Quote:
Originally Posted by hkstylez
Also the one problem I have which I'm sure most people have is having to be committed to eating healthy each and every day and to eat every 2-3 hours. I need to start hanging around people who do that so that I can do the same.
Maybe I should call up Iginla or Gary Roberts and have them train me.. ahha.
|
Check out Lyle' McDonald's article on meal frequency. I think it is a pretty good write up on the topic:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/mus...ass-gains.html
Here's probably the most relevant section of the article (the rest goes into research and backing for these conclusions):
Quote:
... eating too frequently (less than every three hours) has no real benefit, and could possibly be detrimental due to the muscle becoming insensitive to the impact of amino acids. It’s interesting to note the preliminary report above which found increased LBM gains with three versus six meals per day. Perhaps by spacing the meals further apart, greater stimulation of protein synthesis occurred when protein was eaten.
For the remainder of this chapter, I’ll take three hours to represent the minimum amount of time that should pass between meals. Eating more frequently is unlikely to be beneficial and may very well have a negative effect.
How long does a meal maintain the body in an anabolic state?
Having looked at the possibility that eating too frequently might actually be detrimental (or at least not particularly beneficial) given how long a typical meal takes to digest, I want to look at how long a given meal might possibly maintain an anabolic state.
Mentioned above, considering the relatively slow rate of protein and other nutrient digestion, it appears that even a moderate sized meal maintains an anabolic state for at least five to six hours (8). Individual whole food meals are still releasing nutrients into the bloodstream at the 5-hour mark (7). Very slowly digesting proteins such as casein may still be releasing AAs into the bloodstream seven to eight hours after ingestion (22). Considering this research, we might set a conservative limit of five hours as the absolute longest time that should pass between eating some source of dietary protein during waking hours.
|
So, according to Lyle, if you eat anything of substance, you can wait 5 hours between meals. If you eat something that contains a lot of casein (whole milk products), you probably will be able to wait 8 hours. (It's no wonder that Mark Rippetoe's single line of diet advice for mass gainers is "drink a gallon of milk every day").
I should also mention that Lyle's article is debating a program for "optimal" mass gaining. People gain decent mass on all sorts of different diets. (Check out leangains.com for the other end of the extreme: lean massing while doing 16 hour fasts... essentially skipping 1 meal a day and eating big during an 8 hour window).
At the end of the day, you can gain mass pretty much with any type of diet as long as you get adequate calories and nutrients (especially proteins/aminos). If you become a social hermit because of your workout/diet, you are doing something wrong.