Working from home has convinced me that a lot of western people don't really need more than one meal a day (or even one).
Growing up sort of poor-ish, I have noticed that a lot of my eating habits are basically not far off Dickensian "Eat now, you might not have anything at all tomorrow" patterns.
Animals, including us, are extraordinarily good at conserving energy and dealing with long periods of famine. One meal a day is a non event metabolically, and makes sense for most of us that lead a sedentary life.
The idea that we need to eat 3 times a day is from a time most people were living an agricultural life, or doing heavy physical jobs. If you burn a lot of energy, you don't need to be told to eat more.
The idea that we need to eat 5 small meals a day to stay healthy, and never skip a meal! is first world bullshit.
True, but especially if you are obese, find your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) and make sure you eat close to that. You shouldn't cut more than 1000 calories a day from your needs. If you do that over a long enough time period, you can lose muscle and your metabolism will slow and become more efficient to protect yourself, making it harder to lose weight.
If you have already done this, you will have to enter into a period of building exercise and adding muscle weight back onto your body before your metabolism will work the way it should.
Sure, this is anecdotal but I was eating 1600 calories a day OMAD and my metabolism dropped to burn 1850 calories a day. (As measured by a VO2 Max machine as part of a dexafit scan), which is about 750 calories a day under what it should have been. My standing body temperature was also hovering around 97.3 instead of 98.6
Since then I've been eating more, closer to 3000 calories a day and exercising with heavy lifting 3x a week and my metabolism has come roaring back. I haven't had another VO2 Max scan but my standard morning body temp is now 98.3. In the months I've been doing that I have gained 1 pound, but I am sure a good chunk of that is muscle.
I'd rather eat 3 times a day than feeling stuffed from shoveling 2,000 kcal in my stomach once a day – and even if you sit around all day, you still burn up to 2,000 kcal.
As someone who has done one meal/window a day for a decade, I assure you it's a self-correcting problem.
You wont ever starve if your meal is 700kcal one day. You will want to eat more the next day, your head will tell you. Or maybe you want some ice cream after in the same window?
On the other point, very few people who sit around all day need 2000kcal, unless they're relatively huge in any dimension. Either way you will find out if you count for a couple of weeks and if your weight is constant your average intake is your TDEE. If you're sedentary my bet is it's less than 2k.
I kept telling people this while powerlifting. I had several years worth of detailed records of what I ate, down to every sugar free chewing gum I chewed, and while going to the gym 5 times a week combined with a sedentary job, I burned at most around 2000kcal. My bulking diet was at 2400kcal. I was at near competitive level weights at that point.
I feel so much obesity is down to people thinking 2k or even 2500kcal is right for them despite an activity level that means they might be closer to 1500kcal-1800kcal.
Absolutely concur with your advice to count for a couple of weeks, and I'd back that bet...
6'1, about 200lbs when at my leanest (15% or so body fat). 3100 sounds very high to me for your weight unless you're all muscle and very active, but very much in line with the kind of recommendations I'm used to seeing.
But your experience will vary massively depending on how active you are, including how hard you hit the gym.
It's not impossible it's right, but really just count for a few weeks and keep track of your weight, and then adjust up/down up to a few hundred kcal until your weight is changing the way you want it tp.
Unless you're super-lean there's very little reason to add more than 300-400 kcal above maintenance at most (I do less these days) - big bulking cycles take a lot of discipline to break out of. I generally favour slow but steady these days as I'm back into lifting.
Age also factors in - you can expect slower progress the older you get and accordingly you'll need fewer extra calories if you want to avoid adding fat. Conversely, if your testosterone levels and metabolism are at their peak, you might well burn more.
Counting and tracking is really the only thing that will tell you the right numbers for you.
See, I like feeling full when I eat, and three meals means I never feel full - if I want to keep my calories under a healthy amount. I've compromised on two meals in a four hour window. Still lots of health benefits but a bit more manageable than one huge meal (for me).
What makes you think you have to leave for jungle to be an ascetic? You are an ascetic by all means if you have control over your senses. At least Hinduism defines it that way.
I've been having 1 meal a day for several years now (since well before the pandemic), and my weight has stayed pretty much constant throughout.
The tricky part for me wasn't getting enough calories, but ensuring I'm getting a good amount and a good variety of nutrients.
I try to eat healthy meals most of the time, but even a handful of "cheat" meals per week to indulge my cravings for tasty, non-healthy food can seriously throw off my overall nutrition profile for the week, since I only get 7 of them.
I've been trying to balance for that by drinking a bottle of Soylent after every unhealthy meal, basically as a nutritional supplement.
Yes we are in a culture of nonstop eating. Once we understand the basic phenomenon of fasting and or caloric restriction, its easier to restrain from eating excess.
I'd try to do OMAD (One meal a day) a couple days per week, and at first it's hard not gonna lie, but for me the reward was worth it.
The main difference its energy levels. Before it was like a roller coaster of 10/10 minutes after eating, then going low to 5 or 4 in a few hours. With fasting, it's more like a consistent 8/10 across the day.
The main challenge with OMAD, it's probably the social aspect, eating it's rarely around calorie consumption.
Bonus: Is practical only having to do clean kitchen utensils and dishes one time per day. Lot of time saved.
Humans don't have instincts, except a little baby's instinct to suckle. An instinct is a pre-programmed behavior, not a desire. Only non-human animals have instincts.
Motivation is never something to overcome. Motivation is power. You work with it.
By "willpower" people usually mean ability to force yourself to do something you aren't motivated to do - you shouldn't try to do that, it's operator error of the human system.
of course humans have instincts, we're an animal like any other, just because some try to do anything they can to suppress those instincts doesn't mean it's not there
Those are not complex behaviors. An instinct is a complex behavior, like migrating for the winter or building a nest.
The problem with claiming that humans have instincts is that it gives cover for bad theories of mind. For instance, the Nazis believed Jewish people have Jewish minds and German people have German minds; many Marxists have held that bourgeoisie have bourgeois minds. In reality, the human mind is a blank slate, in terms of knowledge and beliefs.
This is exactly why obesity is a thing. We are all wired to some extent to eat whenever food is available. It's a survival thing. But food is plentiful and easily available at all times. That would be bad enough. What's worse is much of it is specifically designed to be addictive.
Sedentary people definitely don't need more than one meal a day to survive. It's trivially easy to satisfy daily calorific and nutritional requirements in a single sitting. There are still a lot of people who say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It is if you are going out to do 4 hours of manual labour in the morning before lunch. Not so much if you only cycle a few miles to work then sit down (and that's already more exercise than most do).
However, I do think there is a difference in how people react to fasting. In particular I think fasting is better for men than for women. I've been fasting regularly for more than 10 years at this point and it's great. But all women I've known to try it have had problems with it.
I think this is true. Whenever I’m sedentary for a while I can’t eat more than two meals a day without quickly putting on weight. I don’t understand how it’s possible for people to struggle with putting on weight unless they have a very active lifestyle
It was harder to gain weight from my lowest point after doing intermittent fasting, than starting to loose from my highest point.
At the lowest point I had lost a lot of interest in food and eating and did not have the same hunger. It is much worse problem since loosing weight is only about discipline, but gaining weight is about more than that.
When I’m in the office, I crave a sandwich from the pizza place across the street A) because it’s there and B) to kill the monotony of being in my office.
At home I have a far easier time skipping lunch despite there being snacks everywhere.
> Working from home has convinced me that a lot of western people don't really need more than one meal a day
A different way to look at it would be that a lot of Western people are too sedentary for more than one meal a day. Not only are they getting fat, their muscles are atrophying from lack of activity.
Growing up sort of poor-ish, I have noticed that a lot of my eating habits are basically not far off Dickensian "Eat now, you might not have anything at all tomorrow" patterns.