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Eating More Meals Might Keep One From Gaining Weight!
 

No one wants to be fat, especially after knowing that a fat (overweight) person is at a higher risk of getting many medical disorders such as hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, high cholesterol and stroke. But sometimes people still gain weight because of overeating coupled with performing less physical activities or health conditions like hypothyroidism, food sensitivity, Cushing's syndrome, prescription drug use, anxiety, blood sugar imbalance, and essential fatty acid deficiency.

Anyway, no one can deny that eating still plays an important role in deciding the weight of a person. In general, we used to think that fat people tend to eat more quantity and more often. However, a study conducted by American researchers pointed out that overweight adults, who ate less often than people with normal body weight, still consume more calories and are less active.

Statistics showed that more than 60 percent of Americans are either obese or overweight. However, so far there is no evidence found to show the relationship between number of meals people eat each day and the ability to maintain weight loss. The researchers particularly wanted to find out what people who have lost significant amounts of weight do to keep it off.

In a paper published during November 2011 in the ‘Journal of the American Dietetic Association’, researchers from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania reported that normal weight adults, including those who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off, ate more often.

For a year, the researchers followed 247 people and analyzed the data collected in 2 large studies sponsored by the National Institute of Health (NIH). One of the studies investigated eating habits of people with a BMI between 25 and 47, which were overweight to obese.

The other study looked at adult males and females who had normal weight, with a BMI between 19 and 24.9. About half of these participants had lost at least 13.6 kilos and kept their weight for more than 5 years.

BMI is short form for body mass index, which is commonly used to measure body fat based on height and weight. It is calculated by dividing weight in kilos by the square of height in meters. A person is considered underweight if the BMI is below 18.5; normal when BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9; overweight when BMI is in the range of 25 and 29.9. Once BMI reaches 30 and above, this person is considered obese.

On average, the participants who were normal weight ate 3 meals and a little over 2 snacks everyday, whereas the overweight participants consumed 3 meals and just over 1 snack a day. Observation showed that overweight group consumed more than 2,000 calories a day whereas the normal weight group consumed 1,900 and the weight loss maintainers took in only 1,800 calories.

In the study, the weight loss maintainers were the most physically active. They burned off about 3,000 calories a week through exercise and other physical activities. In comparison, the normal weight group and the overweight group burned off 2,000 and 800 calories a week.

The findings concluded that being extremely physically active and eating more often does help people keep the weight off.

Unfortunately, the researchers admitted they still could not figure out the relationship between the number of meals a person takes per day and a person’s weight. In fact, most of the past research has already shown that people who ate more frequently had a lower weight. But the problem is no one can explain why.

According to researchers, one possibility is that snacking might help prevent weight gain by staving off intense hunger. Eating more often would probably stop a person from getting too hungry. If a person has to wait 10 hours after his or her last meal, this person would most likely end up eating a lot more food.

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