I've been reading an e-book entitled Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle... sounds pretty gimmicky, I know. But it's in fact very good, and uses the training and nutrition plans of bodybuilders as a template for achieving a low body fat percentage while maintaining muscle durability and strength. A huge thing advocated is the eating 5-6 meals a day, of approximately 500-700 cal each for men and 300-500 for women (specific calculators based on lean muscle mass and activity are given in the book). I have moved to doing this, but am finding it extremely difficult with my schedule. Can anyone cite research on this, or that this has worked for them, or give further reasoning as to why it's beneficial versus the standard three meals a day? It seems reasonable, but I'm looking for some additional backup. And since it's designed for weightlifters... does it apply to high-level badminton training as well or should it be modified?
Keep in mind that bodybuilders need a large amount of calories simply to maintain body weight, never mind the immense amounts they need to gain mass. With that much food coming in, proper digestion can become an issue, so spreading out the intake a bit lessens the peak loads on the digestive system. Also, most bodybuilders adopt a bulk/cut system to their dieting. For most of the year, they eat huge amounts of food (and potentially a lot of junk food), and have a high bodyfat percentage, which is more conducive to gaining muscle mass. Then they go on a "cut" dieting very severely to lose as much body fat as possible without losing too much muscle so they can compete in their shows. This wouldn't work for most athletes since the ability to control your bodyweight through different motions is more critical than strength or size for most sports. Anyways, here's one good article that'll get you in the right direction. The guy who wrote that article has a phd in nutritional biochemistry and exercise biology, he was a former bodybuilder and is the nutrition advisor for olympic teams. http://johnberardi.com/articles/nutrition/7habits.htm
Im not sure if I can answer your question but Badminton players usally go for the high reps and low wieghts. One reason I know why 5-6 meals a day is beneficial versus the standard three meal a day is protien. One of the thing usally most people know PROTIEN. bodybuilders can benefit from the protien consumtion. I heard the max protien intake per hour is around 30-40g. which leads to faster reapir of the muscle and more muscle.
Sure, for some protein may be the limiting factor causing you to eat more frequently (probably due to poor HCl production in the stomach), but what may be more relevant is blood sugar levels. Take the glycemic index for example - it measures the blood sugar levels eating a food. Often it is lowered by the fibre content or acidity of the food -> fibre takes longer to process in the digestive system and low pH is less optimal for quickly digesting carbohydrates. Now, if you were to eat half your meal now, half your meal later, wouldn't that have an even greater effect than simply relying on stuff inside the food to slow down the digestion process? Actually, I've read somewhere that without any other changes such as what foods you eat and how much you exercise, you can get body composition improvements by splitting up your meals - eat half now, eat the other half later.
Though you may see the benefit, there is yet studies to prove the safety regarding the development of diabetes. The reasoning is that eating gives a glycemic rise. The pancreas kicks in and secretes insulin to lower the glucose level. Now, whether you have insulin-resistance or not, if you're in a perpetual hyperglycemic state, the pancreas is overwhelmed and cannot meet the insulin secretion demand. You see this in all patients who are in feeded 24 hours a day via gastro enteric tubing. This is why they need insulin, even though they didn't had any diabetes disease in the start. But I have absolutely NO IDEA if eating 5-6 meals a day could put you in a (pre)-diabetic state. I'm just giving you my reasoning, but as I say, I haven't seen any studies to prove (or disprove) my hypothesis.
Interesting. Well so far the 5-6 meal a day plan is working adversely... I'm eating the exact same amounts as previously, just splitting them up, and it's resulting in some (very minor) weight gain. However, before I might have been undergoing the starvation effect because I've never eaten much. i'm not really sure what the story is. I'm going to keep it up and see what happens!
However, spreading out into more meals throughout a day means that blood sugar won't rise up quite as much per meal, so the corresponding secretion of insulin would be lesser per meal. Now, I can't find any interesting studies regarding diabetes and meal frequency, but there are studies discussing glycemic index and type-2 diabetes. The way I see it, increasing meal frequency is simply a way to modify the release of sugar into the bloodstream by flattening the curve. Where did the 3 meals a day system come from anyways? Why not 1 meal, or 5 meals? I don't think there's anything sacred about only eating 3 meals during the day.
