Does meal frequency matter?

Blood sugar management

Within this topic alone we can cover multiple points and reasons explaining why this is crucial to burning fat, and building muscle to an extent (as well as getting more performance out of your body in the gym).

1. Your diet should make you feel satisfied, well energised (for day to day life AND the gym) and it shouldn't leave you unnecessarily hungry. If you leave too long between meals your blood sugars will plummet and you will potentially become more prone to wanting a sugar fix. Sugar itself isn't necessarily an issue as a whole, but when you consider you're likely to eat too much, very quickly to re-stabilise your blood sugar levels it's going to be negative. Eating every 2-4 hours throughout the day will help dramatically with blood sugar level management (provided the composition of the meals are right). Stop someone eating for 7 hours and ask them what it is they want to eat, steak with potato and vegetables or a bag of sweets.

2. Insulin sensitivity is something we want to improve upon for fat loss and building muscle. By managing blood sugar levels more effectively and avoiding dramatic spikes and dives in levels, we will by default help manage insulin better as well.

To you these may seem like small points, but in my experience these are very important and very relevant. 

Muscle retention and building muscle are also improved by eating regularly, in my opinion.

Here's why.

If you imagine each meal is filled with nutrients which support muscle recovery and growth (amino acids in-particular) you create a frequent flow of these nutrients for the muscle to "top them up" throughout the day.

In fact it actually boosts muscle protein synthesis (MPS) which is key to building muscle and recovery. Sometimes for this purpose alone, you wouldn't need protein every 2-4 hours BUT when you are trying to tick every single box why risk it? As a general rule, when you consider the other benefits it's worth doing!

In order for the protein source to boost MPS as you would want it to there needs to be enough leucine present. Consider this when picking your protein source, as something like pork wouldn't have anywhere near enough.

To maximize muscle growth and recovery you will almost certainly benefit from higher meal frequency in my opinion.