Saturday 27th October - Daily Food Intake

I am writing this blog after talking with some trainers I met in the gym when I was working out yesterday. I heard one telling his friend about one of his clients who was now eating the required six meals a day (and consuming a lot more calories than I would suggest).

We started to talk during a break in our routines and I told him that I had overheard his comments about caloric intake and asked did he get his client to eat the same amount everyday ? He replied that his client did.

I then asked if his client worked out everyday ? He replied that no they didn't because they were a very busy person and proceeded to justify that eating a lot of smaller meals would definitely help his client who had previously been lucky to eat two meals a day. I didn't want to insult or upset this guy so I nodded and we both went back to our routines.

This multi-meal concept (whether five or six) now seems to be the "recommended plan for everyone". In fact I too was part of the "nutrition mafia" singing this song but even they can't follow these rules - you know what I mean by that comment, we tell you to do it because we are the experts but sometimes I think that we need to re-assess every few years the new knowledge uncovered and then evolve that into practice.

Well, as I have learnt more over the last few years I have been questioning this multi-meal concept. Having tried and applied this knowledge myself to get results, but then constantly seeking the optimal intake for individuals I want to point out one important fact. If you don't exercise everday why would you eat as many calories on these non-active days ?

In designing our Rainbow Nutrient ReFuelling Plan in my "Human E.C.O. System" book with leading nutritionists we began to realize that this multi-meal concept was flawed if someone is not active. In fact we could be adding to the problem by increasing their intake of good foods without removing their bad foods. This "compounding" issue I spoke of a few days ago as justification for their bad eating habits they cite the "balance and moderation rules we teach them". It is also the first thing you hear when they want to eat chocolate "I am just doing the 80/20 concept of 80% good and 20% bad".

What you don't hear is that this compounding rule is not addressed for their overall eating habits or activity levels otherwise our fitness centres and parks would be full of people burning off that excess nutrient intake - good or bad.

To achieve the best option for the "growing population of the world", we need to address total calories and teach the individual some personal responsibility with greater knowledge then those "in principle rules" might begin to work !