reason to do these carb ups. What I found is that 2 low cal days leave me starving the following morning. After 6 cups of coffee to try to kill my hunger, I barely felt the 3.8 earthquake we had the other day because I was too busy shaking LOL!

I also find I don't do well w/ these big meals so I've switched to my standby keto diet and just cardio for the near-term.