Does how many meals you eat a day matter?

[PollyQMcLovely]

For a person on HRT would there be any benefit to eating a full day's worth of food once in the morning and not eating the rest of the day? Would this allow you to get all the nutrition you need but also allow your body to then later start working on energy reserves? The idea being you'd be adding fat in the places you want in the morning and then later taking fat away from elsewhere. I know it wouldn't be a perfect one to one ratio, but could it help?

[Dena]

The normal diet advice is 6 small meals a day. This avoids the hunger and lack of energy that happen when your glucose levels start running low. With one meal a day you could be temped to snack adding additional calories to your diet.

[Deborah]

According to current research there are many health benefits to eating once a day and fasting the rest of the time.  However, if you have previously been eating throughout the day and been eating a lot of carbs then your body is geared towards burning sugar all day long.  So when your blood sugar drops you will feel hungry and weak and be tempted to overeat.

This passes after a few weeks as your body physiologically readjusts to be able to more readily access stored fat for energy.  Your blood sugar will also remain stable without food since your liver will manufacture glucose if you're not getting it from food.


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[Vinya]

It's been a wall known body builder trick for years to reduce the hours that you eat during the day. I don't think that it will trigger the energy reserving state if you are actually getting enough calories. Why this method works has to do with the hormone insulin, insulin is one of the most anabolic hormone we have in our body which means that having insulin concentrations low for as much of the day as possible will minimize the the possibility for the body to build up fat reserves, sins you need the anabolic hormones for the body to activate the anabolic process. This Is the aim for diets such as GI and LCHF as well to specificity target the body's inclination to build up fat cells. If you do want to try such a diet I do suggest to switch to a GI diet for a month then LCHF for two three weeks to have the body adjust to lower levels of insulin, then slowly decrease the number of meals you have while increase the amount that you eat each time.

It is one of the more extreme diets so in the process I would recommend that you do see a doctor to have a check-up once you are down to one meal a day.

However This does not seem to be the diet that you are really looking for. To put your body in starvation mood you need to go without food for several days, that will lead to large amounts of cortisol, the stress hormone, to be released. Which is not that good for you in high dose over an extended period. This is also related to a higher hip to waist ratio, meaning the fat will mostly be stored on your tummy. I would not recommend that kind of diet.

Again However this does not seem to be the desired effect you are looking for. To have body fat stored on your hips is just a matter of time. There have been no scientific study proving any diet or exercise regime that will help you either increase or decrease body fat in a specific area of the body. I would therefore suggest you you achieve the body wight you want  and then let the oestrogen do it's thing. 

I do want to add a disclaimer, I'm not a dietician I'm a chemist so my knowledge are more geared towards the processes in the body rather then the health of the body. 

[JulieAllana]

So is your goal to just speed of the process of having your body move fat around from male spots to female spots or are you trying to lose weight or both?

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor a nutritionist so please do your own research.

     From what I have been reading we really don't have much control at all over where our body decides to take fat from when we are losing weight or where our bodies decide to put the fat back when gaining it.  This is probably pretty much controlled by genetics. 
     
     One thing we do have some measure of control over though is when our bodies add fat.  If you eat more than you consume, your body stores the excess into fat.  Another way to add fat as I understand it is to consume more fructose.  Glucose is a simple sugar that our bodies use and it can be metabolized by any cell in our body for its energy needs, but Fructose is only able to be processed by the liver.  Based on information that I got by watching the documentary "The Skinny on Obesity", available on Youtube is that fructose is such a high concentration of energy that frequently the liver just converts it straight to fat regardless of if you are eating a balanced caloric diet.  In other words, the conventional wisdom that a calorie is a calorie regardless of its source may be wrong.

     Being that I am trying to lose around 100 pounds from where I started (320), I am on a ketogenic diet.  The idea is that you restrict carbohydrates do less than 20 grams per day which forces your body to use a process called ketosis to convert fat into ketones which your body can use in lieu of glucose for its energy needs.  I still have to follow the rule of burning more calories than I consume, but since I am not consuming many carbs, my body is burning fat just about 24/7.  As stated earlier, I really don't have control of which fat I burn though.  So far it is coming off somewhat evenly over most of my body. 

   One seemingly side benefit of my fat loss pattern is that I am not really losing much in my chest area, so as my waist goes down, my chest looks proportionately bigger (I am not on hrt yet).  Anyway, when I get to 15% body fat at around 225 pounds (currently at 273), I will start hrt.  I have never had so much motivation to lose weight 

         Anyway, I really hope that this helps

                            Julie

[virtualverny]

the only food advice i have for anybody on hormones is to not drink more than 4/5 pints of water a day as it will effectively wash the hormones out of you

[Vinya]

the only food advice i have for anybody on hormones is to not drink more than 4/5 pints of water a day as it will effectively wash the hormones out of you

I don't want to say that you are wrong but all the sex hormones are fat soluble which means the liver have to first break it down to something water soluble for it to be pass the filters in the kidney's and washed out. I'm not sure if the extra water though would speed-up the process of the liver. Still I'm a little bit unsure if this is the case.
 

[PollyQMcLovely]

I probably could have done a better job describing my aim here.

I'm not really trying to lose weight, I'm pretty skinny already.

I was trying to increase the amount of time that the body breaks down fat reserves without decreasing the total fat reserves uptake. Calories in would equal calories out but instead of the body using food in the stomach three times a day to provide energy if would only be able to do that once a day. Then it would go to fat reserves. And this would mean loss of fat from wherever but if the hormones do their thing the next day they would be replacing fat in the desired areas.

If you need energy and you eat doesn't the body convert the food directly to energy? Therefore if you eat fewer meals doesn't that increase the use of fat reserves?

[Deborah]

If you need energy and you eat doesn't the body convert the food directly to energy? Therefore if you eat fewer meals doesn't that increase the use of fat reserves?

Its not as simple as food directly to energy but in simplified terms; yes.  Eating fewer meals will increase the use of stored energy.  Some of that is what's been there a while and some is from what you ate at your last meal ( and stored).  Some is stored glycogen and some is stored fat.  How much of each depends on what you eat, your activity, and your level of training.  It also depends on how well your body has adapted to burn fat. 

It has other health benefits too including increasing insulin sensitivity and contributing to the prevention of metabolic disease.  Also, after around 12 hours when the digestive process is complete it kicks autophagy into high gear to repair and replace old and damaged cells throughout your body.



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[Vinya]

I probably could have done a better job describing my aim here.

I'm not really trying to lose weight, I'm pretty skinny already.

I was trying to increase the amount of time that the body breaks down fat reserves without decreasing the total fat reserves uptake. Calories in would equal calories out but instead of the body using food in the stomach three times a day to provide energy if would only be able to do that once a day. Then it would go to fat reserves. And this would mean loss of fat from wherever but if the hormones do their thing the next day they would be replacing fat in the desired areas.

If you need energy and you eat doesn't the body convert the food directly to energy? Therefore if you eat fewer meals doesn't that increase the use of fat reserves?

I would say that your reasoning does sound reasonable at first glance but as have been said it is not as easy. The body is a complex system that deals with food, energy and storing energy in a way that is regulated by many parameters that is hard to predict. Further more it is not so that the body will start only puting fat on the right places as soon as you start HRT the way the body distributes fat is not singularly controlled by the sex hormone. The distribution is also controlled by many other factors and the shift in the distribution priority will take time to happen. I would say if you are at the weight you desire and only interested in the redistribution of fat then keep on doing what you do. If you are interested in the possible healthiness of one meal a day keep in mind it might not have the effect that you want.

[Gertrude]

Three times a day.  I wish I could squeeze it into 8 hours or less, but 12ish is about it. Nothing after dinner until breakfast. So I eat breakfast around 6am, lunch 11-11:30 and dinner around 6pm.


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